484 



FRUIT EVAPORATION. 



and slow sales at low figures take off all profit from 

 small berries. I sell Bubach at two cents higher than my 

 neighbor gets for Wilson ; and no one grumbles. We 

 have large sorts that in all respects displace the small 

 ones. Quick selling is half the gain in gardening. You 

 cannot afford time to hunt a market. Besides if you 

 do, you will soon get disgusted and lose the fun of fruit 

 growing, which is quite as valuable as the cash. A fruit 

 grower should keep happy and full of good cheer. 



Diseases vary with location. The best safeguard is to 

 thoroughly drain your soil. The worst enemy is a dry 

 spell. I shall hereafter plant my berries when I can. 



A test bed helps one to enjoy fruit-growing. We 

 should get fun out of whatever we do. The trial plot 

 is a bright spot. I have about 50 sorts, and it is a de- 

 light to compare and take notes. It is also full of amuse- 

 ment to lead friends through and hear their comments 

 as they try samples. Farm work is hard, because done 

 brutally. It pays to find the bright side. I bring up 

 my children to work ; but to be experimenters and in- 



vestigators. My eight year old has as good judgment 

 about strawberries and all other fruits as I have. A 

 pleasant home is the end; not nasty clothes, foul habits 

 and money ! 



Use any good g.irden soil, on a slope, southeast by 

 preference. It must be clean and well drained. To 

 prevent wash, have ditches above to carry off water; 

 wet seasons are often disastrous from berries rotting, 

 especially the Bomba. Good drainage helps ; but you 

 must also prevent surface water from standing about or 

 flowing. This year dry weather has been troublesome. 

 Result ; a third of a crop, bad sized and bad shaped 

 berries. We ought to irrigate more. Try an experi- 

 ment from your well or fountain 



Curiously, the strawberry market is less often over- 

 stocked than thirty years ago; more fruit is eaten. You 

 may plant in confidence if you mean to study the sub- 

 ject and understand it, and then to keep your work up 

 with your understanding. — E. P. Powell, Oneida Co., 

 N. V. 



FRUIT EVAPORATION. 



EW persons realize the growth 

 and importance of the fruit 

 evaporating industry in this 

 country, or the possibilities of 

 its future development ; for 

 the work is at present con- 

 fined to comparatively small 

 areas, the most important of 

 which is in western New York. Large quantities 

 of fruits are, it is true, evaporated in Michigan, 

 Maryland and elsewhere ; but in no place does the 

 industry take such hold of the people and become 

 a part of the lives of men, women and children, as 

 it does in that section. " Even the youngest child 

 that can talk," says Mr. L. B. Rice, a former resi- 

 dent of that region, and a man thoroughly familiar 

 with the business, "will tell about ' wfiite apples,' 

 ' chops ' and ' jelly stock. ' " 



This widespread acquaintance with the industry is due, 

 not to the large evaporators in the villages, which use 

 thousands of bushels of apples each year, but to the use 

 of small evaporators by every household throughout the 

 region. Even those who have little or no orchard of 

 their own have small evaporators, and work up fruit on 

 shares for others who have more than they can otherwise 

 utilize, receiving for pay one-half the product. The 

 great advantage of the small evaporator costing from $20 

 to $30 each is, that it gives the poor man a chance to 

 share in the profits of his richer neighbors. Mr. Rice 

 declares that any honest, sober, industrious man with 

 good judgment and economical habits, who has a good 

 wife and a lot of helpful children, and who can get hold 

 of a cheap evaporator, can, by working up fruit for half 



the product, in less than fifteen years own the best farm 

 in the vicinity, while his sons will drive in their own 

 carriages, and his daughters have a piano or organ. He 

 knows of many such cases. Even a woman with two or 

 three children can work up on an average 15 to 20 bushels 

 per day, with the waste, or 100 to 140 pounds of white 

 apples and 20 to 25 pounds of jelly stock, which, at the 

 average price of yyi cents per pound for the former and 

 2)4 cents for the latter, would give her from $400 to $500 

 for the season of ninety days. 



How marvelously rapid has been the evolution of the 

 evaporating industry ! Within the memory of middle- 

 aged men, apples and peaches were cut into quarters, 

 which were strung on strings and hung to dry on each 

 side of the fire-place and from the timbers overhead, or 

 wherever else they could be most conveniently and rap- 

 idly dried. Then boards, on which the fruit was spread, 

 took the place of strings, and from these the transition 

 was easy to a room set apart for the purpose, containing 

 a stove to dry the fruit. The danger of fire, however, 

 soon led to the building of a small house, called the " dry 

 house," away from other structures. In 1857, a man 

 named Mason, of Marion, N. Y., devised a little portable 

 dry-house with a sheet-iron heater, which revolutionized 

 the business. Thousands were readily sold, and, despite 

 all improvements of later years, thousands of them, Mr. 

 Rice says, are still in use in Wayne county, N. Y., and 

 do just as good work as the large evaporators, while one 

 with a capacity of 10 to 12 bushels per day costs only $20 

 to $25. Cheap evaporators of whatever kind are of the 

 greatest value to small-fruit growers. If the market 

 drops for a day, the surplus can be dried ; or if at any 

 time continued wet weather hinders the pickers until the 

 berries are too soft for market, they can be saved by 

 evaporation. Indeed, the growing of black-cap raspber- 



