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region go westward in 8-tb. baskets, and the Kenka district fruit 
goes eastward in 5-lb. baskets. 
Inferior grapes are picked in crates and shipped to wineries to 
be converted into grape juice or wine. 
Packing Houses. — In all large vineyards some form of a packing- 
house is convenient for the proper handling of the crop. In its 
simplest form, met with in the vineyards of Maryland, it consists 
of the canvas "fly" of a tent stretched over upright poles in the 
vineyard to afford shelter to the packers, who carefully arrange 
the fruit on the surface of the baskets as they come from the pickers. 
Better than this is the permanent shed placed somewhere between 
the vineyard and the loading station. Cut grapes should not be left 
to stand long in the sun. If grapes are stored, a combined storage 
house and packing room is built. The grapes are picked and deliv- 
ered from the vineyard in trays holding twenty-five or thirty pounds 
of fruit, and from these are sorted by other hands and packed into 
baskets for storage and subsequent sale. 
The storage house is built on the plan of an ice house, with oppor- 
tunity for letting in the cold air of night and closing up during the 
day. In this way the interior temperature can be dropped to 40 
degrees F. If the basement floor is built as a cellar in the side of 
a hill it makes a very satisfactory storage room, in which grapes may 
be kept until December and the Catawbas even later. 
YIELDS. 
A strong vine of the Concord grape, having all the advantages of 
soil and location, may yield thirty pounds of fruit, but such a 
yield could not be expected from all the vines in a vineyard. An 
average of twenty pounds to the vine would be a full crop. With 
GOD vines to the acre, the yield would be 12,000 pounds, or six tons, of 
fruit. This was the actual yield of vineyards in Erie county in 1901, 
when 1,500 8-lb. baskets were picked in the best vineyards; 1,000 
such baskets are considered a good average crop. In 1903, owing 
to injuries from winter-killing, frosts and fungous diseases, the 
yield was less than half a crop. The average yield of all the vine- 
yards in a district is regularly much below four tons, but the intel- 
ligent fruit grower must not count his chances with the average. 
He is better equipped to overcome the difficulties and often to avoid 
losses which the average man is not prepared to meet. 
The crop of Concords in 1903 sold at from 15 cents to 20 cents 
per 8 lb basket in Erie county. Vineyards yielding 500 baskets to the 
acre, or two tons of fruit, would return to the proprietor $75 to 
$100 per acre. Two cents per pound is considered a very satisfac- 
tory price for the producer, and when a full crop is harvested the 
