FRUIT MANAGEMENT : GATHERING ; APPLE HEAPS. 
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bruise will injure it; but this extreme care is not necessary for the varieties required for Cider and 
Perry now under consideration. These may be gently shaken from the trees. When the weather 
is fine and dry the fruit may be collected. A layer of straw should first be laid under the tree 
(unless the grass is abundant there), and then coarse cloths or pieces of sacking should be placed 
upon it, as well to save the fruit from being too much bruised, as also for the ready convenience it 
gives of removing the fruit from time to time. The simple plan recommended by Marshall cannot 
be surpassed. As soon as the spontaneous fall of fruit begins to take place he recommends the first 
gathering to begin. The boughs should be gently shaken by means of a pole with a hook attached 
to it, but the fruit that sticks firmly to the tree must be left to become more mature, and be shaken 
off at a subsequent period. This practice is still followed in the best orchards, where the trees are 
thus gone over three or sometimes four times at intervals of ten or twelve days, until the whole 
crop has been matured and collected. The fruit which falls the second time is considered the most 
favourable for the best and strongest liquor required for bottling. 
“ The farmer, with foreseeing view, 
Prepares himself for the forth coming spring; 
Nudged by the ripen’d fruit that silent falls 
On the long grass beneath; at early morn 
He clears the orchard boughs, and piles the fruit, 
And the press gushes with the pleasant juice.” 
Partridge’s “ English Monthly ” 
Apple Heaps. —As the fruit is gathered from the trees it is placed in heaps, until it becomes 
sufficiently ripe and mellow to be crushed. There has been much discussion as to the position and 
formation of the Apple heaps. The common practice is to place them on the plain ground in the 
orchard itself, or in some convenient place by the homesteads. They are usually made from about 
eighteen inches to two feet six inches in thickness, and are left without any protection either from the 
sun, from the rain, or from frost, not to mention the fowls and wild birds. Thus they remain for some 
two or three weeks, to as many months with the later varieties, to suit the convenience of the cider 
maker. Marshall recommends that the fruit after being collected perfectly dry should be laid up 
under cover, in an open shed, or where a thorough current of air can be had, in heaps not more than 
10 inches thick. The best writers of the 17th century gave the same advice :—“ The fruit should 
be laid out of the sun, and the rain, not abroad but in a heap on a sweet dry floor, on straw to sweat 
for about a fortnight ; and harder Apples, like the Redstreak , a month or more. The longer they 
lie the better, so that too many of them begin not to rot.” (“ The Compleat Planter and Cyderest.”) 
-—Marshall admits that this practice was not followed in his day any more than it is in our own, nor 
is it ever likely to be followed in large extensive orchards, although the advice is both good and 
sound. 
The object of placing the fruit in heaps is to allow it to become uniformly ripe and mellow 
for the mill, and in order to insure its equal maturity with greater certainty, the different varieties 
of Apples should always be placed in separate heaps. It is better to do this even when the 
quantities are small, so as to insure their not being sent to the mill until each variety is sufficiently 
