1891 
421 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Business. 
HANDLING THE BERRY BUSINESS. 
Pickers. Prices, Packages, Prospects. 
1. Where do you secure pickers ? 2. How are they paid, 
and what do you call a good day’s work ? 3. Are the ber¬ 
ries sorted, packed and shipped at once ? 4. What pack¬ 
ages and crates do you use ? 5. How far do you ship 
and how do you sell f 6 Do you make any effort to 
utilize the surplus or inferior fruit by evaporating or pre¬ 
serving f Does this pay ? 7. What are the prospects for 
this season’s business ? 
Frost Has Hurt Strawberries. 
1. The young people within IX mile come readily. I 
carry them in rainy or muddy times 2, The pickers are 
Daid two cents per quart. In strawberries a good day’s 
work 18 35 to 70 quarts; in raspberries from 40 to 100. 3. The 
strawberries are shipped, raspberries mostly dried. 4. 
The Disbrow 32-quart crate made in Rochester, N. Y. 
5. To Buffalo and Rochester towards the west, and New 
York and Syracuse towards the east; but mostly I 
sell about home. 6 The refuse strawberries I sell at 
reduced prices. 7. The prospect for this season is good, 
except in regard to strawberries, which were badly injured 
by the frost on Saturday night, May 18. They were nearly 
in full bloom, and all open blooms were killed. The rasp¬ 
berries are not in as good condition as formerly on account 
of the past two wet seasons, which prevented cultivation. 
The present cold weather is probably not severe enough to 
injure the buds, though two years ago they were killed 
before blooming. As the market is entirely bare of evapo¬ 
rated fruit, no doubt the evaporated raspberries will 
bring a good price. r. johnston. 
Ontario Co., N. Y. 
Factory Candidates as Pickers. 
1. My pickers are the children of the employees of the 
neighboring factories. Their ages are between 12 and 16. 
By that time they graduate into the shops. Four-fifths of 
them are girls. 2. I pay two cents a quart for the season 
from the first strawberries to the last blackberries, except 
red raspberries for which I give three cents. We do not pick 
all day—only from three o’clock to sundown. The pickers 
who pick 30 quarts in that time are satisfied and satisfac¬ 
tory, although some of them sometimes run as high as 50 
quarts. I use the Simpson’s Tally System, consisting of 
cards representing 100 quarts which are tallied with a con¬ 
ductor’s punch, see Fig. 152. 3. The berries are not sorted. 
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SIMPSON’S IMPROVED TALLY SYSTEM 
FOB TALLYING BERRIES, HOPS, MILK, ETC. 
WARREN SIMPSON, - OSWEGO, N. Y. 
Copyrighted, 1884. 
BERRIES. 
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Fig. 152. 
The less they are handled the better. I try to grow them so 
that but little sorting is necessary. They are packed im¬ 
mediately and stored in a dry place until morning. 4 I 
use square quart baskets for all except red raspberries for 
which I use oblong pint boxes which fit the same recep¬ 
tacles which are 32 quart crates, such as are made by Dis¬ 
brow, Parry, Sage and others. Baskets cost about $4 per 
1,000 delivered ; crates, 35 cents each. 5. Most of my berries 
are carried by my own teams to the neighboring cities and 
sold for cash each morning Moreover, I ship to retailers 
who sell for 20 per cent. In the large cities I ship all to 
some responsible wholesaler who sells for me for 10 per 
cent commission. If I could be on the teams in four di¬ 
rections at once I would have no hesitation in saying the 
C. O. D. system was the best of the three; but as I find it 
hard to personally attend to more than one team, all three 
systems are satisfactory and the best I can do for the sev¬ 
eral markets I can handle to advantage. Boston—100 
miles away—is as far as I ever ship. 6. I have not as yet 
done any evaporating or preserving, but presume I shall 
as the business increases. I have now 27 acres in berries. 
7. The prospects for this season are an average. They 
were far above that until the heavy freeze of two weeks 
ago which did considerable damage to raspberries and 
strawberries as well as to apples and pears. Cherries and 
peaches were ruined—not enough left for the “home 
market.” G. s BUTLER. 
Middlesex County, Conn. 
An Evaporator’s Story. 
1. I am just outside the corporation of Lyons, N. Y. I 
have no trouble to get all the pickers I want by simply post¬ 
ing a notice two or three days in advance. On another place 
away from town I engage pickers in advance wherever I 
can find them, lodging and boarding them during the season. 
2. My pickers are all paid at one time—at the end of the sea¬ 
son. On the first place I pay one and one-half cent per 
quart except for the last picking, for which I pay two cents, 
they keeping themselves. On the second place I pay one 
and one-half cent per quart and board for the entire sea¬ 
son, including gleaning. 3. Fruit is picked and shipped 
at once or delivered from my wagons to the canning fac¬ 
tories, to which I sell a large part of my fruit. 4. I am 
using quite largely and like them very much 16 quart 
basket crates, made with a heavy wooden rim at the top to 
stiffen them. I have quite a quantity of the ordinary 30 and 
82 quart shipping crates and use them as well. 5. I ship 
very little fruit, selling the most of it tocanners, or evapo¬ 
rating it. 6. We have evaporated as high as 80,000 quarts 
of berries in a season. For blackcaps, with suitable varie¬ 
ties, I consider this the most profitable way, one season 
with another, to handle the crop. The Ohio, which was 
disseminated by me, is generally acknowledge! to be the 
most profitable for evaporation. 7. The prospects at pres¬ 
ent I would consider good for the small fruit crops, and I 
see no reason why good prices may not be anticipated, as 
evaporated fruits of all kinds were sold out very close last 
y ea r. H. p. VAN DUSEN. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. 
A Model Silo; Wind Power For Cutting. 
There has been a great deal of controversy of late in re¬ 
gard to the best method of constructing and filling the 
silo. On May 6th while stopping at the farm of Mr. John 
J. Rosa near Milford, Delaware, I had the pleasure of ex¬ 
amining his twin silo which has a capacity of 150 tons of 
ensilage. Its neat, clean and durable appearance at once 
struck my fancy. One apartment still contained about 
four feet of as excellent ensilage as I had ever seen. It 
was perfectly sweet and emitted a rather pleasant odor 
and there was nothing disagreeable to the taste. There 
was none of that rank, acid smell about it which renders 
most ensilage so disagreeable to handle. Mr. Rosa in¬ 
formed me that only a very small amount, not more than 
one bushel, showed any signs of moldiness at any time. 
This silo occupies one corner of a building used for a 
horse and cow stable. The walls of the lower part for 
about four feet below the surface of the soil are con¬ 
structed of brick, and plastered with water-proof cement 
to the floor of the building. Above this the wall consists 
o f matched pine an inch and a quarter thick, nailed upon 
3x4 inch studding placed 16 inches apart. This was cov¬ 
ered with heavy sheathing paper, over which were nailed 
laths the same as for lathing and plastering a dwelling. 
The laths were furred out from the paper by means of 
laths placed vertically 16 inches apart, leaving a place the 
thicknees of a lath between the laths and the paper. A 
thin coat of plaster made from the best quality of water 
cement was first spread upon the laths so as to completely 
fill the space between them and the paper. A second coat¬ 
ing was applied after the first had thoroughly set, a solid 
air and water-tight wall being thus secured. The parti¬ 
tion was treated upon both sides in the same manner. 
Both silos were filled at the same time in order to secure 
an equal pressure upon both sides of the partition. The 
ensilage was cut by power furnished by a large windmill 
and conveyed into the silo as rapidly as possible upon con¬ 
secutive days and firmly packed as fast as filled. 
Delaware Agricultural Station. M. H. BECKWITH. 
Co-operation In English Agriculture. 
A pamphlet has just been printed in England entitled 
“The Unnegotiability of Farmers’ Invested Capital,” a 
subject that is of much interest to American farmers just 
now. The writer of the above named pamphlet says that 
the great difficulties of farmers are due to the fact that 
their capital or property is not available. That is, when¬ 
ever they need cash in their business, they must accept the 
terms of those who hold cash because their property is not 
negotiable. “Year by year,” he say s “ the capital has been 
getting less, the cattle fewer, and the land in a worse con¬ 
dition. This the farmer may have known, but he has only 
known it imperfectly, and he has been tempted to try to 
ignore it—borne up, doubtless, by the memories of former 
recoveries when prosperous years have followed times of 
depression. The farmer of to-day, who is short of capital, 
cannot make a comfortable living profit, and the farmer 
who ha3 capital is getting it out of farming as quickly as 
he can.” And yet, he continues, “ With the assistance of 
science, experience and careful management, combined 
with a sufficiency of available capital, however created, 
there is a certain prospect of certain success in the future.” 
The problem is to reach the available capital. According 
to this writer, the farmer must reduce the price he pays 
for credit and the price he pays for agency and avoid the 
necessity of forced sales. He would accomplish these ends 
through cooperation—a union of the various farmers’ or¬ 
ganizations in each county, formed on a business basis 
and selling supplies to farmers at five per cent and taking 
a bill of sale as security. This is working out the prin¬ 
ciples of the Grange, the F. M. B. A., and, to'a certain ex¬ 
tent, of the Farmers’ Alliance. It is possible that such 
cooperation will give better results in England than in 
America. 
IMPLEMENT NOTES. 
Picket Mills. —The fence of the future promises to be 
a combination of wire and pickets. Such fences may be 
made during the winter, when out-of-door work fails, and 
held ready for nailing to the posts in the spring. They are 
expensive when one is called upon to pay someone else for 
sawing and handling the pickets. The man who has lots 
of fencing to do, either for himself or for his neighbors, 
can save this cost by buying a picket mill and doing his 
own sawing. The B. C. Machinery Company of Battle 
Creek, Michigan, sell an excellent picket mill that can be 
run by any power. 
Cutaway Harrow: Manure Spreader.-The Rural 
asks about the blades of the Cutaway harrow after It h«s 
been used among stones. I have used one two years on 
stony land, and have ridden over hundreds of bowlders, 
and, aside from dulling the cutting edge, I cannot see that 
any harm has been done. It is a very strongly built im¬ 
plement and will stand a great deal of hard usage. The 
spring-tooth harrows are ail the rage in Vermont, but they 
are hard on the team as well as on the driver. They do 
not, so far as I have seen, cover grain nearly as well as 
either the Cutaway or the smoothing harrows. A farmer 
said in an agricultural meeting that he thought 20 loads of 
manure spread with the manure spreader were as good as 
30 spread by hand. But he added that a spreader did not 
work well on a hill-side or when drawn up hill. Its place is 
on level or nearly level ground. j. w. newton. 
Lamoille Co., Vermont. 
For Loosening Sod Ground. —Some weeks ago we gave 
a short account of a new French device for opening sod 
that has become too tight or “ bound.” The device shown 
at Fig. 153 is the first attempt to imitate this machine that 
we have seen in this country. It is simply a row of curved 
knives fastened to a rod about two feet apart. They simply 
cut the sod to a depth of two or three inches. The theory 
is that this lets in the air to the grass roots, breaking up 
the “ sod-bound” condition and at the same time making 
it easy for the sod to grow together again. 
Fruit Sorters.—The R N.-Y. has frequently told Its 
readers about the machines for sorting fruits and potatoes. 
They are very necessary in sections where fruit is the main 
crop. Think of the hand work required to sort the oranges 
or peaches grown on 100 acres! At Fig. 154 is shown a 
machine quite extensively advertised in the California 
papers. 
Fig. 1 54. 
Like most of the others, this works on the sieve princi¬ 
ple. The fruit is graded by rolling it down a gentle in¬ 
cline in which are holes of different sizes, the smaller fruits 
falling through into different packages, while the larger 
specimens roll over the holes to the package at the end. 
These machines give better satisfaction with peaches or 
oranges than with potatoes, because the latter are not of 
uniform shape, and a long, slim variety of marketable 
size might slip “ endways” through a hole arranged for 
a small potato. 
Veterinary Inhaler —A patent was recently issued 
for the device shown at Fig. 155. As will be seen from 
the picture, it is a perforated metal tube, bent to pass 
around the nose, and firmly secured to the halter by 
Fig. 155. 
means of straps. Substances that are to be inhaled are 
placed In the tube, and the horse cannot help breathing 
them. A firm in California now offers these tubes for 
sale. , 
Machine For Cutting Corn Fodder —In a paper read 
before the Louisiana Sugar Planters’ Association, Mr. E. 
W. Deming spoke of the great demand for a machine to cut 
corn, cane or sorghum. The great difficulty to be over¬ 
come is the fact that many stalks are bent, blown or 
broken down. How can these be raised and cut ? Speak¬ 
ing of cane cutting, he says: “Assuming that canes do 
not grow perpendicular, they must take that position 
before reaching the cutter, and to facilitate handling after 
being cut, some device for raising the fallen canes must 
project beyond the cutter, separating the canes of one row 
from those upon either side, providing a passageway for 
the wheels, to avoid injury to the uncut rows. Upon the 
efficiency of the device for straightening the canes depends, 
in my opinion, the success of the entire venture.” In the 
machine which The R. N.-Y. has referred to several times, 
this difficulty seems to be overcome in a very ingenious 
manner. Drawings of the machine are now being made. 
