4 
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Vol LXIII. No. 2855. 
NEW YORK, OCTOBER 15, 1904. 
$1 PER YEAR. 
PICKING AND HANDLING WINTER APPLES . 
Saving Time on a Large Crop. 
In the picking and handling of Winter apples there 
are three principal things to be kept in view: Getting 
the apples off the trees at the least expense and in the 
least time; handling them as little as possible, and so as 
to bruise them the least; getting them into the packages 
as soon as possible from the trees and out of the sun. 
When one has but a comparatively few barrels they can 
be picked in almost any way and got into the barrels 
as quickly as possible, and there will not he much loss 
in labor, but where one has, as we have this year, from 
7,000 to 8,000 barrels of very nice apples, a saving of a 
few minutes on each barrel makes quite an item in the 
aggregate. 
The old way was to pick the apples and put them in 
piles on the ground to sweat before they were put into 
the barrels, but experiments 
have shown that apples so 
treated do not keep nearly 
as well as when put into the 
storehouses out of the sun 
as quickly as possible after 
taken from the trees. For¬ 
merly nearly all apples were 
picked into half bushel han¬ 
dled baskets, each basket 
having a wire attached to 
the handle to hang it on the 
ladder or limb, and some 
still follow this plan. We 
found that many apples in 
coming in contact with the 
sides of the basket were 
more or less bruised, and 
these spots, particularly in 
all delicate-fleshed apples, 
like Bellflower, would show 
and injure the appearance 
ot the apples and their keep¬ 
ing quality. We also found 
that it was a very expensive 
way of handling apples, to 
say nothing of its injury to 
the keeping quality, to put 
them in piles and then sort 
as they were picked up, or 
picking them up and putting 
them on the sorting tables. 
It takes nearly or quite half 
as long to pick up a lot of 
apples from piles as to pick 
same quantity from the 
trees in the first place. 
We have abandoned all 
such antiquated and expensive ways, and now put the 
apples as picked upon the sorting tables and from them 
directly into the barrels. The only exception to this is 
where we intend to hold the apples in our own cellars 
for a Winter market. In that case we do not put the 
apples into barrels, but take them directly from the trees 
and carry them in bushel crates into our apple base¬ 
ments, where we put each variety into a bin by itself. 
We have found that apples keep much better when stored 
in bulk than when put into barrels, and the larger the 
bins and more apples that are put together the better 
they will keep, and we have mWer had apples, even 
Greenings, scald when stored in bulk in large bins. 
Last March we took Greenings from the bins as fresh 
and brignt as when they came from the trees. 
Our sorting tables are three feet wide at one end and 
four feet at the other, eight feet long, 32 inches high at 
one end and 40 at the other. The upper five feet of 
the bottom is made of strips !]/> inch wide and one 
inch apart to allow dirt and leaves to work through; 
the rest of the bottom is tight. This table has a rim 
about six inches wide all around except that in the lower 
end there is an opening 10 inches wide through which 
the apples pass into the barrel. From each side of this 
opening there is a piece 28 inches long of the same width 
as the run. which reaches up against the sides; these 
pieces so placed direct the apples to the opening and 
form pockets into which baskets can be placed to receive 
the stemmers. To the bottom under this opening and 
considerably wider a part of a grain sack or piece of 
strong canvas is nailed, which is used to ease the apples 
down into the barrels. A piece nearly as wide as the 
rim and about 14 inches long, with a hand hole in the 
middle, is cut to close the opening when changing 
from full to an empty barrel. This table can have a 
pair of old buggy wheels attached near its upper end, 
so that by taking up the lower end it can be wheeled any¬ 
where about the orchard, though if properly made two 
men can pick it up and carry it easily. We pick from 
the ground from step-ladders and ordinary ladders, using 
bags instead of baskets. These arc made from good 
strong grain bags, with webbing straps sewed on so as 
to support them easily from both shoulders; they have 
a wire or piece of hoop so sewed into a part of the 
mouth as to hold it open, and the other part of the mouth 
has rings sewed upon it in such a way that a cord can 
be run into them and the opening gathered up so to hold 
the apples. These bags hold about one bushel, and the 
picker can use both hands. When the bag is full he 
comes to the table, unties the string and the apples roll 
easily upon the upper end of table. With a man or 
woman on each side of the table and a man at the barrel 
they can sort and barrel for from six to eight pickers, 
according to size of trees and quantity of apples on the 
trees, and as fast as a man can head and another man or 
woman can stem the barrels. Each sorter has a basket 
by his side into which the No. 2 applet are placed, and 
the culls are thrown out on the ground. The man at 
the barrel keeps a close watch of the apples as they 
pass into the barrel. When one-third full he shakes it 
well, again when two-thirds full, and when full passes 
it over to the header, who places a false head with a 
handle on top and thoroughly shakes it until the apples 
will settle no more, when he places it on the press and 
puts in the head. In this way the apples roll down the 
table and the sorters do not touch anything but the culls 
and No. 2 apples, and with the watchful eye of the man 
at the barrel nothing but No. 1 apples get into the barrel 
except by the grossest carelessness. Of course some 
years a half or more of the apples will be culls or No. 2, 
but in our crop of 7,000 or 8,000 barrels this year I don’t 
think one-tenth of them will cull out. as both qualities 
I never saw them better. The No. 1 we stencil with 
name and address and guarantee every barrel to be as 
good all the way through as it shows on the pressed 
end. The No. 2 has nothing but good apples, and is 
marked only with the name of the variety. The culls 
and windfalls when less price than $4 per ton at the 
evaporators are put into the 
basements and fed to the 
stock. Properly fed we 
think them worth more for 
stock food than to be made 
into cider to curse mankind. 
J. S. WOODWARD. 
Handling for Cold 
Storage. 
Two weeks ago we had a 
picture of the low-headed 
trees in the orchards of 
E. P. Vergon, Delaware, O. 
We obtain the following 
notes from an article orig¬ 
inally printed in The Ohio 
Farmer. 
Mr. Vergon’s trees are 
headed low and most of the 
fruit is near the ground. 
Fig. 331 shows what is 
called a “go-devil” or pick¬ 
ing stool. It is all made of 
basswood except the front 
leg, upon which the basket 
hangs. This is made of a 
buggy or cart shaft, which 
can be had from any hard¬ 
ware store. The platform 
is four feet long, 15 inches 
broad and lfjj inch thick. 
The corners are sawed off, 
and the ends made double 
thickness to allow two tag- 
screws on each leg, and are 
thoroughly braced. The 
small brace on the under 
side is iron, with two screws at each end. A small 
iron hook is put on the under side of the “crane’s-bill” 
to hang the basket on. The spread of the hind legs is 
four feet and four inches, and from the hind to the 
front leg is five feet nine inches. 
“The stool is three feet high. To get up catch the 
thing by the neck with one hand and put one foot on 
the horizontal brace near the hind leg, and with a little 
effort you are mounted on something that will not fall 
over, as three legs always adjust themselves to the 
ground even if on a slope. Place either end of the 
stool up or down, and you and it are all right. This 
is my own invention so far as I know, and it is the 
best thing to pick apples from up to nine to 11 feet 
high, that I have ever seen or thought of. I have 
a young orchard of 1,200 trees, eight years old last 
Spring, from which the fruit was picked almost entirely 
with these stools, very rapidly and without any danger 
of mutilating the branches. We do not use any step- 
ladders in the orchard. We abandoned them many 
years ago as neither safe nor satisfactory. The stools 
THE LAS T LOAD OF HARVEST. Fig. 330. First Prize Picture. 
