1907 . 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
i3i 
A DAY'S WORK PICKING APPLES. 
How Records Are Kept. 
One of our readers in Indiana who is just 
starting quite a large commercial apple orch¬ 
ard wants to know how growers in districts 
where many apples are picked keep a record 
with their Dickers It is pretty well under¬ 
stood how berry pickers are checked off, but 
in apple picking, there must be a different 
system. I)o we understand that apple pickers 
in your section are hired by the day, or 
are they paid by the barrel or basket? If 
the latter is the case, what arrangements do 
you have for keeping track of the number 
they pick? What is the practice in your 
section, and what is considered a fair day's 
work for a good picker? 
There are about as many different ways 
of picking and packing apples as there 
are different people. There is no estab¬ 
lished way of keeping track of the barrels 
where they pick by the barrel, that I have 
ever heard of. I have always hired by 
the day, but I thought that another year 
I would hire by the barrel, and I would 
like to know myself how is the best way 
to keep it. If they pick by the day about 
20 barrels is the average; if by the bar¬ 
rel, from 25 to 50 barrels is the average. 
Wayne Co., N. Y. w. p. Rogers. 
The apples grown in Niagara County 
are usually gathered by day help receiv¬ 
ing from $1.25 to $2 per day, with or 
without board. Many are hiring Italians 
or Poles, who board themselves in shacks, 
some hiring by barrel, paying 10 cents for 
picking and leaving barrel under trees as 
they come from tree. The reason for 
having apples picked by day help is this; 
the apples are usually emptied on the 
packing table, barreled and shipped to 
market or cold storage immediately, 
making a clean-up as they go along. 
Niagara Co., N. Y., willard hopkins. 
We hire both by the day and barrel; 
each man takes; a row if picking by the 
barrel and tallies each night the number 
of barrels. Some pay by the barrel after 
they are sorted, and pay for culls and 
everything. Some of the largest or¬ 
chards all pick bv the barrel, and some 
entirely by the day, and pick in bags or 
aprons and empty on sorting table. Some 
pickers average 40 barrels per day, and 
some more and some less; 20 to 35 is 
a good average. One picker here picked 
80 barrels in eight hours, and was will¬ 
ing to bet $100 he could pick 100 barrels 
in 10 hours, but could get no takers at 
that. I think he would have picked the 
100 barrels in 10 hours. clark allis. 
Orleans Co., N. Y. 
Ninety-nine hundredths of all the 
apples in this county are picked by the 
day or month hands. So much depends 
upon the character of the trees and the 
amount of fruit on the trees that it is 
very difficult to tell how much it costs to 
pick a barrel. Sometimes, however, a 
man takes a contract to pick by the bar¬ 
rel and usually the price is 10 cents per 
barrel, picking fruit clean and emptying it 
direct into the barrels without sorting. 
Usually, however, the fruit is picked and 
emptied directly upon the sorting tables 
and in that case it would hardly be prac¬ 
ticable to check each picker’s apples. On 
youngest trees, heavily loaded, men have 
picked, when picking from the ground, a 
barrel in from five to six minutes, but 
then when picking in tree tops and using 
ladders very much more time is required. 
In exceptional cases men have picked as 
high as 30 barrels in 10 hours, taking 
whole trees, but he must be an active 
man and have fine picking if lie averages 
20 barrels per day. More men will go 
under 15 than over it. Pickers most al¬ 
ways pick into bags, made especially for 
the purpose, or they take an ordinary two- 
bushel bag and tie the mouth to one 
corner of bottom and use some device to 
keep mouth open. Carrying this bag on 
the shoulder over the neck they pick di¬ 
rect into it. A few use half-bushel han¬ 
dle baskets with wire hook on handle, 
thinking this the best plan. 
Niagara Co., N. Y., j. s. woodward. 
We have never had our apples picked 
by the bushel or barrel, but always by the 
day. Undoubtedly this is the most rapid 
way to get them gathered, and I under¬ 
stand that it is practiced to some extent 
in the southern part of the State, and 
that some of those who have done so 
are well satisfied with the method. I 
would think it only practicable where the 
packing was done in a packing house and 
one naturally would not expect that they 
would be as carefully handled. There is 
apt to be so much difference in varieties, 
size of trees and the crop varies so much 
that it would seem hard to establish a 
uniform price. As our apples are most¬ 
ly sold to the retailer or consumer, or 
are placed in cold storage, all under our 
own brand, we are directly interested in 
having them as carefully handled and 
graded as carefully as possible, and our 
method is to have them delivered by the 
picker right on to the tables in the or¬ 
chard, which are moved as occasion re¬ 
quires, the pickers using one-half bushel 
baskets to pick in, each one having two, 
to save time in carrying. We have, some 
years, kept tally on the pickers, am 1 of 
course there is a great difference in the 
amounts picked. Forty to fifty bushels is 
a good average in good picking for men; 
boys will run less. We have a record of 
90 bushels in a day and one picker claims 
to have picked 75 bushels in seven hours, 
but this was only a spurt. By a bushel, 
in this reckoning, T mean two picking 
baskets, which ordinarily are scant half 
bushels. To keep tally we have used a 
tallv sheet with each picker’s name on it, 
and marked with a pencil as they come 
in, but this is rather troublesome. This 
year we made a little trial of an auto¬ 
matic recorder, but as it was not fully 
perfected, we did not use it to any ex¬ 
tent. In principle it was a keyboard with 
numbered keys, each picker having a num¬ 
ber. Striking a key rang a bell and 
punched a hole in a paper wound on a 
roller which revolved a short distance 
each time. Probably something of that 
kind could be used that would be accurate 
and not expensive. Picking by the bushel 
may be practicable in a uniform orchard 
of one variety, where the product is to 
go right on to the market, and undoubt¬ 
edly is a more expeditious way to gather 
the crop, but for us is open to objections. 
L. R. BRYANT. 
Secretary Illinois Horticultral Society. 
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