1911. 
LOADING A MARKET WAGON. 
A Double-decked Cargo. 
Consummate skill in the loading of a wagon with 
the products .of a truck farm has been and is a great 
factor in the wonderful success of this class of soil 
tilling in Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is the 
principal market. 
In this sense wagon loading does not merely mean 
the placing of a great variety of products in a wagon 
box, but it contemplates the actual growing of crops 
so that they may be loaded to the best advantage. 
For certain vegetables that may be taken out early 
in the season are planted in a strip wide enough to 
afford a driveway after they have been removed, and 
this driveway and others laid out similarly in other 
portions of the farm, serve as channels and laterals 
through which the entire crop, several crops from the 
same land in the same season, are moved to market, 
but no roadway in the entire garden has escaped pro¬ 
ducing one kind of crop or another in the first part 
of the season. 
It may be well to explain that wagons so loaded 
have to stand a haul of from eight to 15 miles, some¬ 
times longer, the wagon at places must withstand 
considerable jolting over electric railway tracks and 
other uneven places. The wagon is not loaded in the 
patch, but it stands on solid ground in the big farm¬ 
yard of such a farm. Small wagons are driven out 
in the field, traversing the narrow driveways, flanked 
on either side by a great variety of growing and 
yielding plants. These small wagons, most of them 
drawn by a single horse, then are driven to the farm¬ 
yard close beside the market wagon, and there the 
different kinds of fruits and vegetables are system¬ 
atically loaded. The wagon has been especially built 
for the purpose; 
it is known as 
the Peter Schut- 
tler type, with 
broad tires, and 
the top of the 
deep wagon box 
is built out over 
the wheels to a 
width of a foot. 
With each wag¬ 
on is a set of 
platform 
boards; they go 
with a wagon as 
do the extra 
leaves of a din¬ 
ing room table. 
Each board has 
an inch cleat 
flush with the 
end, the boards 
are laid cross¬ 
wise the entire 
length of the 
wagon bed, the 
cleat dropping 
down over the 
edge, holding 
each board secure. These boards serve two pur¬ 
poses ; they prevent undue weight of the top part of 
a load ori that in the bottom, and articles in the bot¬ 
tom may be taken out of the hind end through a drop¬ 
ping end gate without removing any package or crate 
on the top of the load. When this wagon reaches the 
market a buyer may want all of a certain kind of a 
vegetable, and the entire stock may be in the bottom 
of the load. The gardener simply drops the end gate 
and removes this portion of his load, sack by sack, or 
crate by crate, until all has been taken out, while 
nothing on top has been disturbed. It has been 
found out that a neat display of the load of products 
enhances it in the eyes of a buyer. The clean washed 
radish tips showing in a crate or a number of crates, 
or the white tops of cauliflower heads evenly dis¬ 
played in a crate, add greatly to the chances of a 
cjuick sale. 
The loaded uncovered wagon shown in one of the 
accompanying pictures, Fig. 387, came from a 20-acre 
truck farm owned by James McGawn, near Mont 
Clare, Ill.; the team and the wagon belong to John 
Burmeister, the tenant, who raised the crop and has 
loaded the wagon for an eight-mile drive to the Hay- 
market in Chicago. On this load are: 600 bunches 
carrots, loaded in the bottom; 100 bunches of black 
radishes, in the bottom; 100 bunches of white rad¬ 
ishes, in the bottom; 20 sacks, V/z bushel each, dry 
onions, on the bottom; 22 crates cauliflower, on the 
top platform; seven crates Osage muskmelons, center 
of the top; three crates of red cabbage, front top; 
one crate white cabbage, front top; five crates white- 
tip radishes, scattered on the top; one crate kohlrabi, 
front top. The gross weight of the loaded wagon is 
8500 pounds, the net weight of vegetables 5900 pounds. 
THE BtURAIs NEW-YORKER 
The wagon is drawn by a pair of eight-year-old gray 
horses, “Bob” and “Kate,” worth $450. The cost of 
the wagon is $212. The horses alone weigh 3000 
pounds. 
The value of such a load of garden truck is dif¬ 
ficult to estimate; it isn’t less than $50. The average 
receipts from such a load shown in the picture is 
$85. The same tenant farmer has sold out such loads 
for $110 and even more; of course, it depends entirely 
on the demand and the supply in the market on the 
day of sale. The business of loading a wagon, driving 
it to market and the selling of it is alone an occupa¬ 
tion commanding a weekly salary of about $15, with 
beard, lodging and other expenses. Some idea of the 
importance of the business may be gained when it is 
stated that in this branch of soil tilling in this district 
there are 1300 farmers associated in 15 local unions 
cf the Cook County Truck Gardeners’ Association, 
and the farms tilled range from 10 to 100 acres, the 
value of which runs from $250 to $600 an acre. It 
requires an accomplished seller to dispose of the load 
tc advantage after it is in the market, the details of 
which are a story in itself and will be given later. 
Illinois. J. L. GRAFF. 
NATURAL GAS FOR HEATING ORCHARDS. 
On page 900 Mr. Victor Labadie, of Texas, refers 
to the possibility of using natural gas for orchard 
heating in Eastern Texas and Northern Louisiana. 
I have made some computations on this proposition 
before now, and found that on a 20-acre orchard it 
would require 1330 feet of three-inch gas pipe and 
36,000 feet of two-inch pipe to provide the proper dis¬ 
tribution of gas. This would allow for the burners to 
be 25 feet apart. In addition to this, a pressure plant 
would be required in order to force the gas through 
to the farther ends of the pipe. Should smaller than 
two-inch pipe be used for distribution, greater pressure 
at the power plant would be required to produce the 
result, but nothing smaller than one-inch pipe would 
be considered under any arrangement, excepting for 
nipples leading to the burners. I do not have the 
costs of piping at hand at this time, so am unable to 
tell you what the cost of the equipment would be. I 
presume it would require some little time likewise to 
place this seven miles of piping under ground, and 
some expense. 
I have been informed of an experiment along this 
line having been made in California some two years 
ago in the Bakersfield district by a well-to-do man 
who figured that a matter of $100 or $200 per acre 
for the equipment made but little difference so long 
as he developed something new. If any such arrange¬ 
ment is now in operation anywhere in America I am 
not familiar with it. One of the features of the mod¬ 
ern methods of orchard heating that appeals to the 
average grower is the extreme simplicity and the 
cheapness with which the equipment can be installed 
and operated, as it lends itself very easily to the work 
to be performed. 
If any other readers know of instances where pip¬ 
ing equipments have been successful in conducting 
either gas or fuel to the burners by underground 
methods, I would be very glad to know about them. 
Colorado. jas. l. Hamilton. 
R. N.-Y.—We would all like to know. 
“Mind is superior to matter,” says the philosopher— 
but show us one whose mind can rise superior to the 
toothache or a mosquito. 
A PROMISING NEW PEACH. 
I am sending you by express to-night a little box 
of my new peach which I have been testing for four 
years on a thousand bearing trees, and believe it is 
unquestionably the best yellow peach in America, as 
it has a combination of vigor of tree, hardiness of 
fruit bud, enormous bearing qualities with a clean 
skin without the fuzz, solid flesh of a clingstone and 
yet one of the most free to part from the pit. Then 
again it has extremely fine color, and is 50 per cent 
better in quality than the Elberta, ripening five or six 
days before that variety, which gives it a great hold 
in the market. It has another advantage of remain¬ 
ing on the trees solid and firm for more than a week, 
and if picked when first ripe is solid enough to pack 
in barrels. I am willing to stack my reputation on 
this as the one greatest peach in America. I call it 
the Million Dollar peach. j. h. hale. 
Connecticut. 
R. N.-Y.—This peach stood around two days in a 
warm room before the package was opened. We 
expected to find it badly decayed, but there was 
only one small spot of rot on one peach. A picture 
of the peach showing exact size of a fair specimen 
is shown at Fig. 391. We regard Mr. Hale’s estimate 
of it as quite conservative. 
WANTED-A LATE ELBERTA. 
I and perhaps a great many others would like to 
know of another peach that would come later than 
Elberta, or follow close after, that has the good quali¬ 
ties of this grand peach. I consider Elberta the best 
peach to grow for commercial use we have to-day. 
I think it would score more points than any other 
peach in health¬ 
fulness and vigor 
of growth of 
tree, also size, 
shape and color, 
though perhaps 
not the best in 
quality of fruit. 
I have about 500 
bearing trees 
out; about 80 per 
cent. Elberta. I 
want to plant 
more, and what I 
would like to 
know is what to 
set out. I would 
like a peach as 
near equal to El¬ 
berta as it is pos¬ 
sible to get in 
the above points, 
and that will 
come in bearing 
following closely 
after that grand 
peach. I think it 
would be inter¬ 
esting to many 
of your readers, and especially so to those who grow 
peaches, to get the opinion of growers on the follow¬ 
ing questions: What is the best early peach, best sec¬ 
ond early, best midseason, best late; judging, first, 
vigor and growth of tree; second, size of fruit; third, 
quality; fourth, productiveness? It is a well-known 
fact that the nurseryman’s catalogue contains too 
many varieties and is very confusing to the grower, 
many of them being nearly worthless, c. a. hyatt. 
Hudson Valley. 
R. N.-Y.—The “Million Dollar” peach mentioned 
above is a little earlier than Elberta. We use Salway 
for a late peach, but there is quite a margin in its 
ripening after the Elberta goes. Let us have a dis¬ 
cussion of late peaches. What is your choice? 
TREATMENT OF SEWAGE. 
The city of Bradford, England, is treating 15,000,000 
gallons of sewage daily. The grease is extracted, the 
moisture dried out and the remainder is pressed into 
cakes for shipping. This material contains about two 
per cent of nitrogen, small quantities of potash, and 
sells at $3 to $4.50 per ton. The cakes are ground intd 
fertilizer. Some of this sewage cake is to be sent tc> 
Florida for growing truck. Bradford is said to be 
the only place where such work is done. In this coun¬ 
try millions of dollars worth of plant food run to 
waste through the sewers. At the mouth of the Hud¬ 
son, including the flow from the Passaic Valley in New 
Jersey, over $10,000,000 worth of plant food is wasted 
annually! No process has yet been devised which 
would utilize this great waste economically. If this 
English town has discovered such a process it has 
conferred a blessing upon humanity. 
