90 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
me ship them across the Continent to him. 
We hope the day is not far distant when 
the Avocados will be taken out of the lux¬ 
ury class and be regarded as a staple, 
throughout this country as it is in the 
tropics. 
The methods of handling the Avocado 
are of great importance on account of the 
extreme delicacy and perishable nature of 
the fruit. In our early days, dating back 
to 1911 when the industry was in its in¬ 
fancy, we used a long bamboo pole with 
a hook on the end to pull the fruit from 
the brittle limbs which could not be 
reached with the hand. Some of our seed¬ 
ling varieties tower twenty-five to thirty- 
five feet in height and the use of a lad¬ 
der against the brittle limbs is out of the 
question. So one man would pull the 
fruit with a long pole and hook while an¬ 
other would watch his chance as the one, 
two or three-pound Avocado gained mo¬ 
mentum on a direct downward line to¬ 
wards him, allowing it, not infrequently 
to slip through his hands on to the ground 
and breaking into a dozen pieces or more, 
and occasionally to drop on top of his 
head. Now a small canvas bag is at¬ 
tached to the hook at the end of the bam¬ 
boo pole and the greatest of care is taken 
in their gathering. Only the perfect 
fruit, free from all blemishes, is shipped 
lo the fancy trade. All scarred and blem¬ 
ished fruit is shipped to a cull market. 
By so watching and carefully grading 
our fruit, the little business of 1911 has 
grown to a point where it now handles 
about 70% of the entire production of 
Dade county. Shipments are selected 
carefully as many of the varieties do not 
carry well; some become soft in twenty- 
four hours while others hold up six or 
eight days. Those varieties that soften 
quickly are always sorted out and shipped 
to nearby markets, while the firmer ones 
are used for the distant markets. 
Three styles of packages are used by 
our concern in making shipments. The 
one which is considered the standard 
crate contains about forty pounds of fruit 
net weight. This package is used more 
extensively than any other style of crate 
as it is recognized by the express company 
as the standard. The next style is the 
flat crate carrying about half the contents 
of the standard crate. For some years 
this flat crate, carrying one layer of fruit, 
was used in making long distance ship¬ 
ments such as across the Mojave Desert 
to the Pacific Coast with a great deal of 
success. As the war came on we were 
forced to abandon this flat ventilated 
crate, and after considerable experiment¬ 
ing, we invented a very inexpensive pony 
refrigerator which could be discarded at 
the receiving end owing to its cheapness 
of construction. We found this mode of 
transportation very successful as the ex¬ 
press company was then delivering ship¬ 
ments of ventilated crates in a worthless 
condition on account of arriving long 
over-due. This refrigerator, which has 
its iced compartment immediately over 
the fruit, saved the day. No matter 
whether it was on the road ten or twenty 
days, as long as the crate was properly re¬ 
iced, it carried the fruit in perfect con¬ 
dition. We are now using this style of 
package in all of our shipments except 
the immediate South. 
Perhaps the greatest difficulty we have 
to contend with is the importation of Cu- 
