Vol. LXXX.. 
Published Weekly by The Rural Publishing Co., 
333 W. 30th St.. New York. Price One Dollar a Year. 
Entered as Second-Class Matter, June 28. 1879. at the Post 
Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
No. 4GG7 
NEW YORK, DECEMBER 3, 1921 
Handling the Peach Crop in Western N. Y. 
D IRECT SALES.—The past season has witnessed 
an increasing trade of peach sales made direct 
from orchard to auto truck in the New York peach 
belt. Last year this section had a largei crop than 
this year, and the truck movement was then an inno¬ 
vation. Its come-back this year in stronger fashion 
than before makes it one of the important connec¬ 
tions in profitable and highly satisfactory manage¬ 
ment of the peach orchards of tiie Lake Ontario 
section. When only in recent, years many orchards 
throughout this section were winter-killed, many of 
perked up, and today any peach grower throughout 
the Ontario belt who has peaches has a market right 
at his own door. 
THE GREAT HIGHWAY.—Luckily for one thing, 
the longest stretch of State highway inside the State, 
a trunk line 400 miles in length, runs from the Ver¬ 
mont line across the State to Niagara Falls, tapping 
the peach belt all along the way. This is the Roose¬ 
velt Highway, which will connect Portland, Me., with 
Portland, Ore. While the growers do not all realize 
it, they can count themselves most fortunate to have 
sickened and stopped. All his freight troubles in the 
past are in the limbo of the forgotten. lie takes a 
new stand, and one which by every reasoning gives 
him better and more immediate returns than any 
way ever devised before for the marketing of his 
crop. 
. LOCATING THE ORCHARDS.—With that uncer¬ 
tainty in the Winter weather which every grower 
cannot evade, he can now rest contentedly, for his 
returns will provide for the occasional blast which 
everyone must expect. It was proved this year that 
Roadside Market for Peaches in Orchard of M. C. Mason, Wellington, N. Y. Fig. 605 
them taken out bodily and replanted, and in close 
connection with this, before the advent of the trucks, 
such a shortage of cars that growers did not know 
what to do with their fruit, the industry stood at the 
crossroads, where but little more provocation -in the 
way of disaster would have driven many of the old 
growers to say “good-by” to the crop. As it was, 
some of the younger hands became discouraged and 
let up on production, but with the coining of the 
trucks and resultant orchard-side sales with cold 
cash and no freight wrangle the whole industry 
their orchards strung along this great highway. 
Great trucks now come into the oi’chard district, 
load with fruit and travel by night Avlien traffic is at 
ebb and weather conditions best for the fruit in 
transit, making distances as far away as the Thou¬ 
sand Islands and to the foothills of the Adirondacks, 
going into districts where the luscious fruit cannot 
be grown. This means much to the growers, and 
will mean more in the years to come. The truck 
brings the rotund expression to the grower's face. 
He forgets that heavy Winter blast when his trees 
a grower does not need to have his orchard fronting 
the big State highway along Ontario’s ridge to get 
the custom. Enterprising growers placard the diver¬ 
sion roads with “Follow the Arrow” signs, leadiug 
to their orchards, and even the most unacquainted 
truckman would have no difficulty in making the 
various jogs and turns over dirt roads leading to the 
orchard, which may be five or six miles from the 
trunk line. 
SELLING TO THE CONSUMER.—More and more 
the practice is growing for families in tile cities to 
