How We are Fed Part 11

I wish that you could see the trees when they are in full blossom, and also when they are loaded with the golden fruit. I am going to put some orange blossoms into the envelope, but I am afraid they will not reach you in very good condition. They are very fragrant, and you can smell their perfume some distance from a tree in blossom.

To-day we picked about two hundred and fifty boxes of oranges. We always speak of _picking_ them, although they are not picked, but cut. You see, if they were picked off, the part where the stem pulled off would soon begin to decay.

We take a wagon load of fruit boxes, and, while father drives slowly between the rows of trees, I throw them off.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 56.--Picking Oranges in California.]

Each picker carries a sack slung over one shoulder, and as fast as he cuts off an orange, he drops it into the sack. The sacks are emptied into the boxes, and these are loaded on to the wagon. Father pays five cents a box for picking, and a good picker will gather about forty boxes in a day.

We sell most of our oranges to fruit companies. These companies pack and ship the fruit. At the packing houses the oranges are placed in tubs of water and scrubbed with small brushes. Many women, girls, and boys work at this. The washing is to take off dirt, and also _scale_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 57.--Grading and Packing Oranges.]

After the oranges are washed, they are placed in a sort of trough which is highest at the end near the tub. They roll down this trough to the _grader_. This is a machine so arranged that the oranges pa.s.s through different openings according to their size, and come out sorted.

In the warehouse close by they are wrapped and packed. Chinamen often do this work. Each orange is wrapped in a separate piece of paper, which has the brand of the company stamped upon it. It is then packed firmly in a box. A certain number of oranges of each grade fill a box, ninety-six of the largest grade, and about two hundred of the smallest.

Those which are too small, as well as the imperfect oranges, are rejected. These are called _culls_. Sometimes these are sold for a low price, and sometimes they are thrown away by wagon loads.

After the boxes are filled, they are placed in special fruit cars and hurried to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Boston, and other cities.

Yes, the Weather Bureau is of great help to fruit growers. Of course we have very little winter here, but oranges will not endure much cold. The mercury falls below the freezing point but a few times each season. On New Year's Day the temperature here was fifty-eight degrees. I looked up the Boston temperature for the same day and found that it was only four degrees above zero. When the Bureau predicts a sharp freeze, the farmers build small fires in their orchards, or turn on a good deal of water.

The fires are built in small wire baskets. They make a smudge instead of a flame. The people in the raisin districts watch the weather reports pretty closely, for rain injures the drying grapes.

Growers have to _spray_ or _fumigate_ the trees to destroy the scale that I spoke of which is a great enemy of the orange, to kill the insects, and to wash off dirt. This is sometimes done by putting a great piece of canvas over the tree, forming a sort of tent which prevents the fumes from escaping. It was found that the ladybugs would eat the scale and so they were brought into California from the East. They do a great deal of good, but still we have to spray the trees.

Orange trees are raised from the seed, and the trees produced in this way are called _seedlings_. By _budding_, a fruit much better than the oranges grown on the seedling tree has been produced. There were five acres of seedlings in our grove, and father budded the trees. He cut off the limbs rather close to the trunk of the tree. Then he slipped buds from _navel_ trees into cuts made through the bark in the end of each limb left on the tree. He then wound cord tightly about the limb and put on some wax. After a time a new growth started out where these buds were placed. These new branches will bear much improved fruit.

We have a very fine variety of oranges called Washington Navels. Trees of this variety were obtained by our government from Brazil. Two of these were brought to Riverside, a town about seventy-five miles east of Pasadena, and planted on a ranch belonging to a Mr. Tibbits. They did well, and all of the trees of this variety in Southern California were obtained from these two through budding. These trees are still living.

California and Florida are the two important orange-growing states of our country. Father says the industry is much older in Florida than in our state. Florida growers can ship their fruit to market much cheaper than we can. It costs us ninety cents for each box.

Mexico, the West Indies, Italy, southern France, and Spain are also orange producers. These countries have the advantage of cheap labor, father says.

I wish that you could visit us. We would have fine times, I am sure.

The next time I write I will tell you about some of the other fruits raised in California.

Your sincere friend, FRANK.

A VISIT TO A VINEYARD

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, Oct. 1, 1902.

DEAR FRIEND WILL: Last week father went to Fresno, which is about three hundred miles northwest of here, in the San Joaquin valley. He took me with him, and we visited some of the great vineyards and raisin-packing establishments near and in that city.

Raisins are simply dried grapes. Although there are many countries where grapes grow, there are few where raisins are made. Dew, fog, and rain injure the fruit, so that the San Joaquin valley, with its dry, hot atmosphere, is well adapted to this industry.

There are a great many different kinds of grapes but only the green variety is used in making raisins. The raisin grapes are called _muscats_. If the grapes are left on the vines long enough, they become raisins. I have picked some pretty good raisins from the vines. Of course by being spread out, they dry quicker and more evenly.

The sugar that you find on and in the raisins is not put there by the people who dry the grapes. It comes from the juice of the grape.

Grapevines grow from both roots and cuttings. Of course cuttings are the cheaper. Often they may be had for the asking. Many think that it is better to set out rooted vines than cuttings.

They are planted in rows from six feet apart to twelve or fifteen feet.

During the first year the young vines will grow several feet. In the fall, when the flow of the sap has been checked by frost, the vines are pruned. A vineyard in California looks quite different from one in the East. During the winter it is simply so many rows of stumps several inches in thickness and one or two feet high. During the summer the branches grow from these stumps and produce their beautiful cl.u.s.ters of grapes, only to be cut off in the fall or winter.

The tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs are generally burned in the vineyard at the same time that they are cut off. A sort of furnace made of sheet iron is fastened between two wheels and drawn by horses up and down between the rows. A man pitches the cuttings into it, and they burn as it moves along.

In the early summer men go through the vineyards sprinkling a coating of sulphur on the vines. This is to prevent mildew, which damages the fruit very much.

During the last half of August and September the grapes are picked.

Sometimes the harvest continues into October. Most of the grapes had been gathered when we visited the vineyards.

When the juice of the grapes is one fourth sugar, they are ready to pick. The grower generally tells the condition by the taste and color of the fruit, although there are instruments for determining the amount of sugar.

Like oranges, grapes are cut from the vines and not picked. We saw great companies of Chinamen going through the vineyards cutting off the beautiful cl.u.s.ters. These they placed on shallow, wooden trays to dry.

In a week or two, when the upper side of the cl.u.s.ters is pretty well dried, the grapes are turned. We saw the workmen place an empty tray, upside down, over the filled one. Then, holding the two together, they turned them over, and the grapes dropped into the tray that had been placed on top.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 58.--Picking Grapes.--Notice the Mountains in the Background.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 59.--Drying Raisin Grapes.]

During this drying time the people watch the reports of the Weather Bureau. In some places flags are displayed when rain is expected. As a rule the grape season is over before the rains begin.

When the grapes are taken from the trays, they are placed in boxes holding about one hundred pounds each. These are called _sweat boxes_.

Here the driest grapes absorb some of the moisture from the others, and the ma.s.s becomes more uniform.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 60.--A Vineyard after being Pruned.]

After the drying process has been finished, the stems are rather brittle. To make them softer and easier to handle, the grapes are next placed in a cool room and left there for a time.

After visiting some of the vineyards, we drove to one of the great packing establishments in Fresno. These packing houses are nearly always in the cities and towns, because there help can be easily obtained. The packing house that we visited employs four hundred people, mostly girls and women.

The raisins are first placed on wooden or metal frames the size of a raisin box. These are called _forms_, and the packers are paid according to the number of forms filled. When these are filled, the raisins are carefully transferred to the boxes.

A box of raisins weighs twenty pounds, but there are half boxes and quarter boxes put up also. A paper is placed on the bottom of each box, and over the raisins another is placed. On top of this there is a fancy paper on which the name of the packer is stamped.

In most establishments there are three grades of raisins, Imperial Cl.u.s.ters, London Layers, and the loose and imperfect stems.

Sometimes a second crop of grapes is gathered a little later in the fall. Of course these do not dry so well because the days are shorter, it is cooler, and rains sometimes occur. On this account they are dipped in lye and then rinsed in water. The lye cracks the skin, and so the juice evaporates more quickly. These are called Valencia raisins. There is not a very good market for these, so that people do not dip them so commonly now as they used to.

We saw the machine where the raisins are _stemmed_. They pa.s.s from a hopper into a s.p.a.ce between two woven-wire cylinders. The inner one revolves within the other. In this way the raisins are broken from the stems. They are then run through a fanning mill which cleans them, and they are finally graded by pa.s.sing through screens having openings of different sizes.

Most of the seedless raisins are made from seedless grapes, but there are machines for removing the seeds from the grapes which contain them.