Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota Part 63

_Packing Apples._--The packing season is a busy one. Often the grower finds himself short of help, and when this is hard to get he is sure up against it if he wants to do a good job of packing.

First make your estimate of the crop you have to harvest. If inexperienced, get an experienced man to help you. You need this estimate for two reasons. You must determine the number of packages you need, which must be contracted for in advance, and you need to know how much labor you need to get the crop in within the time limit. You should not begin harvesting too early, for immature fruit, poorly colored, brings a lower price, and you do not want to be so late that the fruit mellows up or drops from the trees before it is gathered or is caught by a freeze.

I will relate a little experience of mine in the latter connection. In the autumn of 1911 I had a heavy crop on a hundred and twenty acre orchard. The season was rainy, and we lost six days during October, which put us across the line into November with our picking. The last days of October or first of November brought a severe freeze when the mercury went to twenty, or twelve below freezing. This lasted two nights and one day. The apples were frozen absolutely solid through and through on the trees. As I had over 12,000 bushels, all Willow Twigs, unharvested, it was an anxious time for me. The second day was cloudy with the temperature at thirty-four degrees, just freezing, and the following night it remained at the same point, for we were enough interested to note the temperature. This continued up until noon of the third day, when the frost was out of the apples and we proceeded with our picking. These apples kept perfectly and were sold the next May at $4.50 per barrel. There was no perceptible difference between the apples picked before or after the freeze. Two years later my experience was different. We were caught with 1,000 bushels on the trees by an equally severe freeze. The sun came out bright the following morning, and by noon the temperature was up to fifty degrees. The apples turned brown and looked like they had been baked. They were good only for vinegar. The variety in both cases was Willow.

In packing apples it is a good plan to use a corrugated paper cap on both ends of the barrel, in addition to a waxed paper next to the apples on the face end, stenciled with the name of the grower and his postoffice address. Use uniform sized apples for the face as much as possible, and of good color. The face is permitted to be 20 per cent.

better than the contents. Drop facing I consider best for the second layer rather than double facing, as it holds the face apple in position better and presents a more solid face to the buyer when opened. The barrels should be filled uniformly from bottom to top with an even grade of fruit. No reputable packer will attempt any fraud upon the purchaser in this respect. In tailing off the barrel preparatory to putting in the head, the better way is to face the apples on their side in concentric rings with the color side of the apple up. I would not select these apples as to size or color, but let them correctly represent both as they run through the barrel. There can be no objection, however, to your putting the colored side of the apple up. We should always look as well as we can, and first impressions if good, while not always lasting, are desirable in the apple business of inspecting packages. In filling the barrel care must be taken to gently settle the apples into place by shaking the barrel from time to time as it is filled. After the bottom is faced off the corrugated cap is placed on the apples, with the smooth side next to the apples, and the head pressed into place. It is well to use headliners to secure the heads and not trust to the use of nails alone. Have some regard for the man who has to open these heads in storage or the salesroom. Try a few yourself if you never have, and you will use headliners for him who comes after if for no other reason.

Mr. Kellogg: How do you get rid of the waste apples that would rot in the orchard?

Mr. Dunlap: We have a large vinegar plant, and we convert the cider into vinegar and sell it as cider vinegar. We have sometimes shipped the fresh product of the cider mill to factories, where it is made into vinegar. Then there are evaporators for evaporating them. Take a certain grade of apples not good to grind up into cider, and they evaporate this grade of apples. Then there are canning factories that also take them.

The cider mill is a very good way to work up your culls and then sell as vinegar.

A Member: What do these apple graders cost?

Mr. Dunlap: From $75.00 to $125.00. The price usually depends upon the equipment.

A Member: Do you use clear cider for vinegar?

Mr. Dunlap: I use clear cider for making vinegar, and if it is too strong to meet the requirements of the law we dilute it when we sell it.

A Member: I would like to ask if you have any difficulty in getting your cider vinegar up to the requirements of the law?

Mr. Dunlap: We do not have any trouble about that, except that made from summer apples. Any cider that will grade 18 or 24 with the saccharimeter in the fall of the year, when it is made, will make good vinegar.

A Member: Do you pack all one-size of apples in a barrel?

Mr. Dunlap: No.

A Member: Do you use very nearly the same size apples in a barrel, or do you put large ones at the top and bottom?

Mr. Dunlap: I have heard of growers doing that, but the only way to pack a barrel honestly is to select your facers--the law permits that they may have 20 per cent. advantage of the rest of the barrel. The rest of the barrel ought to be graded uniformly throughout. I don't mean by that they should all be apples of three or four inches diameter, but that they run above a certain figure with a minimum of 2-1/4 or 2-1/2, depending upon the variety you are packing. In running them over graders, which sizes them, all over that size go over the ap.r.o.n and into the barrel.

A Member: Do you face both ends of the barrel?

Mr. Dunlap: Yes, sir, we do. We do not undertake to select for the bottom or tail of the barrel apples as to size or color, but we do this--we lay those apples around in concentric rings and turn the color side or best looking side of the apple up and as nearly level as may be across the top and just the right height, so that when they are pressed into the barrel the barrel will be tight enough so as not to have the apples loose, and yet not have them bruised in the heading. It takes practice to do that just at the right height.

The barrel should be shaken as it is being filled. If you do not shake often when being filled and settle the apples down so they reach the place where they belong, no matter how tight you make your barrel, when it gets into the car and on the train and in motion that constant shaking and jar will loosen the apples, and you will have a slack barrel.

A Member: What sort of apples go to the canneries?

Mr. Dunlap: That, of course, depends upon the season. If the season is such that the No. 2 apples are not worth any great amount of money, they will buy everything except cull stock below the strictly No. 1 apple and use them in the canning factory. If the price is high they will probably take the drops, those dropped in picking, or good sound drops. We usually make a practice of cleaning up our drops once a week off the ground in picking time. Before we begin picking we clean the ground entirely and run that through the vinegar factory, into the cider mill, and after that is done any apples that drop in picking they are disposed of in various ways, sometimes to the evaporator, sometimes to the canning factory and sometimes they are shipped in bulk if they are good sound apples and not injured in any way except perhaps for a few bruises.

A Member: In debating the question of the grower and the cannery we are anxious to know just how far it is practical to use apples--what apples we can use after grading them, say, for instance, into Nos. 1 and 2? Can we use a deformed apple? For instance, do the canners in your country buy deformed apples--I mean lacking in roundness?

Mr. Dunlap: They can use them; they are a little more expensive to handle when you put them on the fork to peel them. Of course, they have to use the knife on them afterwards in those places where they are not perfect, cutting out any imperfect spots on them. But as a rule they require pretty fair quality of apple for cannery and above a certain size. They wouldn't want to use anything less than two inches in diameter, and from that on, and they get as good apples as they possibly can. They have to limit themselves as to prices according to how much they can get for their product.

A Member: What grader do you recommend?

Mr. Dunlap: Well, I don't think that I care to advertise any grader. I am not interested in any.

A Member: You are a long way from home, and it might enlighten the rest of us.

Mr. Dunlap: There are several graders on the market, and for all I know, giving good service. I am using the Trescott, made in New York.

A Member: What is the matter with the Hardy?

Mr. Dunlap: I never used the Hardy--I don't know about that. Some of them will bruise the apples more than others.

Mr. Sauter: What form of packing for apples will bring the best prices?

Mr. Dunlap: I investigated that. I have packed as high as a couple of thousand boxes of apples, and I have taken the very best I had and barreled. I picked out the extra selects and boxed them. Then I took a No. 1 grade from those that that were left and the No. 2 grade, and my No. 1 grade in barrels were disposed of before I could sell my boxes at all in the market. The boxes were the last thing I could dispose of.

Considering the extra cost of boxing I was out of pocket in selling them in boxes. Bushel baskets are all right, you can pack the basket with no more expense than packing a barrel.

Mr. Brackett: What can a cannery afford to pay for apples?

Mr. Dunlap: I have never been in the cannery business, I could not tell.

Mr. Brackett: They are talking of starting a cannery where I live and I wondered what they can afford to pay.

Mr. Dunlap: Some five or six years ago I sold a number of hundred bushels to canneries at 60 cents per hundred pounds. Whether they can afford to pay that or not I don't know. I haven't sold any to them for several years now. In fact, I should judge they couldn't afford to pay that for them because they went out of business.

Mr. Brackett: In other words, they can't pay over 35 or 30 cents a bushel?

Mr. Dunlap: I don't know what they can afford to pay.

A Member: We had a canning factory that paid 40 cents a bushel of 50 pounds, that would be 80 cents a hundred.

Mr. Brackett: Are they still in business?

A Member: Yes, sir.

Mr. Sauter: We had one that paid 52 cents a bushel.

Mr. Dunlap: If they were to can these apples in Illinois and ship them up here they have got to pay freight to come in compet.i.tion with your apples.

Mr. Sauter: I sprayed last spring first with lime-sulphur, and my sprayer worked fine. I had a hand sprayer, but when I mixed the lime-sulphur and the a.r.s.enate of lead it almost stopped up. What was the matter, was it the mixture or the sprayer?

Mr. Dunlap: Most all of these mixtures when you put them together ought to be more or less diluted.

Mr. Sauter: How long must they stand dissolved?

Mr. Dunlap: The lime-sulphur is in solution, and if you have that in your water tank the best way is to put your a.r.s.enate of lead in in the form of a paste and dilute it until you get it so that there is about two pounds of a.r.s.enate of lead to a gallon of water, and with that you can pour it into your tank and if you have an agitator in there you won't have any difficulty with it. In the early days of spraying when we used blue vitriol with lime, we tried a concentrated solution of the blue vitriol and lime and found we couldn't get it through the strainer, but by diluting it, putting our blue vitriol in one tank, and putting half of our water that we intended putting in the sprayer in that, and taking another tank and putting half the water and the lime in that and then putting the two together in this diluted solution, we didn't have any trouble, but in putting in the concentrated solutions together we had a sticky mess and all sorts of trouble. It would not go through the strainer.

Mr. Sauter: How does the powdered a.r.s.enate compare with the paste?

Mr. Dunlap: I haven't had any personal experience with the powder and I would have to refer you to the experiment station.