The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-03-11
Profit in Fruit Raising.

Correspondence Vick's Monthly.
Dried, with or without stoniug cherries are
scarce at eighteen to thirty cents pound, and
have seen choice pitted cherries at higher price.
Hardly any fruit is easier to prepare as cherries
want no pairing, and no dried fruit keeps so
much richness. Picked cherries are a cheap,
excellent relish, and would sell at remarkable
prices if any were to be found in market
When fruit sells too low for profit it is time to
preserve it and reap treble gains. The quickest
and cheapest ways of keeping fruit will be found
most profitable, and are the only ways in which
. grower can work off a crop in time to save it.
Dried fruit is easily handled and is coming back
into favor with knowing housekeepers, who rec
ognize good things and know how they should be
cooked. No expense for evaporators is neces-
sary. long since made up my mind that evap.
GRATED fruit inferior to sun dried in flavor, and
talking with old dealers in family
stores, find they prefer the sundried
for their own USE The best cook
ever knew said the same, and there is reason
for it The sun ripens and develops sugar and
flavor in cut fruit dried in it's rays, To have
nice quality of dried fruit select firm, fine ripe
specimens, wipe clean, pare and cut with silver
knives, as steel turns them black on the edges,
and hurry into the sun as fast as they can be
prepared.
The cheapest and best way of drying fruit is
to lay it on lengths of cheese cloth, suspended on
frame, out of doors, in full sun, with white
mosquito netting over to keep off shreds and
insects. This allows the air to reach both sides
of the fruit at once, and when you want to turn
it, the whole can be swung over on another
cloth, leaving the first ready for new batch.
Apples should be pared, cored and cut in eight
pieces. Peaches should not be pared, for the
richest flavor is lost with the skin. They should
have the fur removed by dipping baskets of them
into weak boiling I've of wood ashes or common
potash, and wiping them with coarse towels
Common peaches only need to be cut In halves to
dry. We had peaches dried in this way last
winter which when cooked would be hard to
tell from the best canned peaches in looks, with
richer flavor
Picked peaches might be as staple as cucum-
Der pickles and sold by the frkin instead of the
quart. Apple and peach butter ought to be in
every grocery, as plenty as raspberry jam, and
great deal better. Inferior fruit can be put to
good use in this way, only no fruit should be
cooked in metal kettles, brass, copper or tin
Brass kettles spoiled the sale of oldfashioned
apple-butter. Sometimes find box of it at
the large Boston grocers, but when it leaves
coppery stain on knife blade, and still more
coppery taste in the mouth dealers shy of
recommending it. Yet there is no canned fruit
or preserves better than good apple butter stewed
down in its own fruit sugar till its juice thickens
into syrup. IT you have not porcelain kettle,
make it in threegallon stone jars, filling the
oven with them, and you will have a better thing
with less trouble.
With all the tons of grapes raised how is it
that there is not gallon of grape syrup to be
had for love or money in markett Ii you don't
know that grape juice boiled down to clear
syrup is the most reliShing thing in sickness
health, for consumptives and to keep people
from getting consumptive, to be eaten as food OF
diluted for drink, that would Danish wine sooner
than all the temperance societies, you have
something to learn. This article, once known,
would prevent all danger of an over-crop of
grapes for it would be made and kept by the
barrel, and exported for use in all climates. The
new production of cider jelly, which is merely
cider boiled down, without any addition till it is
a solid, dark jelly, is a great, gift to the house
keeper, and will be the salvation of the apple
orchards. What if apples are fifty cents bar
rel in Octobera Set the cider mills going, and
the huge, enameed evaporating pans. Perhaps
cider jelly at twelve cents pound will repay
the work, as no sugar is used.