Times-promoter., 1908-01-24
MAJOR DoCKERY WRITES
OF ORANGE CULTURE
Maitland, Florida, Jan. Is, 1908

1 MdlUldnQ, Florlua, Jan. 10, 1910
editor Times-Promoter:
Would you believe it, we had {
rest here this week and the grounds
md house tops were as white as snow
md yet no damage. The flowers are
blooming as pretty as before, and the
grass and garden truck as green ano
no sign of killing or even willing.
ion't unders jand it. Such frost
| with us would make us shiver and kill
vegetation to the ground. My man
Oscar says the frost is not as cold
here as with us, and as proof, he
showed me tomatoes-ripening in the
garden, watermelons and sweet po-
tatoe vines untouched by cold. The
potatoe vines of last years crop are
green and supplying us with eating
roots. But the potatoes of Florida
don't begin to compare with the
Wheeler yellow yam. The people
here brag on and honestly believe the
Nancy Hall (I call it the Nancy
Hanks) dry, mealy yellow potatoe,
the ideal potatoe. don't quarrel
with them, but don't approve of their
taste.
The orange crop was fairly good in
this county (Orange county, and this
railroad station has shipped thirty
thousand boxes and has as many more
to ship, besides several thousand
boxes of grape fruit.
The orange begins to show yellow
early in October, and some growers
for want of money or fear of freeze
like they had in 1896, begin to ship
Immediately, and send to Memphis
and other cities fruit that would make
pig squeal. The oranges hang on
the trees until April and are at their
best during January and February.
Before that they are sour and after
that they are drier. Some of the
groves around here are loaded yet
with the golden fruit and from every
direction are wagons loaded with
empty gathering boxes and ladders
going out, or the same wagons with
filed boxes going to the packing
houses, which are always beside the
railroad track, and the boxes as you
see them are delivered on the car by
the packer. The fruit is generally
sold on the tree to agents for the
markets who pay experts for hand
Ling from the tree to the car. Negro
men and boys do the gathering for
six cents box and make about two
dollars a. day. Young white men,
many of them college students, make
their expenses from Connecticut and
the New England States by packing
the oranges, and you would be aston
ished to see how expert they get to
be. They seize the paper which is
stacked by their side. With the left
hand and the orange with the right
and about as soon as you can wink
your eye, the orange is in the box.
The buyer pays forty-five cents for
gathering and handling, including
boxes and paper. The gathering
boxes are a little larger than the
shipping and have hand holder in the
end. A wagon holds about two dozen.
In the packing house they are emp
tied into large hopper or a corn or
cider mill, from which they run out
and down groove, which has grad
uated holes in it. And the small
oranges drop through the first into
bin for that size, while the larger
oranges roll on until they find the
right size hole and drop into proper
bin, from which they are packed and
labelled.
Orange growing is like every other
business, sometimes profitable and
sometimes not. Some men make
at it and some fail. OF course
we can't control the seasons, but the
prudent business man comes out bet
ter than the other sort. A widow
told me yesterday she sold
her fruit for nine hundred dollars net.
"a six acre grove.
A doctor in answer to my question
if he was getting rich said with sat
isfied look that now he had taken in
only about fifteen thousand dollars
from his hundred acres. The doctors