Cañon City record., 1909-04-15

Heating
CO. l.. HamiltOn)

| will give my experiences of the
pot in saving my crop of fruit near
Grand Junction in such detail as
will go to make success or failure
in the use of these little devices. l
will tell a little only of some of the
difficulties l successfully overcame
and some observations allof which
have been of great interest and bene-
fit to me in this work. The results
of my work was of such a nature as
to leave no doubt as to the elective
ness of this system. My orchard Is
made up of twenty acres of bearing
tree, principally apples. trees about
fifteen years old, of good size and uni
form. They are but twenty feet apart
and the branches are very close over,
head which made an ideal condition
for smudging with heat. Late in the
day of April 25 1 was very busy pre-
pairing to save my crop from the
freeze the weather bureau had
warned US was approaching and was
due that night. Previous to that time
NO preparation had been made by
any one In the Grand Valley for
smudging, as the winter had been cold
and the spring ideal in every respect.
The growers felt secure so far as any
possible damage from frost might
occur. This was my condition but
81 ~ ha ~.
ing l felt that to sit by and watch
this old Hun OF the skies invade my
orchard and Destroy my crop with
no effort on my part to interfere,
would end with results that l would
not relish and I might feel that I
could have at least tried sOmething.
This I concluded to do and at once
secured several hundred California
oil smudg pots and several hundred
gallons Of kerosene oil, cheaper oils
not to be obtained at that time. and
with this equipment set in the orch
ard and the pots filled with oil we
waited for the temperature to reach
the danger point. In this we had but
a short time to wait after prepara-
tions had been completed and when
the thermometer showed thirty de-
grees we began firing. The entire
field of pots were fired and in about
fifteen minutes after which l care
fully noted the temperatures and
made readings from five thermOm-
sters. l located two thermometers
outside the heated zone and well
away from any possible effect of ra-
diation and three inside and two
near each edge or about the second
tree row inside the heat. Within ten
minutes after the pots we're fired the
outside the reading showed 29. At
this time we were burning about thir-
ty pots to the acre and reading
made an, hour later showed the tenn
perature to be 27 while inside it was
80. The pots were lighted at 10:45
p. m. and burned until about GAS
a. m. or eight hours. The thermom-
eter had been active on the outside
going as low as % for two hours and
for thirty minutes had reached the
low mark of 81. We had filled pots
and refilled pots during the night and
consumed about 1000 gallons of kero-
sene oil Owing to the oil supply run
ming low, we abandoned all but ten
acres and on this plat we made our
stand for a finish fight. We main
tained a temperature all night in the
heated area of 80 and above except
ing the thirtyminute period when
the temperature outside reached the
81 mark 1t also went down in the
heated area and reached 28 for thir-
ty minutes. All the damage I re-
ceived on this ten acres was at that
period and probably represented
many boxes OF apples.
Their filling process was q very
tedious and tiresome task and had my
force of men been other than neigh
boring fruit growers bent on seeing
the experiment carried to q success.
l would have lost the entire force
The sun rose on very tired crew
but also on a crop of fruit that had
been saved from the frost. 1t had
been q hard task and had cost con-
siderable but the mark had been set