The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1914-08-04

WHICH tIAS SIOWSI piChS lIOiu Ills OWu
trees.
Orange County has not been in
creasing it's acreage of this fruit, for
the reason, as | have been told, that
oranges and lemons are handled and
marketed under the association plan
with much less trouble and risk. APP
ricots have to be gathered and dried
quickly to save the crop, and there
is rush and worry until the last of
the fruit is safely stored in the ware
house, where it is finished off and
attractively packed for shipment. The
German government is said to mono
police the market for apricot pits,
which formerly were used for fuel,
but are now sold at nearly thirty
dollars a ton-perhaps to be used
as a nutty ration of the Battle Creek
stripe, to keep the dogs of war up
to fighting pitch. Nobody seems to
know just what use is made of them.
Boys Pick The Fruit
At my friend, Louie's ranch, pick
ing apricots was done by a force of
dozen or thereabouts, mostly boys,
who gathered the fruit from the
ground, usually after the trees had
been deity Jared so that only the
ripe fruit came down Several days
were consumed in going over the diff
ferent tracts, at the end of which
time the trees first cleaned up had
ripened another installment of cots.
With the best picking conditions one
fast picker could get ton of fruit
slowed away in big boxes, but on
account of the trees being too thick
ly set at blossoming time and not
thinned out, much of the fruit was
small and the boys averaged less
than half ton each per day. All
work and no play is not a popular
schedule for young Americans, and
under the trees the boys alternately
rustled about on their knees to fill
their buckets and boxes, and while
the gathered fruit was hauled away
to the pitting tables, occasionally in
dulged in pitched battles, apricots be-
ing thrown swift enough to make the
boy who was Soaked" painfully
aware that there was something be-
sides music in the air. Part of the
time the picking was from trees
sandwiched between walnut trees,
where picking in the shade was
pleasanter job than down in the sand
near the RIVER bed, now dry, but last
spring flooding the countryside for
miles.
The boxes of fruit were piled on a
large platform wagon and drawn to
the pitting shed, where a score or
more nimble-fingered young women,
at both sides of long tables, swiftly
cleft each cot by an effective stroke
which pushed out the pit at the same
time the fruit was divided in halves,
and the latter were ranged on light
wooden drying trays, about 24x36
inches in dimension. AS fast as a
tray was filled, helper placed an
empty one over it, until there was
stack too high for efficient handling,
when they were removed to cars on
track alongside, and new stack of
trays started. When fifty or seven
ty-five of the trays were loaded on
these cars, they were pushed down
to switch, side-tracked and run in
to the sulphuring sheds, where they
were closed in with tight-ftting doors
and treated to bath of sulphur
fumes which serve the double pur-
pose of cleaning and fitting the fruit
for the drying process.
At the end of a few hours, the doors
are opened and the trays started on
their way to the drying yards on
either side of the track, in this case
about the dimensions of an average
city block. Two or three days of
sunshine renders the fruit ready for
the store house, when the trays are
scaped and their contents slowed
away.
Profit Is Modest
/ was told that four or FIVE tons
of the green fruit go into a ton of
the dried product, which usually
brings the producer around 5000 per
ton. Friend Louie's crop looked good
for about ten tons of dried fruit on
the trees, but there was some loss
by the rapid way the fruit matured
and the estimate may be subject to
a shrinkage. The harvest alone costs
the ranches around $4,000 per ton,
and the cost of cultivating and irri-
eating the trees will reduce the net
tprofit to modest dimensions
Crew Enjoys Itself
| 1t is easier to outline the process
kof harvesting apricots than to de-