The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1916-11-15

as unstable as house OF cards. OF al
this You need to be reminded rather thar
informed; for, experience and tile teach
ings OF years have given the Odds handI
among you, at least, knowledge of the
uncertainties in growing fruit and now
everywhere we are hearing discussions OF
the business side of the industry.
"The only possible way to obtain an
absolutely accurate reckoning of the
profits and losses of an apple orchard ID
To add up the expenses for the whole
life of the trees and subtract from the
total income; the remainder, ii plus, is
the profits; II minus, as will be most
often the case, the losses. This plan
might have been feasible for Methuselah
with his 800 years. but in our short span
of life it will not work. Since annual
accountings are not fair, and total ones
not possible, we must divide the life of
the orchard into periods and take data
for each division. In this region where
the apple lives as long as man, we may
make from the life of the orchard seven
periods Of decade each.
"The fruit TO be considered is the apple
as grown in our orchard situated few
miles west of Rochester, n. Y. The trees
are Baldwfns, p years old at the begin
ming of the experiment. 81 now. Our ac-
counts tell what each of the orchard OPP
erations has cost, the number of bushels
of fruit produced and the selling price
| THE exact number for the cultivated
| plat in this l0-year average il ll6.S bar
rels. Graded, the acre average for the
| period is 1912 for barrelled stock; 37.6
barrels of evaporator and cider stock.
Reducing these figures to the tree unit
we have for barrel stock 2.93: for evap-
orator stock IL. Total per tree, 4.33
| barrels. The proportion of evaporator
and cider stock is seemingly high made
so by two autumn gales in different sea
sons which gave many windfalls. The
first item in cost OF production to be con
sidered is interest on investment. Sup
pose we make the value $500 per acre
and call the interest ) per cent This
valuation is not high 1t is sufficient too,
TO cover the overhead expenses of houses
and barns. Our first expense item, then,
is S25 an acre on investment. sum
which divided by ll6.s, the number of
barrels per acre, gives us a charge per
barrel Of q cents as interest on invest
ment There are few regions or years in
New York in which taxes for such an
orchard would be over 81 so an acre, max
ing the tax on each barrel Of apples IL c.
"The next account TO be charged to
cost of production is depreciation in
teams and tools. and interest on the
money invested in them. First class ma
chinery for running the average orchard
will cost in the neighborhood of 81 900.
If we set the depreciation and interest
on money at 20 per cent for the above
equipment we must add II cents per bar
rel of apples to the depreciation account. !
"The tillage per acre for the decade !
was $3.50, making the amount to be
charged against each barrel of fruit SO C. |
Tillage includes the labor OF putting in |
the cover crop, but not the cost of the /
seed. For the cover crop seed, in this |
orchard usually red clover must be added |
S274 per acre for seed or % G. per bar. |
rel of apples. The expense of pruning |
per year per acre was S3.56--since there |
are 81 trees to the acre in this orchard /
the cost per tree was 1871 G. The cost 4
per barrel of apples was three cents.
The average price paid for the work was
cost per acre for spraying was SLIPS;
per tree AIS C.; Ps- barrel of apples
90 c.
"The services of the erage fruit
grower are worth more than the 50 per
day allowed for actual work and this de-
ficieney should be made up by a charge ,
for experimenting the work, The sta
ton paid for this service $500 per year
The charge to be entered against bar
rel of apples then for experimenting is
Is cents; against the acre unit, $50; +,
against an apple tree, Sl.l0.
Picking, packing, sorting and hauling
nave been done in divers ways during the
10 years and the items cannot be segre
rated. But the total cost of these OPP
,rations has been pa c. per barrel The {
lpples, it should be said, were sorted 5
md packed in the field. The crop was
lauled to the station one and one-half C
niles away over country road not bet b
err than the average. The following is i
summary of the cost sheet for a barrel e
II apples: t