Weekly journal-miner., 1919-08-06

rest of the country is enjoying good gardens and ripe fruit-so we cannot fight for April prices, but plan to get the best fall prices by putting our stuff on the market in the very best shape we can devise.
 l found all our Prescott merchants interested in this; just now every one of them is selling more home grown stuff than stuff shipped in and they are too good business. men not to know and to say that this IS the best way for all of us, in town and out, when it can be carried out success fully. l have talked with them all and l have not talked with one who did not say that he was glad to buy ranch produce if it was of grade his customers could use. Glad to buy and pay fair prices, thought not the prices of April-we must not expect that for string beans in August,
 Here in Yavapai we have very few real market gardens and not a large number of truly commercial orchards. Most of the fruit and vegetables that seek market are grown on ranches where alfalfa or cattle or corn is the main issue. That is why probably a lot of our stuff does not q et started out on a fair footing with the Cali fornia produce-is isn't our business to know how to pack as they do 1t over there.
 Again. Yavapai has a big market
 outside our leading towns and a big
 buying public around the mining camps that cares little for the pack ling so the stuff is good and not too
 dear. There is no question but this | is the best rancn market-we can al
 ford to make our fruit and vegetables
 cheaper to these buyers who do moi
 care for expensive boxing or wrap
 ping.
 But even though most of the things
 we grow may be sold outside it is
 worth while to know what is wanted
 in the most cxacting market One o
 the Prescott dealers who has beer twenty years in the business on vari ous parts of the coast told me tha i Northern Arizona was the most eN acting market he had ever seen--de
 manded better grade of goods anc
 .wouid pay better prices. That
 think, is a very good tribute to ou intelligence, for good foods meat
 good health.
 ! As 1 talked with these. men whos'
 business is is to sell fruits and veget
 ables day by day, year in and out i did not seem to me that the thing they had found necessary were tot
 difficult for any of us to reach Wld what we have to sell.
 The first thing was cleanliness : Mother Earth is good to look at il . our gardens but not attached to tn vegetables when they come on sale Several times this spring l hay | bought new potatoes because ou ; ranch crop was just growing. l al . ways bought most when they wer 5 scrubbed clean and looked attractiv [ "a few times l was given 'sPuds f coated with the black soil in whic
 they had grown. They didn't loo l nice and 1 told the merchant so. II . and I talked it over right there an . he said that he would gladly pay , little more for potatoes that wer , clean and graded evenly enough l -I the sack 50 that his customers woul , not find fine big ones and mer t marbles mixed in one lot,
 , That matter of grading as to sig l lis much more important to the mel ! chant who sells mostly ill lots of $ few pounds at time than some C
 the ranchers realize. If you are sell ing to customers who want perhap ten pounds at a time they will pass b { the box that shows all sizes togethe and choose from one in which all tn potatoes are nearer even size. . It is really good business and help t Us to ind ready market to sort ov' . our vegetables, keep the smallest to home use or food for the pigs whic | every ranca should have, and was i and dry the others before we ofC y them for sale. The trouble it is to d
 this will be more than repaid in tn good will which buying dealers wi - develop toward Us and what we hay 9 | to sell.