Weekly journal-miner., 1919-08-06
(BY SHARLOT HALL)

How is the market for fruit and vegetables? This is the question which the fruit grower and small rancher is asking these days. The exceptional rains have pushed our gardens along at great rate and fruit is ripening now that is normally ready in two or three weeks. Hava- pal certainly has enough fine fruit and vegetables to feed her people, and a lot over. if it can reach the consumers in good condition.
 Marketing is not as simple as itI used to be; it has become special and highly developed business since the days when a farmer took his sur plus garden stuff to the market store and traded it for what he needed att nome. The distribution of foodstutts has become almost science - and has called in scientists of note to de- terminc the best methods of hand ling perishable food materials within the past few years.
 Florida. California and the North ern Pacific Coast states have taught the world how to pack and ship fruits and vegetables as well as how to grow them. So much of this work is done by specially trained people ill specially planned packing houses that the ordinary gardener or fruit grower is not to be blamed if he does not get onto all the new ways or find them all adapted to his own use or locality.
 In a way each locality lids indlvid- nal problems to meet and this can be done successfully if the men who grow and the men who sell. try get ting together and talking things over once in a while.
 have been making the rounds of the Prescott merchants who sell fruit, vegetables, eggs, or ranch pro duce. It has been interesting to talk with them and 1 have learned lot about the handling of such foodstpfs. A good deal of their experience wouli be useful to any of us ranchers m handling what we grow Some of 1t would help Us to sell our surplus stuff where we have failed to sell it or gotten low prices for 1t.
 Yavapai has a good many indivld- ual problems to meet as to her farm ing and fruit growing. For one thing We are in a region of fairly late spring cold: our corn planting time Is hardly earlier than that of the Middle West. and we cannot produce the earliest vegetables in competition with the winter-grown crops oi Southern California.
 Now. with the transportation de velopment of recent years people everywhere demand and will pay for a variety of fresh foods such as were never dreamed of even a quarter of a century ago. Fresh lettuce and Der ries in mid-winter and new swee' potatoes in early spring are in tho market in most small cities and de, manded by people whose parents would have taken the vegetables o' each season in turn as matter o course.
 No not-houses can compete witt Natures great hot-beds in the I'm perial valley or other sheltered val levs of Southern California and th' South. That is why imported lettuce and early vegetables are on our Pres colt markets before we ranchers art planting our seeds and at prices tha seem to Us like eating gold. People want them. and our merchants in, them in outside markets with whicl nature has made it impossible for Il; home folks to compete.
 That is the beginning of buying away from home - other localitie; can produce what is wanted when il is wanted and deliver it upon demand When We home ranchcrs can do the same we will find our home mer chants mighty glad to buy of Us al prices that are right. We cannot eH pecr February prices for lettuce il July or June prices for peaches 1T September-everywherc in the world prices arc regulated by the suppl, which eacn season brings.
 Here in Yavapai nature has hXec our time Of abundance from mid summer +O frost-li1lst when all in,