SUCCESSFUL PEACH-GROWERS.
The condition into which those pennywise dealers who are indifferent to Flavor and oppose variety have brought our peach market is a national disgrace and a gastronomic calamity. Most of the Southern peaches sent North seem now to be of two or three kinds and those not of the best. To be sure, it makes little difference what kinds are sent, for all are equally spoiled by being picked, like the pineapples, before they are ripe. California peaches melt in the mouth like ice cream—if eaten in California. In the East they used to contrast with Atlantic Coast peaches by their leathery consistency and lack of Flavor, due to the fact that they had to be picked unripe to stand transportation. To-day they contrast less, because Eastern peaches also are so usually picked unripe.
In the peach-growing business, under present conditions, "the proportion of failures to successes is at least as ten to one," according to Erwin F. Smith. The proportion might be reversed if this expert's advice, as given in "Peach-Growing for Market" (Farmers' Bulletin No. 33), were generally followed by farmers. The most important point he makes is that the peaches to be marketed successfully must not only have size, color, and firmness enough to stand shipment, but also superior flavor.
It was by leaving his peaches on the tree till the sun gave them that superior flavor that one man I know of became rich. He had an orchard about twenty miles from New York and when the first crop had thoroughly ripened he picked a wagonload to take to the city. He never reached it. Every basket was sold before he had gone a mile, and all the other loads were thus disposed of to his neighbors, although he charged the full New York retail prices. The middleman's usual share of the plunder remained in his own pocket.
What would you think, Mr. Farmer, or Mr. Business-Man-Who-Wants-to-Live-in-the-Country, of buying a twenty-two-acre tract of worthless pasture land, putting it into peaches, and getting therefrom in twelve years a profit of $44,000?
It can be done, and it has been done. The very interesting and instructive story was told in detail in the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post" of September 10, 1910, by Forrest Crissey. It is the story of J. H. Hale, of Glastonbury, Connecticut. One day he came across an old native seedling peach tree, loaded with sweet wild fruit that had a delicious flavor and melted in his mouth. While he was eating one of these peaches, the thought came into his mind: "If this stony old hillside will grow such peaches as these, wild and without cultivation, what is to hinder its producing a splendid crop of choice, cultivated peaches?"
There was nothing to hinder; the trees were planted, and when they bore fruit he put up a sign reading: "Headquarters for Hale's Peaches. Peaches Ripened on the Trees." When he began to market them in the cities he sorted them into three grades, charging fancy prices for the best. These and other details of his method helped; but the great secret of his success was painted on his sign: "Peaches Ripened, on the Trees"—a sign which proved that he understood the Commercial Value of Flavor, which made him a millionaire.
Apples, fortunately, do not need to ripen entirely on the tree. They can be picked before they are ripe and get their full flavor in the cellar. Cold storage makes them keep longer still—unfortunately, I feel tempted to say, for this tempts the middleman to hold them for higher prices till they have become mealy and lost much of their aroma. Many of the apples sold in our markets in winter are over a year old. They will not be after the consumer rises to assert his right to Flavor. The English are more alert. I most earnestly call the attention of American apple-growers and eaters to the following sentences from an article in the Consular and Trade Reports (April 5, 1911), explaining why Australian apples have an advantage in English and other European markets over American fruit:
"Cold storage extending over a period of six months is not the best means of preserving the flavor of a fruit. On the other hand the Australian and Tasmanian crops being six months later than the American, the fruit comes direct from the orchard with its original flavor almost unimpaired."
At the Illinois Experiment Station the important fact was demonstrated that mature apples keep much better in cold storage than immature apples (Farmers' Bulletin No. 193).
The new method of pre-cooling fruit, especially peaches and oranges, gives much hope for the future. Two illustrations in the "Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture" for 1909 illustrate this point. One pictures peaches as handled and delivered in New York by the old method—the small, pallid, leathery, flavorless things we all know and groan over. The other shows red, ripe peaches, luscious to the eyes and the palate alike. Pre-cooling does it; for if this method is used, "the fruit may be left on the trees to attain a greater degree of maturity, thus assuming a much better quality."