The cherries of New York

by U. P. Hedrick

THE COMMERCIAL STATUS OF CHERRY-GROWING IN NEW YORK

Cherry growing is a specialist's business in which, under the best of conditions, there are more ups and downs than with other fruits. Because of the great profits that have come to a few in the years just past many growers have been drawn into the business in a small way or have planted an acreage beyond their means to manage. The inevitable depression that follows over-planting is, at this writing, at hand and spells ruin to some and disgust and discouragement in the industry to others. Perhaps no fruit can better be left to men of reserve capital than the cherry, and even with men of substance cherry-growing should largely be incidental to the culture of other fruits—an industry to fit in to keep land, labor and machinery employed.

Cherry trees begin to bear in the climate of New York when set from three to five years. The varieties of Prunus cerasus first produce profitable crops but, at from six to eight years from setting, both Sweet and Sour sorts are in full swing as money-making crops. The limits of profitable age are not set by the life of the tree but, rather, by its size. Thus, cherry trees of either of the species commonly cultivated are not infrequently centenarians but the profitable age of an orchard is not often more than from thirty to forty years. After this time the trees become large and the expense of caring for them and of picking the fruit becomes so great as to prevent profits. Moreover, disease, injuries and inevitable accidents will have thinned the ranks of trees until the orchard is below profit-making.

Cherry-picking begins in New York about the first of July, following the rush in harvesting strawberries, and lasts, if the orchard contains both Sweet and Sour varieties, from four to six weeks. Workers may in this way fill in a gap between small-fruits and other tree-fruits and the crop becomes one in which the grower may often take small profits to keep his help employed; though, in the long run, if the more or less frequent depressions can be weathered, the cherry may prove as profitable as other fruits.

The problem of labor is a most vexatious one under present conditions, it being impossible to obtain casual men laborers for cherry-picking and women and children are unsatisfactory, since the fruit must be carefully picked or both cherries and trees suffer. The problem is solved, unsatisfactorily in most cases, in various ways by different growers. Most of the crop is now picked by children in the teens under the eyes of men or women supervisors. In picking for the market the stem is left on and only the stem is touched by the fingers. Cherries for canning factories are less laboriously picked. The picking package is usually an eight-pound basket. The rate paid is one cent per pound. Pickers earn $1.50 to $2.00 per day in good seasons. Close watch is kept on pickers to prevent the breaking off of fruit-spurs, thereby destroying the succeeding year's crop, varieties fruiting in clusters suffering especially from carelessness in this respect. Cherries are picked a few days before full ripeness.

Cherries are sent to canneries in various packages but chiefly in half-bushel baskets or paper-lined bushel crates, the container being often supplied by the cannery. The six- and eight-pound baskets are the favored receptacles for Sour Cherries in city markets but the Sweet sorts are rather oftener sent in four-pound baskets and still more frequently in quart boxes. In the larger packages not much effort is made to make the fruit attractive but in the smaller ones, stemless and bruised cherries are thrown out and the package filled, stem down, with the best fruits. In fancy grades all of the fruit in the box is layered. The demands of the market, of course, determine the package and the manner of packing. Cherries are seldom stored longer than a few days at most in common storage and a week or two weeks in cold storage.

There is a marked difference in the shipping and keeping qualities of varieties of cherries, the sorts that keep longest and ship best, quite at the expense of quality, having the call of the markets. Undoubtedly this must remain so, though it is to be desired that local markets, at least, be supplied with the best, irrespective of handling qualities. A further factor that prevents the placing of choicely good cherries in distant markets at all times is brown-rot, to be discussed later, which more often attacks the juicy and usually the best-flavored varieties, oftentimes ruining the pack on the way to market—one of the most discouraging events incidental to cherry-growing.

Marketing machinery for cherries is at present very costly, inadequate and frequently sadly out of gear. The fruit passes first from the grower to a local buyer who ships to a center of consumption, transportation companies taking heavy toll on the way. Jobbers or commission companies, who in some cases receive the fruit direct from the grower, then distribute the crop to retailers in the consuming centers. Lastly, the retailer parcels out the quantities and the qualities demanded by the housewife. The whole business of selling the crop is speculative and the grower is fortunate to receive half of what the consumer pays and not infrequently has all of his pains for nothing or may even be forced to dip into his pocket for transportation. The perishableness of the product and the present defects of distribution go far to make the crop the hazardous one it is but all look forward to better times coming under an improved system of marketing.

Up to the present, it must be said, but little effort has been made in New York to ship far and to develop a trade in cherries other than at the canneries. The canners have until the last year or two taken the cream of the crop but with recent greatly increased plantings are now over-supplied. The average grower, possessing a mixture of mental inertia and business caution, has not sought other sources for the surplus fruit. Bolder and more energetic spirits are now developing new markets and opening up those to which other tree-fruits more generally go so that the present over-production may prove a blessing in disguise. The greatly increased demand, for Sour Cherries in particular, brought about by the development of markets in 1913-14, are most hopeful signs for the future of the cherry industry.