HARVESTING, MARKETING AND PROFITS
The beginning of the Twentieth Century is marked as a period in which commercial affairs in agriculture are being more highly developed than ever before. Temporarily, the idea of making two blades of grass grow where one grew before is eclipsed by the idea that success in agriculture is quite as much dependent on business management as on large production. We need, then, in The Peaches of New York to set down as precisely as possible, as a record of the times, the business side of peach-growing. This we conceive, so far as the fruit-grower is concerned, consists of matters having to do with growing, picking, grading, packing, cooling and shipping, while the affairs of the several go-betweens from producer to consumer belong to merchanting rather than orcharding. Not that the grower is without interest in the selling of his products—far from it. There is no better ballast to keep the fruit-dealer steady than knowledge of all of his dealings on the part of the fruit-grower.
Among Caucasians green peaches have a bad reputation. Adage, prose and poetry bear witness that any curtailment of the sun's maturing function in this fruit is going against nature and makes an altogether unwholesome product. But in China and Japan the peach is habitually eaten green and hard. Fungi play such havoc with peaches in Oriental countries that the fruit must be devoured green or the crop is lost. A green peach is quite as palatable, nutritious and wholesome as a green olive. The ripe product of the one is just as superior to the green as is the other. All this not to point a moral or adorn a tale but to bring out the fact that the green peach is an edible fruit and that the annual performance of health inspectors in all large markets in condemning carloads of green peaches as unfit for food while green olives, apples, pears, plums, cherries and grapes pass muster, is an unjust discrimination against the peach. The peach is, of course, best when ripe, soft, melting and luscious, but so are all other fruits and all should be accorded the same treatment by consumers and health inspectors.
The peach in western countries is picked for market when it has attained full size and is passing from the hard state of the green peach to the softer mature condition. The picker tells by eye and by pressure of the peach between thumb and finger when a peach is ready for picking. White-fleshed peaches are green in color when picked but turn to greenish-white or yellowish-white as maturity proceeds; yellow-fleshed turn from yellowish-green to lemon or orange-yellow. The full flavor of the ripe peach develops only when the fruit ripens on the tree but ripe fruit cannot be shipped and peaches are therefore picked at the stage in advance of full maturity that will permit them to reach the market at maturity—one or two days in New York, six or seven in California. Peach-picking is a delicate business for it is equally disastrous to gather the crop before it is ripe enough or to delay a day or two too long.
Few picking appliances are needed for the peach in New York since the trees are trained so low most of the fruit can be picked from the ground or from a short step-ladder. The knack of peach-picking consists of tipping the fruit sidewise with a light twist which releases it from the branch without the bruise of a direct pull. The care in handling depends largely on the temperament of the picker—a coarse, careless ruffian cannot handle the tender-fleshed peach with the consideration it deserves. Women are much employed in picking peaches. Two systems of managing pickers are in vogue: They are employed by the day in charge of a competent foreman; or the picker is supplied with tickets or tally cards and is paid by the basket. The day-system is commonest and most satisfactory. When peach-picking is in full swing a man can pick 100 half-bushel baskets in a day of sorts like Elberta in which the fruits ripen at the same time, but the quantity grows smaller and smaller as the varieties decrease in size and increase in length of ripening-time. Peaches are usually graded and packed indoors, being brought under cover in special picking receptacles into which the fruit is put as it comes from the tree. Packing indoors is a comparatively modern innovation, the method a decade or two ago being to pack in the field as is occasionally done now, more especially for local markets.
Grading peaches is still a matter of local or personal practice in New York as it is the country over. No state seems yet to have regulated by law the grading of peaches, as several have done with the apple. The need is quite as great for such laws for one fruit as for the other, and no doubt grading peaches in New York will soon be regulated by the strong arm of the law as is grading apples. The essentials in good grading as now practiced are fair or large size for the variety, high and characteristic color, uniformity in size and color, freedom from bruises and insect and fungus injuries, and full and characteristic flavor for the variety. Peaches vary much in shape and pubescence depending on soil and climate—so much that through variations in these characters the identity of varieties is sometimes lost—but grading is not yet sufficiently refined to take note of either character. Good growers sort into at least three grades, counting culls.
Not solely as a matter of record but to inspire further progress as well, we record the fact that New York is behind the times in the package used in sending peaches to market. The antiquated Delaware package, a truncated cone holding a third- or a half-bushel, is now the most popular package with growers. This package is a poor carrier, clumsy and easily tipped over, its sides are so thin that the fruit bruises, it is easily opened by thieves and it is unattractive. The reason for its popularity among growers may be guessed when its sole merit is named—peaches need less sorting and are easily packed in this Delaware package. The grand jury of consumers, the country over, has declared for a smaller package for dessert peaches than the Delaware truncated cone and a larger one for culinary peaches. Better in every way, and more and more used by growers in the State are the several sizes of climax baskets. The best of all peach-packages, the Georgia carrier, is just coming into use in New York. It is a crate holding six four-quart till-baskets. These till-baskets are dainty and attractive, fulfilling well the adage "good goods come in small packages." The Georgia carrier is conceded by all to hold the palm of merit for long-distance shipments of dessert peaches. The bushel and half-bushel, round-bottom, farm type, the substantial cover supported by a stout peg between cover and bottom, are being more and more used for shipping the home canning supply. In western New York the bushel basket, if not now, promises soon to be the most popular of all peach-packages.
Our common commercial container, the Delaware basket, is seldom a packed package. The peaches are turned in, assorted somewhat as to size, and the top layer faced with the red cheek up. The climax basket requires more care in packing. The fruit must be arranged in layers and tiers according to the size of peach and basket. Skill and not a little ingenuity are displayed in packing the dainty till-baskets for the Georgia carrier, all depending on the size, uniformity and shape of the peach. The peaches are placed in rows and tiers which regularly alternate and cover much as in a box of packed apples. The peach-harvest in New York usually comes in pleasant weather so that the packing house is generally but a screen from the blaze of the sun, put up in the orchard. The packages, both before and after filling, are, of course, kept clean and dry under permanent cover.
The peach is so handsome and delectable, for that matter so pleasing to all of the senses, that every fruit-grower takes special pride in a finely-finished product going to market and more often than with any other fruit advertises his wares with a label. These show original ownership, where grown, often the variety, always the grade and usually advertise the whole farm and its product. Some growers have their labels registered in the United States Patent Office.
New York peach-growers profit more and more from cold-storage. Peaches can be kept for a few weeks in storage at the freezing point or just above but they soon lose texture and flavor on coming out and cannot compete with fresh peaches which reach the markets every day from some source from May until November. Precooling before shipment, now but coming into practice, is of inestimable value in the heat of the summer. The fruit is quickly packed and then cooled to 40° F. in a central station or by forcing cold air through loaded cars, and then goes under refrigeration to destination. In eastern New York peaches go mostly to New York City by night-boat but refrigerator service is an absolute necessity for western New York and has been very generally installed by the railroads of the region. The precooling station is to be the next step in advance.