Orcharding in Tasmania—and, for that matter, in Australia also—offers certain hints which the British “at home” would do well to heed. The Australian and the Tasmanian understand the art of making their fruit trees produce the maximum of yield with the minimum of labour and expenditure. It is true that the unparalleled climate has much to do with their success. But I was a little astonished to learn that poor soil—third-rate soil—produces the best results in apples. The secret lies, not in the richness of the soil, but in careful irrigation and in careful pruning. The trees are what in England would be called dwarfs. They rarely exceed eight or ten feet in height. They are thus dwarfed so as to dispense with the loss of time in the use of ladders. All the fruit can be picked by men standing on the earth or upon small boxes, or by boys who leap into the fork of the tree, and from that elevation gather the fruit. This method makes an astonishing difference to the time and expense of plucking.
Not only are the trees deliberately dwarfed, but they are so pruned that all the fruit is thrown into six or seven large branches, which are thick with apples, growing as low down as a foot from the ground. Thus, by the cutting away of all inner branches, light and air gain access to every part of the tree. It is a simple method of cultivation, but it is highly successful. In addition to this, the growers practise what is called “summer pruning.” Two or three weeks before the apples are gathered all superfluous small branches and leaves are removed, so that the sun can reach every apple on the tree. The appearance of apple trees developed on this system is rather curious at first, and it contrasts unfavourably with the large and bushy aspect of trees in an English orchard; but, judged by results, the Tasmanian and Australian system is far preferable to the English system.
As I write, the picking season is in full swing. We are following the entire process. Swarms of men and boys invade the orchards, filling their bags with the golden fruit. But oh! the holocaust! It is enough to make a man weep to see the thousands of “rejects.” The tiniest speck in an apple, a little sunburn, or the merest suspicion of the codling-moth is sufficient to cause the fruit to be flung upon the ground. Only sound fruit, absolutely perfect, is allowed to be packed. Lynx-eyed inspectors open each case of apples upon the wharf, and defect in a single apple means condemnation for the entire case. In the packing-sheds each apple is wrapped in a separate piece of paper before being committed to the case. Clever workers can earn as much as ten or eleven shillings a day by wrapping up the fruit. They are paid a penny a case of, say, one hundred and fifty or sixty apples. Think of the rapid manipulation of the fingers which, at this rate of work, can earn eleven shillings a day! It means the handling of twenty thousand separate pieces of fruit.
The healthfulness of the orchardist’s life is apparent to all. Dr. Benjafield, in presenting his annual report as Medical Officer of Glenorchy, declared that the health of the municipality, a district of one hundred square miles, had established for the year a world’s record—not a death from preventible infectious disease; one case only of true consumption; the death-rate nearly down to zero. Dr. Benjafield is a medico trained in London and Edinburgh, and he has been in Tasmania for thirty years. Besides being Medical Officer of Health, he is an orchardist on his own account, and he speaks of health in the orchard thus:
“I have seen for myself the great things which are included in life in a garden. I have seen many babies born in the district, but never a mother died. I have seen rollicking, toothless, fat babies munching away at red apples, or stuffing in raw strawberries, and their mothers just laughed at the horror on my face; and when the thermometer stands at 90 degrees or 100 degrees sunstroke never troubles them.”
The much-lauded “simple life” is the general life here—“early to bed and early to rise”—and then the whole day in the sunshine—pruning in winter, digging and ploughing in spring, weeding and spraying, in big apple and pear orchards, and picking small fruits in early summer, and later on the harder fruits as they come in, until the great autumn gatherings close the season.
There is no hustle here—a great thing that in the battle of life. Each worker has own row to hoe, and pretty well his own time that he takes to do it.
In the next chapter I shall say something of the orchards as a desirable investment for English workers.
Meanwhile, let us follow the fruit to the end. When all the sound fruit has been exported there remain millions of “rejects,” which are sent to the jam factory and there converted to profitable uses. At Hobart we inspected a large factory where every kind of jam is made and many kinds of fruit preserved. The process is wonderfully clean, most of the fruit being untouched by hand. A great deal of “pulp” is sent to England, to be there treated and converted into preserve, but the jam itself is not exported, because English people have a great prejudice against tinned preserves. This is a pity, and the prejudice is entirely without foundation since the introduction of enamelled tins. If this prejudice could only be overcome, Englishmen might taste a new sensation at present denied to most of them—peach jam. Australia and Tasmania can supply this delicacy, but not until the folk at home look with kindlier eyes upon the despised “tin.”