Each picker carries a sack slung over one shoulder, and as fast as he cuts off an orange, he drops it into the sack. The sacks are emptied into the boxes, and these are loaded on to the wagon. Father pays five cents a box for picking, and a good picker will gather about forty boxes in a day.
We sell most of our oranges to fruit companies. These companies pack and ship the fruit. At the packing houses the oranges are placed in tubs of water and scrubbed with small brushes. Many women, girls, and boys work at this. The washing is to take off dirt, and also scale.
Fig. 57.—Grading and Packing Oranges.
After the oranges are washed, they are placed in a sort of trough which is highest at the end near the tub. They roll down this trough to the grader. This is a machine so arranged that the oranges pass through different openings according to their size, and come out sorted.
In the warehouse close by they are wrapped and packed. Chinamen often do this work. Each orange is wrapped in a separate piece of paper, which has the brand of the company stamped upon it. It is then packed firmly in a box. A certain number of oranges of each grade fill a box, ninety-six of the largest grade, and about two hundred of the smallest. Those which are too small, as well as the imperfect oranges, are rejected. These are called culls. Sometimes these are sold for a low price, and sometimes they are thrown away by wagon loads.
After the boxes are filled, they are placed in special fruit cars and hurried to St. Louis, Chicago, New York, Boston, and other cities.
Yes, the Weather Bureau is of great help to fruit growers. Of course we have very little winter here, but oranges will not endure much cold. The mercury falls below the freezing point but a few times each season. On New Year's Day the temperature here was fifty-eight degrees. I looked up the Boston temperature for the same day and found that it was only four degrees above zero. When the Bureau predicts a sharp freeze, the farmers build small fires in their orchards, or turn on a good deal of water. The fires are built in small wire baskets. They make a smudge instead of a flame. The people in the raisin districts watch the weather reports pretty closely, for rain injures the drying grapes.
Growers have to spray or fumigate the trees to destroy the scale that I spoke of which is a great enemy of the orange, to kill the insects, and to wash off dirt. This is sometimes done by putting a great piece of canvas over the tree, forming a sort of tent which prevents the fumes from escaping. It was found that the ladybugs would eat the scale and so they were brought into California from the East. They do a great deal of good, but still we have to spray the trees.
Orange trees are raised from the seed, and the trees produced in this way are called seedlings. By budding, a fruit much better than the oranges grown on the seedling tree has been produced. There were five acres of seedlings in our grove, and father budded the trees. He cut off the limbs rather close to the trunk of the tree. Then he slipped buds from navel trees into cuts made through the bark in the end of each limb left on the tree. He then wound cord tightly about the limb and put on some wax. After a time a new growth started out where these buds were placed. These new branches will bear much improved fruit.