Many a grower who understands fairly well how to produce good fruit is lost when it comes to selling it to an advantage to himself. You notice that I said "to himself." It is often done to the advantage of the buyer. Like most inventors the apple grower usually needs assistance in selling what he has produced. The grower who connects up with the best methods in this particular gets best results.
No one can long be successful whose methods are not careful and honest in the packing of apples.
Equipment for Harvesting the Apple Crop.—There are some who insist that the only way to pick apples is to use a basket lined with cloth. These insist that the use of the basket in picking is the most careful method and that the bruising of the apples is reduced to a minimum. I have, however, seen apples handled very roughly in baskets. The picker hangs the basket on the tree, on the ladder rung, or sets it on the ground and then proceeds to shoot the apples into the basket from distances of one foot or six or eight feet away.
The bottomless picking sack, with broad straps across the shoulders, has come into use within the past few years in many commercial orchards. My experience is that either the basket or sack is good if rightly handled, and either may be objectionable if care is not exercised.
My own experience after using both is in favor of the sack. If care is used no more bruising will be done than with the basket, and it is far more expeditious. Both hands are at liberty for use in the picking. The sack should not be shifted about, and the picker should not be allowed to lean against the rungs of the ladder with the filled sack between. The sack should be lowered into the picking crate so that the apples have no drop in emptying the sack. Pointed ladders are the best for tall trees and less liable to injure the tree or turn turtle and upset the picker.
A packing house is essential if best results are to be obtained, but many growers use the canvas-covered table in the orchard, picking and packing the product from sixteen to thirty-six trees at a sitting, and then moving the table to the next center, and in this way the entire orchard. In good weather this is not so bad as might seem, but at times the sun is very hot, or sudden showers saturate everything, and in the late fall the weather is too cold and frosty for comfort. On the whole, therefore, a good sized packing house or shed built at a convenient place in or near the orchard is the more desirable method of handling the crop. This building must be large enough to give room for a sorting table three feet wide by sixteen or more feet in length, or, better still, room for an apple grading machine of best pattern, which will occupy about three feet by twenty feet. There should be a space on one side or end of the building for unloading the bushel crates with which all well regulated orchards should be equipped, when they come from the orchard. These crates can be stacked up four or five deep, and there should be adequate room for these based on necessities. There should be room for at least a day's supply of apple barrels and a place to cooper them up by driving the hoops and nailing same. There should be enough room to face and fill barrels and head them up and to stack up enough for half a day's hauling ahead.
The size of this building will depend upon whether you are barreling 100 barrels per day or 1,000 barrels. For the former a building 28x20 feet will answer very well. For the latter amount 60x100 feet would be none too large. This building should have skylights in the roof. I build these of ordinary greenhouse sash about 3x6 feet, usually putting in two of these in each building on the north or east side of the roof, according to the slope, and directly over the sorting end of the table. This will give you light an average of thirty minutes more each day and prolong the day's work that much, or at least make it possible to do better work on cloudy days and in the evenings.
The building should be approachable on all four sides with the wagon, and doors either sliding or hinged should open at least ten feet wide for taking apples in and out. For example, I have my sheds arranged to take the fruit as it comes from the orchard on one side of the building. The number one apples go out one door, and in case I use a grader the number two go out another side. The cider apples also take their route. The fourth side is used for supplying empty barrels as needed. Thus you see the necessity for getting to all four sides. On the side where the filled barrels are loaded onto the wagon there should be a raised platform so that the loading can be carefully and easily done. A bin for the cider or vinegar apples should be built with a roof on same.
Low-wheeled, platform wagons are needed to haul fruit from the orchard to the packing house.
The standard barrel of three bushels capacity is used generally by the commercial orchardist in preference to the box. Good hoops are growing scarcer every year, and some, including myself, are using two or four of the six hoops required of the twisted splice steel wire variety as being both safer and more economical. In transit or in storage they hold better and do not break and scatter the contents of the barrel over the car floor or storage warehouse.