calmly and watch the worms eat your trees,
trust to the woodpecker and the sparrows, and you will in time buy
apples from your more active, thoroughgoing neighbor, or go without.

Methods of picking do not vary much, yet all agree that it should be
done carefully. If shaken from the tree, poured out carelessly, or
jolted about in a lumber wagon, it simply increases the culls and
decreases the cash returns.

Sorting is done in various ways (a sorting table or device is explained
elsewhere), but a majority seem to make three classes: First class, the
unblemished best of each variety; culls, which are the unmarketable,
specked, bruised and gnarled fruit; second class, which are between the
other two, and really valuable for immediate use. In some cases the
"second best" have been put in cold storage, and they sold well after
the usual fall glut.

Packing: While there are many who handle in a small way in boxes--and
the time is near when all fancy apples will be marketed in boxes--yet
all the larger growers use barrels, and it is encouraging to find they
use full twelve-peck barrels. The eleven-peck barrels should be
boycotted out of existence.

Marketing: In our large apple-growing districts the crop is generally
wholesaled, either in the orchard or subject to delivery at the
railroad, generally in barrels. In the western half of the state the
apples are largely taken in bulk, in wagons, hauled farther west and
south, and sold at a good profit to the wagoner. Thousands of
wagon-loads are thus disposed of every year. The same wagons often
appear in the same neighborhood year after year, to the mutual advantage
of all. Shipping to distant markets by the growers, especially when
consigned, has been generally unsatisfactory. I need not give reasons;
my own experience along similar lines makes me "hot under the hat" when
I think over it.

Drying is not practiced to the extent that it ought to be. It seems
almost a sin to allow so many thousands of bushels of apples to rot on
the ground every year simply because the owner lacks faith in his
ability to turn them into a product that will keep while he looks up a
market. Dried apples are in demand--hundreds of tons of them--and Kansas
dried apples stand as good chances to bring as remunerative prices to
the manufacturer as those from other states. If the work is economically
done a profit is sure. Storing for winter is described elsewhere.

Cold storage, cave storage, and ce