twenty feet long, and by using No. 12 wire, making one turn around the
pole at the required height, turning up the end of the wire to hold it
and making a hook out of the other end of the wire, using about seven or
eight inches of wire for each. These made excellent props at small
expense, the ringlike excresences on the pole preventing the wire from
slipping. We propped as many as four and five limbs at different heights
on one pole. This method carried the heavily loaded trees through the
season in good shape. Anyone afflicted with too many apples on their
trees should try it.

Next in line came the harvesting of the crop. We use the "Ideal
Bottomless Bag" for a picking utensil, and almost all the fruit is
picked from six foot step-ladders. We pack the apples in the orchard.
Fortunately we have had the same people pick our apples year after year,
from the first crop until the last one of the past season.

[Illustration: Apples by the carload at Howard Lake.]

In packing we aim to use the kind of package the market demands. The
crop this season was all barreled. The pickers have been on the job long
enough so that they are as able to discriminate as to what should go
into a barrel and what should not as I am myself. However, our system is
to always have about twice as many barrels open ready for the apples as
there are pickers. The barrels are all faced one layer at least, and two
layers if we have the time, and as the pickers come in with
approximately half a bushel of apples in the picking sack, they swing
the sack over the barrel, lower it, release the catch and the apples are
deposited without bruising in any way.

The next picker puts his in the next barrel, and so on, so that each
succeeding picker deposits his apples in the next succeeding barrel. In
that way I personally have the opportunity to inspect every half bushel
of apples, or, I might say, every apple, as a half bushel of apples in a
barrel is shallow, making inspection a very simple matter. When the
barrels are filled they are headed up, put in the packing shed until
sufficient have accumulated, and when that point is reached they are
loaded out, billed to Minneapolis, where practically all our apples have
been sold for years. All fruit up to date has been sold on a commission
basis, the crop for the past season aggregating five carloads, or
approximately 800 barrels.

We feel that we have worked out a fairly good method to handle both our
trees