husks are open, the crop of the tree is
ready to be harvested. It will not do to wait until every burr is open
(some varieties never open, but such are extremely undesirable), for it
will usually be found that by far the most of those which do not open,
on trees which open their burrs uniformly, are faulty, and it will not
pay to wait for them. Neither should such be left on the tree, but the
whole tree should be stripped at the time already indicated. It will be
necessary to use light bamboo poles to remove the nuts with closed
burrs.

_Picking._ The nuts must either be picked by hand or knocked off the
trees onto the ground with sticks. From whatever standpoint we may
regard the gathering of the crops, in orchards of good varieties, the
best plan for the removal of the nuts is to take them off, in so far as
possible, by hand. Men should climb the trees and collect the nuts in
sacks. Men provided with sacks can, with the help of a good extension
ladder, reach the most of the nuts on ordinary trees, up to forty or
fifty feet in height. A good man will pick one hundred pounds of the
shelled nuts in a day, at a cost of one dollar--or one cent per pound.

[Illustration: FIG. 35. After the Harvest.]

In gathering the crop, the product of each individual tree, in the case
of heavy-bearing seedlings, or of each group of trees of a single
variety of grafted trees, should be kept in a single pile or lot. It
will not do to mix nuts of different sizes, shapes and colors, if the
best price is to be hoped for.

_Curing._ As soon as removed from the trees the nuts should be carried
to the curing house. This house should be absolutely rat-proof. Here
they are to be picked from the hulls, the unopened burrs being placed
apart by themselves. If they open later, well and good; some good nuts
may be found among them, but usually they are inferior and should be
kept strictly apart from the other portion of the crop. The cost of
removing a hundred pounds of nuts from the hulls is about fifty cents.

As soon as the nuts have been separated from the hulls, they should be
spread out in shallow trays for curing. These trays should be two and
one-half or three feet wide and four or five inches deep. The bottoms
are best covered with wire netting with meshes about one-half inch
square. They may be arranged around the walls of the curing room, one
tier above another. The room should be provided with good ventilation so
as to give a free cir