oors on each of the four sides to give plenty
of light and easy access to and from the building. The roof and dry
floor are the important parts of such a building, and you only need the
walls as a support and occasionally to break off the wind when weather
becomes chilly. What you should avoid in a packing house is narrow
doors, dark interior and access from only one or two sides.

_Picking._--I have found it most satisfactory to pick by the bushel,
keeping a foreman in the orchard to see that crates are filled full,
ladders and apples carefully handled. Each picker is provided with
tickets of a certain number which corresponds to the one opposite his
name on the sheet tacked to a small board or clip carried by the
foreman. Each picker is assigned a tree, and his empty boxes are
distributed to him from the wagon. When filled the number is tabulated
by the foreman and loaded onto the wagon and hauled to the packing shed.
Here they are stacked up and afterwards emptied onto the sorting tables
or machine grader, and from thence into the barrels.

_Hauling to Market._--The barrels when filled are not allowed to lie
around, but are hauled immediately to the car or storage. Failure of
winter apples to keep in storage may often be traced to the packing
shed, where the apples stand in the crates or lie in the barrels for a
number of days, perhaps a week or two in warm weather, before they are
forwarded to storage. Sometimes delays occur at the storage owing to
rush, and apples remain sometimes for a week or ten days in cars before
they are unloaded. It behooves the grower not only to watch his own
packing house for delays, but the storage company also. In one instance
I lost $1,000 on five cars of apples that were without refrigeration
five weeks owing to the storage warehouse not being completed. I knew
nothing about this until two years afterwards.

Hauling to the station is done on wagons or motor trucks equipped with a
rack that permits the barrels being carried lying down, but supported at
each end of the barrel so that the weight of the barrel does not come
upon the bilge. They can be so racked up that one wagon will carry
fifty-five barrels. A three-ton truck will carry forty barrels of apples
and haul forty more on trailer. Such an outfit in one of my orchards
makes five trips in one day a distance of four miles, traversing forty
miles and carrying 400 barrels of apples. One and one-half miles of this
is over a well-g