Further, in this campaign we aim to concentrate our efforts on certain districts so as to build up fruit centers. For instance we have in Door County, that narrow little neck of land between Green Bay and Lake Michigan, over seven thousand five hundred acres of orchards, apple and cherry.
Along the Bayfield sh.o.r.e line we have another splendid fruit district almost, if not quite, as well known as Hood River and worth vastly more.
In the southwestern corner of the state along the valley of the Kickapoo River, on the high bluffs on either side of the river, have been planted a thousand acres of apples and cherries in the past five years.
While not all of this development is directly due to the Horticultural Society, ours has been the moving spirit. The Kickapoo development is due wholly to the work of the society.
In this way we are establishing an industry that will be a tremendous a.s.set to the state. There was a time when dairying was but a feeble industry in Wisconsin, and now we lead.
Our society also aids in the development of marketing a.s.sociations. In doing these things we also aid the farmer and home owner, for whatever is best in the commercial orchard is best in the home orchard. Spraying, pruning and cultivation as practiced by the expert serve as models for the farmer who has but two dozen trees.
The other activities of our society are similar to yours. We publish a magazine, as you do; we hold two conventions, as you do; in fact our work, and no less our interests, are the same as yours, and I most sincerely hope that the very pleasant relations that have existed between the societies may continue for all time.
Marketing Fruit Direct.
H. G. STREET, HEBRON, ILL.
In studying this subject, the direct marketing of fruit, let us first see how much it includes. Does it include simply marketing alone? Or does the success of it depend princ.i.p.ally upon the varieties of fruit set out together with the after cultivation, pruning and spraying? First of all you must interest people in your work by producing something that they really want, and half of your problem will then be solved.
There are any number of places in the northwest where the demand far exceeds the supply. I do not mean for the common run of fruit full of worms and covered with scab, but, instead, strictly No. 1 fruit of the very best varieties.
About 1901, through the advice of my uncle, Dr. A. H. Street, of Albert Lea, I joined your society, and through the experience of your members I learned many valuable lessons. Perhaps the one that impressed me the most was that of grafting our choicest varieties upon hardy crab stocks so as to make them hardy enough to withstand our hardest winters, and by so doing it nearly insures us against total failures in the fruit crop and especially against losing the trees outright.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Mr. H. G. Street, of Hebron, Ills.]
This top-working of course will not do all; we still have to a.s.sist Nature by proper spraying, pruning, cultivating, etc. Doing all in your power to secure a crop each year to supply the trade you have already worked up is a big item in holding it.
While studying your conditions, together with those of Wisconsin and Illinois, I became very much interested in the native plums as well as in the apple industry. Therefore I also set out some three acres of the following varieties: Surprise, Terry, Wyant, Hammer and Hawkeye, also some of the Emerald and Lombard.
As this was then new business to me, I had fallen into no deep ruts, and of course I took it for granted that all horticulturists practiced what they preached. Therefore I pruned, sprayed, etc., according to directions, and in due time the fruits of my labor commenced to show up, and they certainly were attractive to the eye as well as to the taste.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Wolf River apple tree twelve years old, bearing eighteen bushels, in H. G. Street"s orchard.]
As our supply increased our demand increased also, so that for the past five years our average plum crop has been around 2,000 baskets (the 8-lb. grape basket) and all sold readily at 25 to 35 cents retail.
We are located at Hebron, Illinois, eight miles south of Lake Geneva, Wis., on the Chicago & Lake Geneva Railway, which makes an ideal location for a fancy trade. During plum harvest it is nothing uncommon to have fifty to 100 visitors a day. These customers include all cla.s.ses, from the Chicago millionaires to the common laborers, and all receive the same cordial reception.
We make it a point never to allow them to think that we are close with our fruit--not even the neighborhood boys, as they are our best friends. What they buy we charge them a good fair price for and never fail to give all new customers a few choice samples of best varieties.
By the latter part of the plum season our big red Wolf River apples commence to show up and cook well; also Wealthy and McIntosh commence to get ripe enough to eat, and the demand each year has far exceeded the supply.
So far we have had very few poor apples, but we always sort them into three grades, the third grade being made up into cider to sell while sweet. The second grade we sell as such for immediate use. The firsts of the McIntosh we have sold at $2.00 to $2.50 per bushel, Wealthy, Jonathan and Grimes at $1.50 to $2.00, while Wolf, N. W. Greening, Salome, Winesap, Milwaukee, etc., have averaged us $1.25 per bushel. We are always very careful not to have any bruised, diseased or ill shaped specimens in our first grade.
The President: Can you tell us something more about your experience in marketing direct? Do you sell all the fruit you raise on the place?
Mr. Street: We sell about all the fruit that we raise direct to the consumer. When we first started we started with strawberries, and about half of our crop went to the merchants, and he would retail it for 20 per cent, but to any one that came there for it we would charge the full retail price, same as he had to charge, and we never had any trouble with any of the stores that we dealt with. If we have any seconds or anything we don"t like to put out to the stores we sell them to our customers and charge them whatever we think would be right for them.
As to plums, about two-thirds of those would sell right direct to customers coming there, the rest we supplied to the stores at 20 per cent discount so that they could retail them at the same price that we retail them for. Since the apples have begun to bear it seems that two-thirds of the people want the McIntosh, and almost everyone is satisfied with its flavor. They average a little larger with us than the Wealthy, and some of them you can hardly tell from the Wealthy unless you know just about what the fruit is. Last year we kept them until about February or possibly later, but an apple with as good a flavor as that you cannot keep from being eaten up.
The President: I suppose that is automobile trade?
Mr. Street: A great deal of it is.
The President: How did you get it? By advertising?
Mr. Street: No, by doing something so much different from what anybody else is doing you get people to talking. I think the Wolf River apple together with the Terry and Surprise plums have been the cause of getting started. Of course, the McIntosh now is helping out, too. You give a person a few Wolf River, not for eating but for cooking, and then give him a Wealthy or something like that to eat--they will be looking at the big Wolf River and eating the other and seem to be well satisfied and always come back. Whenever we sell to the stores we always gauge our prices so that the majority of their customers will take our fruit before taking the shipped in fruit from Chicago. We find with grapes we can charge about five cents a basket more than they retail the Michigan grapes for.
[Ill.u.s.tration: View in eleven year old orchard of H. G. Street.]
For native plums we get more than they do for the Michigan fruit. We have had quite a good many of the Burbank plums, but we cannot sell over one-third as many as we do of the natives.
A Member: You don"t ship them, so don"t consider the packing?
Mr. Street: The only ones we ship are those ordered by people coming there or by letter. If they want a bushel we pack them in a bushel box.
If they want three or six bushels then we pack them in barrels.
Mr. Anderson: Where are you located?
Mr. Street: Just south of the Wisconsin state line.
Mr. Anderson: I am located 100 miles west of here, and I shipped out 400 bushels of apples to the Dakotas last year direct.
Mr. Richardson: How many growers are there in your neighborhood growing fruit commercially?
Mr. Street: I do not know of any who spray, cultivate and prune according to the best methods within about 100 miles. We always make it a point to give our customers good fruit, so that we are not afraid to recommend it. Then there is another advantage. If they come right there, and we have any seconds we can tell them just what they are, and if they want them we can sell them for what they are worth, but if we are putting them into a store, I prefer not to put in seconds.
Mr. Kochendorfer: I think that is the advantage of disposing on a public market. You have a chance to sell the inferior goods without any coming back.
Mr. Street: The main thing is to use improved methods and try to outdo the other fellow. Cultivate a little more thoroughly, put in your cover crop, not over-fertilize but all you possibly can; give the dormant spray; spray before bloom very thoroughly and again after bloom; two weeks after that again, about July 15th.
Mr. Richardson: How many apple trees have you?
Mr. Street: We now have ten acres in apples, but most of them are young, about three acres in bearing.
Mr. Richardson: I would like to ask the gentleman if in a small place that way he hasn"t a better local market than we have here in the larger cities. Around Lake Minnetonka they raise grapes, but we get most of our grapes from Ohio and Indiana. I have wondered why it is that these grapes go to another market when they can just as well go to the Minneapolis market. You know as well as I do anyone buying fruit in the Twin Cities always buy fruit grown in Ohio or Indiana.
Mr. Street: I do not know why it is, but so far we haven"t realized that we have any compet.i.tion. We charge for our best eating apples fully as much as the stores have to charge for the Western fancy packed fruit.
There is not a worm hole or speck of disease on the No. 1, and really I can"t see how they can compete after raising the fruit in the West and packing and shipping it to Chicago and then out there. The price they would have to charge there would make us a good fair price; in fact, a good big price.
A Satisfactory Marketing System.
G. A. ANDERSON, RENVILLE.