GLUT OF APPLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 251, 22 October 1936, Page 17

GLUT OF APPLES.

ENGLAND'S NEW CROP.

HIPS AND HAWS IN HEDGES

EFFECT- ON N.Z. EXPORT,

(By NELLE M. SCANLAN.)

It is one of the crazy features of 0111civilised system that the poor producer geems to suffer. 110 matter what the season. When there is a lean harvest he has little to sell, even if prices are high. And when there is a bountiful one there is such a glut on the market that the price offering does not justify the expense of harvesting and transport. It has been the latter evil this summer in England with apples. Apparently the wet season has suited the apple orchards, and the slow ripening with late sunshine and few gales has left the trees laden in a phenomenal way. I have never seen such crops of apples as line the roads in Kent. The boughs are bending under the weight of fruit, and the apples have not suffered from the over-crowding. They are- splendid specimens, now ripe and juicy, but the fruit farmers are in despair. As I motored around Kent last week, I saw petrol stations offering free apples tojfcustomers who stopped for a gallon or two of spirits. There were tearooms on the roadside, luring you in'to refreshments, with the promise of a free gift of apples to take home. One farmer, had placed cases, pf fine ripe apples outside his gate, with a notice: "Help Yourself." But it is ever the way-with the free gift. When"motorists Stopped to help themselves, they began "knocking at the door, and asking for bags or baskets in which to take them away. That proved too much for the generous farmer, and he promptly took down the sign and' removed his apples from the Help Yourself." They are offering less than per lb for apples at Covent Garden, the great fruit market in London. This does not pay for picking and transportation. "Help Yourself" is the usual invitation, and what a jov to walk through rows and rows of luscious fruit, selecting the rosiest, instead of paying sd, fid and even 9d in town, as. we usually, do. When I left the farmhouse at which I had spent a week, I was urged to fill a basket, and told to take more, and' yet more, till I came home laden. And for the first' time in my London life I have rows of fine apples spread out as we did in New Zealand, and not the mingy pound or two that. scarcely fill a dishf

I am afraid this will be sad news for our New Zealand fruitgrowers, because this glut has made it necessary for the English grower to resort to our overseas methods of preservation, a, thing he seldom did before. This year, millions of Bramley seedlings, the best English cooking variety, instead of being dumped wholesale into Covent Garden, are being sorted, carefully wrapped in oiled paper, and packed in "market boxes, just as you do in New Zealand, and put into "gas" storage, where they are sent to sleep for months. At Christmas time and throughout next spring these farmers "will be able to sell them out of store at 6d and 8d per lb. And the tragic feature is that this is the season when New Zealand usually reaps her harvest of profit from the London market. Now the, overseas crop, which, usually has the/field to'iteelf, will share it with the piclt of " England's apples, which have -ijeeii. excellent" in • quality this year, an<l the .competition should be keen. £->

There are now vast gas-proof chambers inside the world's largest cold store in the world, that is, the London Docks. They are made to keep poison gas in, as this has proved to be the best method of preserving apples. It takes a lot to change the English producer, he is a fierce individualist, and likes to do his work in his own way, and many are too conservative to bother their heads about these new-fangled systems. They grow the crop, harvest it as their grandfathers did, and send it straight to market, big and little, good and bad, all tumbled in together. In Xew Zealand we have learnt the need for •Trading and selection. You cannot take a chance at that distance. This glutted season may be the means of converting many English growers, and the competition with gasstored English apples is not likely to end at -this one season. If it proves profitable to the farmer, he may find it expedient to pick over hie crop each year, and store the best for a highpriced market in the off-season—a season which we had come to regard as belonging to the growers in the southern hemisphere. Cold Winter Looming Up. This autumn everything points to a cold winter. All the signs, the country lore, point to something phenomenal. Winter has already set in on parts of Europe, but the rustic experts knew it was coming. Up north, the eels were on the move earlier than usual. The birds began their winter migration. And to-day I read that even the monks at th>? famous St. Bernard Hostel in the Swiss Alps are laying in larger stores than usual, as everything indicates a long and severe winter. Usually a heavy crop of berries on trees and hedges is read as an indication that Nature has something special in store for us, and is providing for the -birds. All over the country, the hips and haws are laden with red berries. The hips are the red berries 011 the wild briar lose, and the haws are the hawthorn berries. The hedges are gorgeous with them now, branches just one solid red mass. Last year there was a dearth of holly berries at Christmas, but this year they should be plentiful, as these, too, have produced an exceptional crop. The hedges in Kent are mostly hazel, blackberry and hawthorn. All along the roads and lanes, people were picking hazel nuts, or Kentish cobs, as they call them here; they look the same thing to me. Most people had a walking stick with a hooked handle for catching the branches and bending them down, but the blackberries, I found, had very spiteful thorns.

Lorry drivers had a big advantage, the height of their vehicles made it easy for them to reach the upper branches; the motorists came next, and the pedestrians had to be content with those easily stripped near the ground. On a pleasant, sunny morning it was great fun along the lanes picking nuts and berries, though the result was not always a full basket.

Passing one orchard I watched an old man picking apples. It was a fairly young orchard, the trees just eight years old, so he told me, but they had a fair crop for their age. He drove his farm cart right round each tree, hooking the apples down with a stick, and they dropped into the boxes in the cart. It saved climbing and ladders and the fag of carrying baskets about. And yesterday in London I noticed a large red van, the size of a double decker bus, crawling along the side of a road. It was a curious vehicle, with solid walls, open at the top, and a man with a clipper stood on a shelf inside the top, "clipping all the overhanging branches of the trees, and these dropped into the vast interior of the van. As a rule this clipping business is done by means of ladders, or . climbing the trees, and ilia branches and twigs fall on to the path and are afterwards swept up and carted away. It takes the combined labour of several men. But this new method, which bore a close relationship

to the old man picking his apples meant that the branches, like the fruit, fell straight into the vehicle and were carted away. Hop-Picking in Kent. Kent is also the great hop-growing district of England, and hop-picking was in full swing. Every year, thousands of poor people from the slums of London are taken by special trains to the hopfields. Some of the veterans will tell you that they have gone every season for forty years. It is their only holiday from town, and they make a bit of money as well. Sometimes a woman and her eight or ten children go off 011 these expeditions. At one time, these masses of poor people dumped down in insanitary conditions, bred epidemics in the country, but now the health authorities take a hand in the game, and there are doctors and nurses attached to the hop-pickers' camps, and at least a minimum of comfort is provided. I watched these groups of pickers, old, old women, young women with babies, and swarms of children of all ages. Sometimes the baby is placed in the hop bin into which the mother and her family are picking. As the hops mount up, she hoists the baby and places it on top until it is nearly covered again, then gives it another hitch, pausing to feed it when necessary. The children also take a hand at picking, but the younger ones soon tire. However, it all contributes to the day's total.

A notiee warning motorists of hoppers' camps is placed on the roads, and driving home in the evening I passed long straggling processions; tired old women in canvas shoes and sack aprons, th'-ir lined and gnarled faces speaking of their hard life. The young women and some of the better dressed children wore Wellington boots, for it was very muddy in many of the fields. Small noys trundled bundles of sticks along to eook the evening meal. Girls about ten and twelve carried round cooking pots. Some of the men and women were gathered about the village pubs, having a drink and resting after their day's labours. Long wooden huts provide.accommodation in some hop fields, but rows of white bell tents were the homes of many, and in the dusk they gave a picturesque note to the scene, with the tall stripped hop poles and the cascade of unpicked hops swaying in the breeze, a camp fire throwing a luminous glow on the white tents and lighting tip the family group gathered in front of it for the evening meal. But I pitied the tired mothers, after their long day's picking, facing the task of cooking a meal and getting their unruly half dozen to bed. And how they keep peace among the swarm- of youngsters on a wet day is something to marvel at. Soon tiie hop-picking will be over for the year, and these slum families will return to town, back to their crowded tenements, Ticher by a few pounds and their weeks in the fresh air.