FRUIT PICKING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18317, 6 February 1923, Page 10

FRUIT PICKING.

CALIFORNIAN EXPERIENCE.

THE - RANCH ORGANISATION.

. ~ BY A NEW ZBALAOTEB, ■'.';■,/,■.:' : Fruit ;' picking in / California r r supplies work for thousands of people during the gammer months,, and many who consistently follow; ihe fruit " and -keep;on the move— rather on the road"— may work all the year round. Some kind* of fruit picking pay well, but to make money you must work hard for at least eight hours a day, or as I did, for nine and ten. Each form of fruit picking brings to your notice muscles you never knew you had before, and causes curious kinds of stiffness in different places. So if you are working on the piece-work system you must not only learn to subdue this army of complaining aches and pains, but you must make every action count in time saving. Then there is the inevitable ladder to be bested: twelve to fifteen feet of the stupidest timber to be carried about. Mules are not more contrary or skittish than ladders when anything goes wrong with their stays, or they have to stand upon uneven ground. Around Sevastopol where I picked fruit for two summers, grow hundreds of acres of, cherries, berries of all Kinds, apples, prunes, grapes and hops; also many peaches and many other varieties for home canning. Everyone cans fruit, but few make jam. . , •Jerries were my first experience of fruit picking. They are not popular. All day one picks berries, and at night—. thorns When picking Lawton berries I have had to take thorns out of my, back and knees, as well as hands and elbows. Mammoth black berries ripen first. They are trained on either a single wlro or double wires suspended upon' posts at regular intervals in straight lines across the patch. The rows are about six feet apart, Lawton berries grow in bushes so they are wired to a single stake at sufficient intervals apart to allow the pickers to get all round them, and also to make room for the endless cultivation necessary in all the orchards. Pickers are keen critics of the latter and the rancher comes in for many sarcastic remarks and jokes about his ploughing if it leaves big hods which upset the berry carriers, and prune pickers' knees learn by heart all tho lumps and bumps under the trees. Good cultivation means a great deal to the pickers.

1 Weighing Hot Necessary. A rancher who owns about five acres of Lawtons and three acres of Mammoths, asked me to help picking them, and, on various days when necessary, to go with the rest of his pickers to m neighbour's patch. He told us that he used no scales to see that the lawful five pounds were picked into each tray, a3 he " trusted to the honesty of the pickers." This sounded as if he was a sort of philanthropist, but this illusion was soon shattered by his daughter— fine looking girl of fifteenwho not only hounded the pickers to fill their trays heaping full, hut had a perfect SherlockHolmes instinct about who was leaving unpicked berries in inaccessible places. One day I weighed my own trays and found I had put as much as a pound and a. half overweight into many of them. As I was paid the price of seven' cents a tray set by the Berry Growers' Association before the commencement of the season; this extra weight made to much more profit for the grower. ! . '- v On the other rancher'ii patches the organisation was very good, with the exception of the poor sanitary arrangements. These were bad on all the ranches I worked at. It seemed extraordinary to sen how wealthy fruit farmers spend thousands of dollars for trucks, tractors, and all the latest machinery for spraying, and yet would evidently grudge a few dollars expended to conditions which not only made things more uncomfortable for the pickers but for those residing on the ranches. I never saw any of the inspectors which I was informed were appointed -to go round during the season after an agitation some years ago. Types of Froit-picbsrs. ,

While we were picking the Mammoth berries the weather became so hot that

tons of berries were burnt. I could make very little during this time, ~ and the owner lost considerably. He was also anxious about the Lawtons, as they were an exceptionally good crop and his anxiety about the weather made" no difference to the local pickers who. had one by one left, without notice, to take better paid jobs at the cannery and packing houses in the email town about three ■ miles away. However, after . days of heat, welcome fogs from the ocean drifted in across the hills and saved the berries, and the ranks of pickers were strengthened by some wandering pickers who were found camping on the main road on their' way to pick prunes further north. They were an amusing party and arrived, in different ways. A man and hie wife with five children civile in a canvas covered waggon drawn by two race horses," (as he called them), and another man and his wife with a child, Came in a groaning Lizzie laden with all they possessed in the world—a battered tent and meagre supplies for camping. Of two grades were these two parties, as the former had a settled home where they spent the winter and sent the children to jjchool, while the latter lived "on the road '* roaming - from place to place. The man of the last mentioned party wore a wide sweeping sombrero: tilted at an acute angle to display a long curly fringe which ruffled in the breeze. He suggested rounding op cattle and the mountains at first glance. His conversation was all.about horses, round ups, and riding the range and he made an ■ amusing contrast to the work he had to do, as ho picked berries in a very bored way. His wife's loud voice could be heard all over the patch , as ama kept him on the job,lo,r she suiipected him of loafing when he was out of sight. Once I came upon him having a peaceful snooze &s ho sat on his carrier in the shade and ho just woke up to mutter: Picking no good herd," as his wife came round the end of his row. Young America. j '

. I got to work at 6.15, and usually had two trays full before the rest arrived. This always made a boy of fifteen start racing me. He made desperate efforts with good results till the sun became too hot. His name—Edga/ Allan Poe— prompted me to ask if he was connected to the famous poet. "No!" he replied, "I ain't; that guy didn't amount to a hill of beans anyway; got one of his poorr/3 in our school books, and I'll bo dorgawned if I can see any sense in it." He asked me all kinds of amusing and absurd questions about England, the King, and what a real " dook " looked Jike. When he asked why many English people left out their H's, I asked him why he said " stoo " instead of stew, and " doo " for due, etc. Every evening the chests which each hold twelve trays of berries are collected and taken to the nearest station, where the freight train takes them on to the Berry Growers* cannery the same night. On Saturdays the cannery will not accept berries after twelve o'clock. It is a wonderful sight to see lines of every kind of vehicle waiting for their turn to bo weighed up. Huge trucks loaded with chests from the fields of big companies who grow nothing but berries, . high-poweued touring cars, small spidery waggons drawn by the tired horse of all work, are there and stretch out far beyond the cannery to the bank in the principal street of the town. Fruit picking makes one ponder over the temperature, those pickers who are bound for the nether regions will require to keep them warm, especially those who revel in the steamy heat of Imperial Valley where eggs can be cooked by putting them into the sand. ;:Jt; seemed almost unbearable to me when we had days when the thermometer rose.to 104 or kept very near 100. Yet people *f from Imperial Valley co to .these districts for the -.«« cool " summer. A* ; one of them observed 5 "We will ;;:«we. want:steam heat down there,."- >