Casing Potatoes.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11744, 22 September 1902, Page 5

Casing Potatoes.

What a good' many have prophesied has come to pass—viz., that potatoes should; be cased like apples. It is an expensive process; but i* stands to reason that the tubers will receive less knocking about than in the old cumbersome sacks. Messrs. Parker, Duramf and Co., of Ellesmere district, who have got a large portion of the Government contract, are busy at work with staffs of men picking and boxing the potatoes brought in from the farms in .sacks. Each bag is opened out, and the potatoes again sorted. Few would believe what rubbish is displayed in this initial operation. Our reporter on Monday saw a bag emptied, in which there were not a bucketful of good!, clean eating potatoes, after a layer of seven or eight inches of suitable "sjmds" at the top. These are again carefully gone over, *md the same potatoes placed in the boxe« that, piled up in-heaps, stand near by. These boxes are for all the world like kerosene boxes, only a little bigger, and the sides consist of battens with intervals between like those on a fruit case. These battens axe first of aX nailed V>n, and then wired, so that when the box, which is .calculated to hold 100 lbs. of potatoes, is finished, it is wire bound. Tho potatoes are destined, as most know, for South Africa.—Ellesmere "Guardian.'"