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?