Mr. Street:  I do not know why it is, but so far we haven’t realized that we have any competition.  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.

I have marketed this fall some over 400 barrels of apples, mostly Wealthy, Duchess and Northwestern Greening.  Three hundred barrels of these were shipped direct to local merchants in Dakota and western Minnesota towns in small shipments of a few barrels at a time or as fast as they could sell them.  I started this way of marketing during the big crop of 1913 and this year again, getting nearly all of my old customers back and many new ones.  I secured satisfactory prices, and for my location I believe I have solved the marketing problem.  One does not pay much attention to the marketing as long as enough only for local demand is produced, but when one has a surplus to dispose of the marketing problem looms rather large.  I have tried several times shipping to commission firms, but have never received satisfactory returns.

A Successful Cold Storage for Apples.

H. F. HANSEN, ORCHARDIST, ALBERT LEA.

Mr. Clarence Wedge:  I want to preface this short paper with the statement that Mr. Hansen is a man who has worked himself up from the very bottom of the horticultural ladder.  He came to Albert Lea a very poor man, and I think supported himself for some time by trapping and fishing and such work as he was able to do.  He is a man with a great tendency to investigate and to work out problems for himself.  By his thrift and persevering investigations he has brought himself into a fine property and great success.  He is the market gardener in our part of the country and a credit to his kind. (Mr. Wedge reads the paper.)

When my orchard, near the city of Albert Lea, began to bear heavy crops of fruit, I found it very desirable to hold the Wealthy and other kinds that ripen at the same time until after the farmers had marketed their fruit.  We have a very good cold storage in Albert Lea that is open to the public, but the price they charge is sixty cents per barrel for two months’ storage, which is more than the fruit will bear, and so I began to think of putting up a cold storage of my own.

My first one was built underground with pipes for ice and salt to cool it, something like the system that I am now using.  But I found out in the first season that it takes a great deal of ice to offset the heat that is coming in from the ground at the sides and bottom of the cellar.  And so I built the storage which I am now using entirely above ground, using the basement under it for storing cabbage and vegetables.  I built this in 1913, the size 28x56 feet, using cement blocks for the basement, where the cabbages are stored.  The cold storage above this is built as follows: