Fruit merchant

“ You may see in this picture the fruit shops in the native quarter of the town, and bunches of bananas or plantains hanging up. Other shops sell grain, which the people chiefly live upon. It is nothing unusual to see the grain merchant lying fast asleep on the top of his store of rice or other grain. ”

“ In the fruit market were many familiar bright-coloured fruits. Fat, jet-black negresses, wearing turbans on their heads, strings of coloured beads on their necks and arms, and single long white garments, which appeared to be continually slipping off their shoulders, presided over glittering piles of oranges, bananas, pine-apples, passion-fruit, tomatoes, apples, pears, capsicum and peppers, sugar-canes, cabbage-palms, cherimoyas, and bread-fruit. ”

“ In the market-place stand the fruitsellers, who sell all kinds of fruit: ripe figs, with their bruised purple flesh, melons, smelling of musk and yellow as topazes, citrons and rose-apples and clusters of white grapes, round red-gold oranges, and oval lemons of green gold. ”

“ Whether the buyer will want a second basket or not depends entirely upon the cleverness of the person that supplies the demand. The thoroughly ripe fruit is, according to an experienced traveller, "entirely without bitterness or astringency, sweet, rich, and juicy." What more can you say about watermelon or strawberries? But if you who gather the fruits persist in hurrying them green into market you may expect that the prejudice against persimmons will grow stronger. ”

“ Very few know much about the names of varieties, but eagerly purchase that which appears the most attractive. The grower who can make his crates of berries, when opened, look better than others near, will always receive good prices. If he tops off poor fruit with large berries, he will scarcely find a market eventually. If he always fills his baskets well and honestly, and gives good weight, taking pains to make his packages appear attractive, his fruit will soon be in much demand and spoken for in advance. ”

“ Then we pass a fruit market which gives the sensation of an opulent, natural force of the Earth. Heaped up, in pyramids and—overflowing from quaint, plaited baskets, and brimming over the sides of low country carts are all the fruits of all the world: pears, melons, grapes, peaches, almonds, plums, and strange, fiery-colored vegetables. They are all monstrous in size, and the profusion is as monstrous. ”

“ What the enlightened public wants is not only Flavor, but variety in Flavor. Pomologist William A. Taylor of the United States Bureau of Plant Industry has penned a maxim which dealers cannot ponder too much. "Attractive diversity in appearance and quality stimulates a demand for fruit among consumers." Yet, as another Government expert attests, "there has for many years been a strong tendency in the American [536] fruit trade to urge fruit-growers to reduce the number of varieties in their commercial plantations." The results we see in our markets. ”

“ The homeward commerce which we carry on with our numerous Colonies, with our Indian Possessions, and with foreign countries, is principally in articles furnished by the vegetable kingdom, such as the cereal grains, wheat, rice, maize, &c.; vegetables used in preparing dietetic drinks and distilled liquors, as tea, coffee, cacao, and the sugar cane, grapes, &c.; spices and condiments; drugs; dyes and tanning substances, obtained from the bark, leaves, fruit, and roots of various herbs and trees ”

“ The vegetable market contains every description of horticultural produce known in England, as well as the arracacha, yuca, casava root, camote, sweet potatoe, yam, oca, &c. The vegetables are remarkably fine, in great abundance, and generally cheap. The fruit market is splendid, furnishing the most delicious fruits of Europe—the grape of several varieties, the peach, apricot and nectarine, the apple, the pear, the pomegranate, the quince, the tomate, and the strawberry ”

“ There has been a great injustice done the commercial fruit grower, or those trying to grow fruit commercially, by advising, urging, or anything else you choose to call it, the farmer or small homekeeper to buy more fruit trees and plants than this class of individual needs for his own use. ”

“ The fruit industry as a business, in its variety, extent, and commercial importance, as we find it to-day, is of recent origin and within the memory of the present generation,—a worthy tribute to the brain and muscle of men of our time. ”

“ Over half a billion bushels of apples, apricots, grapes, peaches, pears, prunes and small fruits are raised, apples being largely exported, and the value of the fruit crops, nuts and orchard products some years reaching $140,000,000. ”

“ Fruit will become more generally and largely an article, not of luxury, but of daily and ordinary diet. It will find its way down to the poorest table—and the quantity consumed will make up in profit to the dealer, what is lost in lessening its price. ”

“ Peddlers sit on their heels behind their heaped persimmons and busily tie straw to the short stems of the fruit, that the buyer may carry his purchase like a bunch of giant golden grapes. Fries, stews, bakes, and grills scent the air with savors, and all sorts of little balls and cubes, pats and cakes, lumps and rolls of eatables are set out along the country road. ”

“ Most of the country is well adapted to horticulture, but the almost prohibitory export duties prevent a trade which might go far toward supplying the fruit markets of Europe with oranges, lemons, dates, peaches, plums, apricots, grapes, figs, pomegranates, mulberries, and olives. ”

“ Thrifty orchards of healthy well-grown fruit trees, including many varieties, are fast coming to maturity. Waving fields of golden grain, ripple in the simmering heat of a noon-day sun, or rustle and billow with each passing breeze, under the pale light of a harvest moon. Beautiful fields of cotton and corn, are an inspiration to behold. ”

“ It is the lack of discrimination that leaves our markets so bare of fine-flavored fruit. What the grower and the grocer are seeking is a hard berry, which, if not sold speedily, will "keep over." Let citizens clearly recognize the truth,—that there are superb, delicious berries, like the Triomphe, Monarch, Charles Downing, Boyden, and many others, and insist on being supplied with them, just as they insist on good butter and good meats, and the problem is solved. ”

“ On the other hand, the sellers of fruit-trees have at the same time been learning more as to the qualities of different varieties, and how best to select them, in order to place on the market those which will secure the largest profits to the grower, and to propagate the most popular species. ”

“ Good fruit is more abundant and cheaper in the United States than anywhere in Europe. When sun-ripened and picked at the right time, it is all that fruit should be. Unfortunately, it is not usually brought into our markets in that condition. ”

“ Apples, plums, and pears grow with equally bounteous [Pg 152] success, and there are fruit farms that with their orchards and small fruits sometimes realize fifty thousand dollars a year, when the season is a good one and the market conditions favorable. ”

“ It was found that, left to themselves, some men who sold apples were so short-sighted as to fill the centre of the apple bar- rels with inferior fruit, straw, old boots, clothes, and other material which cost less than the hand- picked fruit of the Canadian orchards, and which could not be seen when covered up with rosy, sweet smelling Northern Spies. But the appetite of the British consumer does not extend to the contents of the refuse cart, and Canadian fruit growers as a whole suffered. ”

“ The person must be fastidious indeed who could ask for any sweetmeat more delicious than the pears, peaches, cherries, and plums that now fill our markets and groceries, and there can be no doubt that for those who must buy the fruit, and take the labor and risk of canning it, it is far more economical to buy it from the factories or grocers ready canned. Even when one has the privilege of raising one’s own fruit, if it can be sold with reasonable profit we think it questionable if there is anything saved—any real economy—in canning the fruit at home, instead of buying it. ”

“ We have in like sort such workmen as are not only excellent in grafting the natural fruits, but also in their artificial mixtures, whereby one tree bringeth forth sundry fruits, and one and the same fruit of divers colours and tastes, dallying as it were with nature and her course, as if her whole trade were perfectly known unto them: of hard fruits they will make tender, of sour sweet, of sweet yet more delicate, bereaving also some of their kernels, other of their cores, and finally enduing them with the savour of musk, amber, or sweet spices, at their pleasures. ”

“ How to buy.—Since we should eat fruit daily, and not merely as a “treat,” it is important to practice economy in buying it. Fresh fruits in season, and dried fruits are the cheapest. Canned fruit is economical when it is a product of one’s own garden, or put up when some fruit has a low market price. Prices are so variable, even with one variety, that no definite sum can be given as a fixed price. Apples vary from fifty cents a bushel near the orchard and in season, to ten cents apiece for a fancy table variety in the winter. ”

“ Many large growers send no fruit to London now. It is by no means uncommon for growers to sell their fruit crops on the trees or bushes by auction or private treaty, or to contract to supply a stipulated quantity of specified fruit, say of currants, raspberries or strawberries, to jam manufacturers. There is a considerable quantity of fruit, such as grapes, peaches, nectarines, grown under glass, and this kind of culture tends to increase. ”

“ Both these fruits are being largely imported, owing to the western and more southern grown being earlier, and parties from a distance can supply the market, when the lack of fresh fruit, owing to the long winter, secures for the earliest berries gilt edged prices.
Each succeeding year appears to awaken more and more interest in the fruit business and fruit culture, and though sometimes we raise all the fruit we consume, still nothing is exported from here; and all our winter apples, and most of the summer ones, are imported from the west and from over the line from the United States. ”

“ Kentish fruit-growers are becoming more particular in picking, grading, packing and storing fruit, as well as in marketing it. A larger quantity of fruit is now carefully stored, and sent to selected markets as it ripens, or when there is an ascertained demand, as it is found that if it is consigned to market direct from the trees there must frequently be forced sales and competition with foreign fruit that is fully matured and in good order. ”

“ The quantity of refuse at the metropolitan “green” markets varies with the different descriptions of fruit. Of apples it averages one- [118] twentieth, and of plums and greengages one-fifteenth, of the entire supply. With pears, cherries, gooseberries, and currants, however, the damaged amounts to one-twelfth, while of strawberries and mulberries it reaches as high as one-tenth of the aggregate quantity sent to market. ”

“ Still, I would advise any one who is supplying the market, thoroughly to prepare and enrich an acre or more of moist but well drained land, and plant some of the large, showy berries, like the Sharpless, Monarch, and Seth Boyden. If he has heavy, rich soil, let him also try the Jucunda, President Lincoln, and, especially, the Triomphe de Gand. These varieties always have a ready sale, even when the market is glutted with common fruit, and they often command very high prices. When the soil suits them, they frequently yield crops that are not so far below the Wilson in quantity. ”

“ HOW TO START IN LIFE. FRUIT-GROWING—BY KIRK MUNROE.
In no other civilized country of the world is there so much fruit eaten as in the United States, consequently in no other is fruit-growing such an important and profitable industry. ”

“ Tinned and bottled preserves soon become insipid to the palate, but dried fruit, such as apples, apricots and prunes, we found far more attractive, and they should always be carried when native supplies are uncertain. ”

“ The general or wholesale market handles fruit in larger quantities, usually with a smaller margin of profit. A selling agent or commission man is the means of disposing of fruit in such a market, where competition is open to the whole country and sometimes to the world. Only standard well-known varieties find a ready [144] and profitable sale. Great attention is paid to appearance and comparatively little to quality. Fruit shipped to a wholesale market must be packed in a standard package, which is not returned, but goes with the fruit, and must be packed so as to endure rough treatment. ”

“ THE value of fruits bottled whole in such a way that they retain their natural form as well as their natural flavour is becoming more and more recognized, and fortunately science has kept space with the spread of this recognition, so that it is a perfectly simple matter for the owner of the smallest garden to bottle his fruit at the most trifling cost and trouble. ”

“ The usual kinds of fruit the regular costers deal in are strawberries, raspberries (plain and stalked) , cherries, apricots, plums, green-gages, currants, apples, pears, damsons, green and ripe gooseberries, and pine-apples. They also deal in vegetables, such as turnips, greens, brocoli, carrots, onions, celery, rhubarb, new potatoes, peas, beans (French and scarlet, broad and Windsor) , asparagus, vegetable marrow, seakale, spinach, lettuces, small salads, radishes, etc. Their fruit and vegetables they usually buy at Covent-garden, Spitalfields, or the Borough markets. ”

“ As they ripen they drop to the ground, and are picked up and eaten with much relish by all kinds of stock. The excellent quality of this fruit as a fodder is evident from its fattening effect—stock having access to it improve markedly during the time it is in season. ”

“ 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. ”