For the second time within a month, a carload of apples has been shipped to Ahoskie, and distributed to all comers at such ridiculously low prices as to cause the buyer to believe he was getting something for nothing—a situation that so seldom obtains in these high price times that it creates an opportunity for newspaper comment. Five hundred bushels of choice varieties were sold from the car here, on last Saturday and Monday of this week.
John Y. McDonald, orchard man of Charlestown, West Virginia, brought the carload here, at the instance of James W. Green, linotyper for the Herald. It was Miss Myrtle Swindell, county home demonstrator, who started the ball rolling by ordering a co-operative shipment three weeks ago. The carload ordered through her effort did not meet the demand, and the second carload went just about as fast, despite the fact that a part of the third carload were on sale locally at the same time.
Among the varieties included in the latest shipment were Old Winesaps, Yorks, Ben Davis, King David, Grimes Golden, and Albemarle Pippins. They came in bulk and packed in baskets and barrels. The price for some varieties ran as low as $1 per bushel; and at the prices sold Mr. McDonald says he was completely satisfied at the sales. He thinks Ahoskie will make a good shipping point another season.
Mr. McDonald talks interestingly of the fruit industry in his county, Jefferson. More than 400,000 bushels of apples have been shipped from his county, which embraces a territory of only about 10 square miles. It was an unusually good season for yields, he said, although the price has been low, and a great majority of the growers have not made any money. However, he says his crop has netted a nice profit. The average price this year has been $3 per barrel, which, after paying 75 cents for the barrel and a like amount for picking and handling, nets the grower $1.50 per barrel.
The West Virginia visitor was impressed with what seemed to him general prosperity among the ruralites of this section, and expressed regret that he had not hear of Ahoskie before this late date. “Peaches went begging in my county this summer, and had I known that you people were peachless, it would have been the simplest piece of business in the world to have shipped a carload of them here,” said Mr. McDonald. “I was offered a whole orchard of peaches without cost this summer and wouldn’t take them. Many growers did not even harvest their peaches at all, letting them rot in the orchards.”
He was interested in the boll weevil menace through this territory, in view of the fact that himself and other orchard men were paying unusually high prices for lead arsenate with which to spray fruit. The invasion of the weevil into new territory has caused the poison spray to leap upward in prices. Last year it was 14 cents a pound, while he paid 40 cents a pound this year. “We folks are used to spraying bugs, and it is nothing new—this insect killing business.”
Mr. McDonald was for three years a teacher in Bingham School, Asheville—not the one that is so sadly remembered locally and elsewhere. And, while he is loyal to his West Virginia home, Mr. McDonald did not hesitate to say that he might yet be a Tar Heel. He likes the State and its people.
From the front page of the Hertford County Herald, Ahoskie, N.C., Friday, Nov. 30, 1923
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