EVAPORATING AS A HOME INDUSTRY IN EAsrEitx uNITED STATES In the past twenty-five years great progress has I n made in each of the three methods of preserving fruit: drying or evaporating, canning or preserving, and extracting the juice. Canning for market has largely passed into the hands of firms that operate expensive canneries and make this their business. Evaporation h a s also passed through a period of great development from the old methods of drying in the sun. But while it has progressed t o so great an extent, it still remains as a home industry in the East. Perhaps it is because the equipment of a good evaporator lies within the means of a farmer, while the equipment of a canning factory is very expensive. The Twelfth Census report gives the total product of evaporated fruit in 1899 as 141, 80d.638 pounds. A large part of this represents the product of the farmers' home evaporators.
The evaporator furnishes a profitable outlet for fruit that is undesirable for market purposes. It not only makes such fruit a source of profit, but keeps it from the market where it would compete with good fruit and lower the price. In years of low prices, the entire crop can be evaporated and held for better prices. Not all of the fruit evaporated is of poor quality. In some regions, fruits are grown primarily for evaporation. In Wayne county, New York, nearly half of the apple growers regularly evaporate all their crop or sell it to neighbors for that purpose.
Extent of the industry.
Apples, pears, raspberries, peaches, plums, cher ries, quinces, huckleberries, currants, peas, corn, potatoes, pumpkins, and other crops are evaporated to some extent in the East. The apple-evaporating is by far the most important. The following table gives the average amounts of dried apples exported and shows the increase in these amounts: The center of the apple-evaporating industry is Wayne county, New York. This county undoubt edly produces more evaporated apples than any state outside of New York, except perhaps Cali fornia. In 1902, this county evaporated over
3,000,000 bushels of apples, producing about 20,000,000 pounds of dried stock. The average for the past five years (1900-05) has been about 15,000,000 pounds. Over 70 per cent of the total crop is evaporated. This evaporation is nearly all done by the farmers who grow the fruit or by their neighbors. The evaporators are almost as characteristic of the farms as are the barns in a dairy region. Evaporating is also done in the villages. The methods described in this article are founded on New York experience. (See page 165.) Sun drying.
Until about 1870, sun drying, or drying over the kitchen stove, were the only methods used. Prob ably, the beginning of the evaporating industry was with the invention of the Lippy fruit-drier, in 1865. It was about fifteen years later before the evaporator largely replaced the sun-drying method. Many farmers still dry fruit in the sun, but in the East large quantities are not often so dried by one person. The sun-drying is ordinarily done on racks, made of lath placed about one-fourth inch apart and covered with cloth or paper, or made of thin lumber. Slices of apples are sometimes strung on strings and hung in the sun to dry.
Evaporation gives a much better looking product, that is more palatable and more digestible, and that consequently brings a much higher price. At the date of this writing (February 1906) the best quality of evaporated apples is quoted in New York City at eleven and one-half cents per pound, while the best sun-dried stock is quoted at seven cents.
The poorest grades are quoted at seven cents for evaporated and five cents for sun-dried. Other fruits show similar differences. Not only is the sun-dried product less valuable than the evaporated, but the process is slow and inconvenient. The fruit must be protected from showers and dew. In rainy weather, it is almost impossible to get it dry without having it damaged.