We began to send them. When we shipped them we made sure we sent nuts that were considerably better than the sample, and the rewards for shipping there were also very good. Then we went on to Chicago, and we have been shipping to Chicago over since. At this time I am out here to find a little more market for some of the nuts that we have in Oregon. At first we put the nuts in cold storage at about 32 degrees, expecting to get a better price on the Thanksgiving market. We found out that we were making a mistake and that the earliest nuts on the market brought us our best price. So now we are shipping just as early as we can ship. We first adopted the western cranberry box as being open enough to allow a little drying off and tight enough so that it wouldn't allow too much and yet we didn't get any mold. We were very much afraid of that, because a good many of the California chestnuts had molded on the way to market. Later we turned to the splint bushel basket, and lately we have been in favor of the half-bushel basket. There seem to be buyers who don't like to stock up more than a half bushel at a time, chestnuts being of a rather high price. They dry out too fast. We found that cold storage above 32 degrees keeps chestnuts in good condition with little dry-out. One dealer in Oregon we know of wraps his cold storage nuts in waterproof paper, keeps them that way clear on into January. A very little mold will develop on chestnuts kept in storage from 32 to 35 degrees, but not enough so we take any precaution. We have had a few batches that people have stood in sacks on damp nights, and they started to mold, especially on the open end, and we find we can kill the mold with Clorox. We have just used a little Clorox in water. We think this would prevent mold from developing on all nuts if they were put through a chlorine bath. We haven't taken the trouble to do that. I might say our walnuts, and filberts have been put through a chlorine solution, and, of course, after a chlorine solution is used you have to put the nuts through water again and wash that off. We have on our place a nice washer. We have graded the European varieties, which we handle mostly, into three grades: standard, fancy, and extra fancy, by size. All our grading has been done by hand, except we expect to have a simple grader this year. [Footnote 7: Mr. Bush informed the secretary by letter, early in 1949, that he did not then have any nursery stock ready for sale at his Eagle Creek, Oregon, nursery. From that location about 10 years ago he introduced, under numbers, three selections of Chinese chestnuts grown from seed imported in the early 30's. Two of these, in 1941, were named Abundance and Honan. The Abundance is now considered one of the most desirable varieties from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania, while Honan is slightly less desirable.--Ed.] +"Sweet" Nuts Sell Faster+