The Raisin Industry: A practical treatise on the raisin grapes, their history, culture and curingEisen, Gustavus A.
History
The Raisin Industry: A practical treatise on the raisin grapes, their history, culture and curing
Eisen, Gustavus A.
Raisins; Viticulture -- California
The packing-house should contain the following apartments: First, the
general packing-room, in which the raisins are assorted and packed. Then
the sweating-house or equalizing room, in which the boxes are stored for
several weeks in order to equalize the moisture in the raisins. Then the
stemming-room, in which the stemming and grading of the loose raisins is
carried on. Then we have the weighing room, where the raisins are
received from the field, and where they are weighed when this is
required. There should also be an office and a pasting room, where the
labels are pasted on the lining paper, and finally there should be
plenty of veranda or shed room all around the building, where boxes of
all kinds can be received and temporarily stored, either before the
raisins are packed, or afterwards when they are ready to be shipped. We
might also wish to have a room for a box factory, where boxes of all
kinds are nailed up. This can in our climate best be done in the shed or
under the veranda. The packing-house proper should be as large as all
the other rooms together. It can hardly be made too large, as during the
lively packing season hundreds of hands will here be busy, each one with
his special work. The floor of the packing-house should be of matched
lumber, and slanting towards the center, along which should run a small
gutter. Any other material, such as cement, may also be used, the only
object in view being that the floor can be washed from time to time and
the dirt carried off through the gutter as readily as possible. The
packing-room should have places for long narrow tables, at which the
packing and assorting is done, and these tables can most conveniently be
run the whole length of the room. At one end there should be room for
the presses and the nailing tables, as well as storage room for empty
and full boxes.
_The Sweating-house._--The sweating-house or sweating-room should
immediately adjoin the packing-room. It should be built either of
matched lumber or of brick or adobe, in order that the temperature may
be kept tolerably even and the moisture confined if necessary. The
sweating-room in the Fresno Raisin and Fruit Packing Co’s house in
Fresno is large enough to contain 40 tons of raisins at one time, and is
about 50 feet square, while the sweating-room on the Forsyth vineyard
measures about 35 feet by 50 feet, and is built of brick in two stories,
the lower one of which is used for raisins, the upper one for storage.
For those who wish figures, we might state as examples of buildings,
that the Forsyth packing-house, which also contains a sweating-room but
not a stemming-room, is 120 feet by 35 feet, and contains besides a
small platform outside for the reception of boxes, etc. The Fresno
Raisin and Fruit Packing Co’s building is about 150 feet by 75 feet.
[Illustration: Raisin Stemmer and Grader.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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