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Ella M. Sexton - Stories of California
however is so cheap and so good that millions of pounds are prepared every year. Such fruit ripens on the
tree and so keeps all its fine flavor. It is then dried in the sunshine, which not only fits it for long keeping
but turns part of it to sugar. Apricots, peaches, pears, and cherries are usually cut in halves or stoned
before drying. Prunes are first on the list of cured fruits, and they seem the best to use as food. The ripe
prunes are dipped into a boiling lye to make the skin tender, then rinsed and spread in the sun a day or
two. They are then allowed to "sweat" to get a good color, are next dipped in boiling water a minute or
two, dried, and finally graded, a certain number to the pound, and packed in boxes or sacks.
Several kinds of nuts grow well in the state. All the so-called "English" walnuts, with their thin shells, are
raised in the south, Orange County furnishing half the amount we market. Peanuts and almonds are a
good crop there, also, though almond groves are in all parts of the state. Both paper and thick-shelled
almonds are usually bleached, or whitened, with sulphur smoke to improve their color.
Santa Barbara and Ventura are the bean counties of the state, and send Lima beans away by train-loads,
while Orange County grows celery for the Eastern market. Very high prices are received for this celery
and other vegetables sent from California during the winter season when fields are covered with snow in
the East.
And did you know that the state produces a great deal of sugar? Tons and tons of sugar-beets are grown
throughout the farming lands, and harvested in September. When the juice of these crushed beets is
boiled and refined, it makes a sugar exactly like cane sugar and much cheaper. One-fifth of the beet is
sugar, it is said.
Even the dry, worthless mountain sides are valuable to the bee-keeper. The bees make a delicious honey
from the wild, white sage, which grows where nothing else will live. This sage honey brings the very
highest price.
Oats are raised in the coast counties, and corn in the valleys, but owing to cool nights and dry air the corn
seldom makes a good crop. Orange County, however, claims corn with stalks twenty feet high and a
hundred bushels to the acre. In the south, also, that wonderful forage-plant, alfalfa, will produce six crops
a year by irrigation and give a ton or more to the acre at each cutting.
Along the upper Sacramento River stretch the great hop-fields full of tall vines covered with light-green
tassels. At hop-picking season many families have a month's picnic, children and all working day after
day in the fields and pulling off the fragrant hops. Indians, too, are among the best hop-pickers. The dried
hops are bleached with sulphur, baled, and in great quantities sent to Liverpool, where with California
barley they are used in brewing malt liquors.
An odd crop is mustard, and at Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County, enough for the whole country is
grown. Both brown and yellow mustard is cultivated, and the little seeds, almost as fine as gunpowder,
are sold to spice-mills and pickle-factories.
Whole farms are taken up with the production of flower-seeds or bulbs, with acres and acres of
calla-lilies, roses, carnations, and violets. The tall pampas-grass, with its long feathery plumes, gives a
profitable crop. Indeed, one can scarcely name a fruit, flower, or tree that will not thrive and grow to
perfection in our mild climate and rich soil.
THE STORY OF THE NAVEL ORANGE
Who has not enjoyed a juicy navel orange, while wondering at its peculiar shape and lack of troublesome
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