1900s - Early Florida's Citrus Industry
The Ladder
"When the first citrus fruit was removed
from the tree, it was done by the human
hand. Today, centuries later citrus is
still harvested by hand. There has
been some harvesting done by
machines, but the appearance of a
disease that weakens the trees has
caused Florida to abandon machines.
Ladders have been used to aid in harvesting just as long
as citrus has existed for the trees can grow to be rather
large if they are not pruned. For many years in Florida the
trees were not pruned and it was not uncommon to have
them reach heights of 40 feet. Many groves in Lake
County required ladders like this one which is 38 feet long.
Two men would 'walk' the ladder into a standing position
and then place it 'into' the tree. The ladder would be
relocated as the fruit was removed from the tree. Once
the tree was picked clean, the ladder would be moved to
the next tree in the row. This process continued until the
entire grove was harvested. The ladders would be
walked' down and placed on the flat bed trucks that were
used to transport the fruit from the grove to the
packinghouse. The crew then climbed on board to hold
the ladders down as they were transported to the next
grove to be picked. This continued from late October to
well into the spring as Lake County citrus was harvested."
"A critical part of the citrus harvesting
operation is the ladder. This piece of
equipment has evolved as the tree structure
has changed. Early in the citrus growing
business the trees were allowed to grow as
tall as possible. The distance between trees
in the field was such that they had plenty of
room to grow, both up and out! In order to
harvest the tall trees, long ladders were needed. This ladder is
38 feet long, about as tall as the large orange and grapefruit
trees found in the groves.
Orange trees were planted 25 ft by 25 ft and grapefruit 30 ft by
30 ft. Trees could reach 35 to 40 ft in height. For many the
lower limbs were well above head height. Therefore, a long
ladder was needed to reach the top of the trees.
Many ladders used in citrus
came from the Babcock Ladder Company in Bath, NY. This is
their history
"Origins of the Company" from The Heritage of Bath, N.Y.
1793-1993 (1998).
"The origins of the company actually extend back to the mid
1880s when Cornelius Jackson manufactured butter churns
under his own name. In 1905, with Jackson looking toward
retirement, he sold the company to W.W. Babcock. Babcock's
primary interest was in converting the facilities and
woodworking skills to ladder manufacturing, but he continued to
produce butter churns under the Babcock name into the 1920s.
The transfer of the company from Jackson to Babcock involved
both cash and stock. The original Jackson stock soon went to an
"in-law" named Thomas Saxton and subsequently through four
generations of Saxons until 1991. when James Martin became
the sixth president of the company and acquired all outstanding
stock."
They started making ladders in 1909 for the Putnam Rolling
Ladder Co.
As noted in 1991 the company was sold to James Martin and he
operated it in Bath, NY until it folded in 2000.
At one time Babcock Ladder produced 20% of all wood ladders
in US and had 50 models.
They sold 150,000 ladders in 1988. The side rails were West
coast hemlock with rungs of Southern hickory or oak
It seems 3 families were closely involved with the company -
Saxton, Babcock and Hamilton. According to a source (member
of one of the families) the company was "unbelievably
profitable enterprise that made a premier product line"...
This individual actually spent a couple of years in the early 70's
working for the company. His grandfather and father were both
Presidents of the company (his father left in 1975). He states "I
do recall all of the ladders you speak of... The
"orchard" ladders were a specialty line made from spruce and
most likely in later years West coast hemlock". He notes many
of the other ladders were made for various companies and
"jobbed' out. He notes "fruit tree" ladders (as I call them) were
all Babcock labeled.
Many citrus harvesting ladders were made by
local companies in Florida. They used
cypress. They split the trees and used a
"swamp ash' for the rungs. It seems there
were a number of small "ladder manufacturers
scattered over the citrus producing region."
"Smaller Trees, Shorter Ladders
Some growers realized it could be beneficial to prune their
trees and 'lower the fruit producing limbs to the ground.
However, the freeze of 1962 accelerated this process.
Temperatures that year on the night of December 13th
reached mid-teens over most of Lake County. The result
was extensive damage to the trees requiring severe
pruning to remove the dead wood. The extensive pruning
produced abundant new growth on the shorter trees.
Pruning is a rejuvenating action producing multiple latent
"buds' to grow around the cut limb. This new growth
produced a smaller tree that actually produced more fruit
that was closer to the ground. The 1966/67 crop in Lake
County was substantially (about 40%) larger than the
previous year as all the new growth on the pruned trees
produced flowers and fruit. Most growers now realized
that pruning trees to keep the fruit producing area close to
the ground was profitable. There were still those that let
their groves grow tall, but not many. Now that trees were
smaller, the ladder needed was shorter. Many 40 ft ones
were cut in half! However, ladders were still an essential
part of the harvesting operation."
Picking Sack
"The picking 'sack' was designed to allow the harvester to
put as much as 90 pounds of fruit into it and then let the
bottom open to deposit the fruit into a container."
The
Allen Harvesting Sack
"Mr. Allen is said to have invented
the open bottom picking sack that allows the fruit to flow
out once the snap holding the folded bottom in place is
released. The 'invention' took place in 1904 and the Allen
Bag Manufacturing Company operated in Orlando from
1910 to 1970. "Hugh C. Allen
maintained groves for L. E. Dommerich Estate in Maitland
where he experimented with using pillowcases as orange
picking bags." This style 'sack' continues to be used to
harvest many types of fruit and is still used by every citrus
harvester in Florida today." (One of these bags can be seen in the Groveland Museum.)
The Box
"For many years fruit was transported from grove to
packinghouse in wood field boxes. These boxes were 1
and 3/5 bushels by volume and when full of fruit weighed
around 90 pounds. The full box was loaded by hand onto
a flatbed truck, called a 'goat' which then moved the fruit
to the edge of the grove where the boxes were placed on
the truck (straight job) that hauled them to the
packinghouse. These trucks would generally hold 100 to
120 'boxes' of fruit.
Over time the wood field box was replaced by a plastic
field box that was dumped into a 'goat' as mechanization
started to take the place of labor. Soon the hand
harvested fruit was dumped in larger pallet boxes (most
contained 10 field boxes). The first pallet boxes were
wood and were eventually replaced with the currently used
plastic bins. Special trucks called 'goats' were designed
with arms to lift the pallets onto the truck to be hauled
from the grove to a large flatbed semi-trailer that could
hold 50 of the 10 box pallets. Today the fruit is still picked
by hand, but machines do the real heavy lifting to get
containers from the field to the packinghouse."
The Pickers
"...Citrus harvesting sacks can hold up to 90
pounds of fruit. For many years each piece of fruit was
removed from the tree by hand and placed into the sack.
Once the sack was full, the harvester would climb down
the ladder, unsnap the sack and dump the fruit into the
container that would then be used to transport the fruit to
the packing facility. A good' harvester could pick 100
boxes a day. A box of fruit weighs about 90 pounds!!
That is 9000 pounds of fruit every day! This translates into
strapping 60 to 70 pounds around one's shoulder and
climbing down a tall ladder 150 times
a day. During the season a picking crew worked 6 days a
week! No need for those guys to go the gym!"
The Packing House
"Once the fruit was loaded onto the 'straight job' the last
step was to remove the boxes of fruit at the packinghouse
Hand 'trucks' were used. Four filled boxes
were 'grabbed' by another strong man using this 'truck'.
The boxes were then taken to the area in the
packinghouse where fruit was dumped to start the process
of washing, grading, sizing, packing and loading the fruit
for shipment to market. For many years this operation
was all done by people. Eventually machines were made
that mechanized the process. Fruit in bins was moved to
a dumping station by fork lift where it was mechanically
placed at the beginning of the packing line. Once packed
in cardboard boxes, the fruit was automatically stacked
and transported to a cold storage room by fork lift waiting
for the final move into the refrigerated semi for the trip to a
retail distribution center."
"Prior to the freezes in the
1980's Lake County produced 10 to 13
BILLION pieces of citrus fruit a year.
Yields were reported in 'boxes' with 44
million being produced in 1980. This
goes back to that wood field container
used for many years. This 'standard'
field box became the unit of measurement. In order to
'standardize' the data, the Florida Department of Citrus
established 'official' weights for a box of citrus. Oranges
weigh 90 pounds, grapefruit 85 pounds and tangerines 95
pounds. Most of Florida citrus is now processed as juice
and the fruit is still picked by hand, but dumped into 'tubs'
which are loaded by the 'goats' into large semi-trailers. At
the juice plant each trailer load of fruit is weighted, thus a
'box' number can be determined.
Since each piece of fruit is handled by hand, it is obvious
that many people were needed to harvest the crop in Lake
County each year.
A survey conducted in 1980 shows the
following estimated 'numbers' for Lake County"
Processing Plants Producing OJ - 5
Packing facilities for fresh fruit - 26
Harvesters - 6.000
Total employees in Lake Citrus industry - 26,000
Acres of citrus - 117,000
Boxes of fruit produced - 44,000,000
Economic Impact on county - $950.000.000
Testing Citrus Fruit for
Sweetness
"When is a citrus fruit ready to eat?
Citrus does not continue
to ripen once it is removed from the tree so the fruit must be
mature when harvested. In the 1930's the Florida citrus
industry established 'standards' about ripeness! Fruit had to
have a minimum for juice content, per cent sugar and the ratio
of sugar to acid. A fruit testing kit was used by growers to see
if a crop was legally 'ripe' before it was harvested. The
procedure was as follows:
1. 10 fruit were squeezed and the juice collected - a
minimum volume was required.
2. Part of the juice was placed in a tall cylinder and a device
called a hydrometer was dropped into the juice. The
hydrometer would float in the juice, the level was
determined by the sugar content of the juice. Citrus
hydrometers were calibrated so the per cent sugar could
be read from the stem.
3. To determine the level of acid in the juice a process called
'titration' was used. A measured volume of juice was
placed in a burette (tall glass tube with a scale on side and
stopcock which allowed small amounts to be discharged).
A solution was placed in a collection device (Erlenmeyer
flask). The solution contained a product that changed
color when the contents of the flask were 'neutral'. One
slowly added juice in the burette into the flask until a color
change took place. This process provided the acid content
of the juice.
Now it was a math problem to determine ratio of sugar to acid
Once the math was done, the grower could use the tables to
be sure the fruit met the minimum standards of juice content,
per cent sugar and ratio. The 'legal' standards for maturity
were established by the Florida Department of Citrus."
[Contributors: Lake County Museum]
Next Article: 1900s - Citrus and Celebrities - Kuharske Family of Bay Lake