Ann Zarko
How Apricots Were Grown/Dried

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Apricots were grown in Santa Clara valley from about 1900 to the 1950s which is when housing developments started. Trees were planted in rows about 25 feet apart. 

The trees were small when planted and took about 6 years before they bore fruit. 

Apricots were picked off the tree using a ten foot ladder. 

The picker had a bucket with a hook on the handle. He climbed the ladder, hooked the bucket on the ladder and filled it with fruit. 

He climbed down the ladder after the bucket was full and emptied the bucket into a wooden box that held about forty pounds of fruit. Two full buckets usually filled the box. This procedure went on all day. As the boxes were filled they were stacked on top of each other, usually five boxes high.

A flat bed truck was driven through the orchard, picked up the boxes of fruit and took them to the cutting shed.

The cutting shed was made of a frame covered with the 3 x 8 foot trays tied to the frame with rope. It would be put up before, and dismantled after the fruit season. Using eight saw horses and four 3 x 8 foot trays, there would be enough room for eight cutters to cut apricots, two working on one tray.

A box of fruit was emptied on the tray. The cutter would cut the apricot, take the seed out, put it in a little box that was by them, and carefully lay the apricot half on the tray cut side up. If the fruit was overripe, they would dry into slabs. The over-ripe fruit could not be cut in half so it was put on the tray flat. It made a very sweet dried fruit.

Every cutter had a ticket of one hundred numbers, which would get punched for either cutting a box of fruit or filling a tray. Some paid by the box, snd some by tray. At the end of the day all the trays of fruit were taken off the trays and put on a little truck that ran on tracks through the center of the shed. The truck was pushed down the track into a sulfur house.

A hole under the truck held a bucket full of powdered sulfur. A match was struck to a piece of grass or paper to light the sulfur. The door of the sulfur house was closed and the load of fruit was left all night in the sulfur smoke. In the morning the truck was pulled out of the sulfur house. The fruit was plump and juicy and a beautiful orange color, cured by the sulfur.

The trays of fruit, carried by two adults or four children were spread out the ground to dry in the sun for about five days. After the fruit was dry, the trays of dried fruit were stacked for a few days.

Then each tray was scraped with a scraper into clean boxes and taken to the barn.

A salesman from a packing house bought the dried fruit.

It was delivered by horse drawn truck to the packing house.

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