Historic Hood River
Spray Time
3-24-2015
Notes
The steam sprayer must have been an important labor saving invention, as we have so many good photos proudly showing off different models. This one is from the A.I. Mason album.
The History Museum of Hood River County
Bringing the Rich History of Hood River County to Life
Charlott
All dressed up to spray???? Wonder what they are applying.Unlike today, even the kids get in on the action. However, I used to play where my grandfather had the stationary sprayer. It ran in over head pipe from that sprayer down the hill through the orchard, with a faucet every so often. These my Dad and Uncle hooked into with their wonderful old heavy black hoses and dragged them around the trees. Great fun to play in the spray bags, bottle, etc. while Grandpa mixed the spray. My prime DNA has to be DDT………..
James Holloway
Yikes Charlotte,
That was my thought, what are they spraying, we know it is not just water and lemon juice, but more likely the first generations of some toxic chemical, like DDT. Lucky for us our prime DNA has a way to help us adapt, to all the environmental assaults.
nels
The late Ron Stewart, one of the first organic orchardists, once joked that if the feds knew how much cyanide and other known chemical killers were in his orchard soil they would make him put a chain link fence around it and cut down the trees. Remember watching my father deal with chemicals they soaked wooden fence posts in with his bare hands. Never sick a day in his life and died at 83 with acute leukemia. They gave him 6 weeks and he lived 3 more years, with all us kids donating blood to him regularly. Was it the fact that they were not already saturated with chemicals such as DDT, or were they just hardy folks eating ‘organic’ food?
L.E.
I am a real fence sitter when it comes to spraying.
Charlott
I have a friend who when a teen ager sprayed DDT with his shirt off because he was hot. I sometimes wish I had a dab of DDT to kill bugs…….
Jeffrey Bryant
Hood River Glacier, August 20, 1908
Will Manufacture Steam Sprayers
E. T. Zable, of the Pine Grove district, went to Portland this week to purchase material to manufacture steam spraying outfits. It is Mr. Zable’s intention to secure the necessary parts and then to assemble and connect them up at Hood River. As he is a mechanical engineer as well as a fruitgrower he believes that he can perfect a steam sprayer that will be superior to anything of this kind that has yet been used in the valley. Two of the features will be a bronze spray pump and brass piping. It is found that where blue stone is used in spray mixtures or alone that it rapidly corrodes and soon destroys steel or iron fittings and by the use of bronze and brass this will largely be done away with.
L.E.
I know what Bluestone is. I used to use it on the feet of my sheep when they had foot rot.
It is a copper sulfate mixture. It came in a bottle with a cotton dobber. When you brushed the blue mixture on something, it turned a coppery blue color.