Dear friend Will: Last week father went to Fresno, which is about three hundred miles northwest of here, in the San Joaquin valley. He took me with him, and we visited some of the great vineyards and raisin-packing establishments near and in that city.

Raisins are simply dried grapes. Although there are many countries where grapes grow, there are few where raisins are made. Dew, fog, and rain injure the fruit, so that the San Joaquin valley, with its dry, hot atmosphere, is well adapted to this industry.

There are a great many different kinds of grapes but only the green variety is used in making raisins. The raisin grapes are called muscats. If the grapes are left on the vines long enough, they become raisins. I have picked some pretty good raisins from the vines. Of course by being spread out, they dry quicker and more evenly.

The sugar that you find on and in the raisins is not put there by the people who dry the grapes. It comes from the juice of the grape.

Grapevines grow from both roots and cuttings. Of course cuttings are the cheaper. Often they may be had for the asking. Many think that it is better to set out rooted vines than cuttings.

They are planted in rows from six feet apart to twelve or fifteen feet. During the first year the young vines will grow several feet. In the fall, when the flow of the sap has been checked by frost, the vines are pruned. A vineyard in California looks quite different from one in the East. During the winter it is simply so many rows of stumps several inches in thickness and one or two feet high. During the summer the branches grow from these stumps and produce their beautiful clusters of grapes, only to be cut off in the fall or winter.

The trimmings are generally burned in the vineyard at the same time that they are cut off. A sort of furnace made of sheet iron is fastened between two wheels and drawn by horses up and down between the rows. A man pitches the cuttings into it, and they burn as it moves along.

In the early summer men go through the vineyards sprinkling a coating of sulphur on the vines. This is to prevent mildew, which damages the fruit very much.

During the last half of August and September the grapes are picked. Sometimes the harvest continues into October. Most of the grapes had been gathered when we visited the vineyards.

When the juice of the grapes is one fourth sugar, they are ready to pick. The grower generally tells the condition by the taste and color of the fruit, although there are instruments for determining the amount of sugar.

Like oranges, grapes are cut from the vines and not picked. We saw great companies of Chinamen going through the vineyards cutting off the beautiful clusters. These they placed on shallow, wooden trays to dry. In a week or two, when the upper side of the clusters is pretty well dried, the grapes are turned. We saw the workmen place an empty tray, upside down, over the filled one. Then, holding the two together, they turned them over, and the grapes dropped into the tray that had been placed on top.

During this drying time the people watch the reports of the Weather Bureau. In some places flags are displayed when rain is expected. As a rule the grape season is over before the rains begin.

When the grapes are taken from the trays, they are placed in boxes holding about one hundred pounds each. These are called sweat boxes. Here the driest grapes absorb some of the moisture from the others, and the mass becomes more uniform.

After the drying process has been finished, the stems are rather brittle. To make them softer and easier to handle, the grapes are next placed in a cool room and left there for a time.

After visiting some of the vineyards, we drove to one of the great packing establishments in Fresno. These packing houses are nearly always in the cities and towns, because there help can be easily obtained. The packing house that we visited employs four hundred people, mostly girls and women.

The raisins are first placed on wooden or metal frames the size of a raisin box. These are called forms, and the packers are paid according to the number of forms filled. When these are filled, the raisins are carefully transferred to the boxes.

A box of raisins weighs twenty pounds, but there are half boxes and quarter boxes put up also. A paper is placed on the bottom of each box, and over the raisins another is placed. On top of this there is a fancy paper on which the name of the packer is stamped.

In most establishments there are three grades of raisins, Imperial Clusters, London Layers, and the loose and imperfect stems.Sometimes a second crop of grapes is gathered a little later in the fall. Of course these do not dry so well because the days are shorter, it is cooler, and rains sometimes occur. On this account they are dipped in lye and then rinsed in water. The lye cracks the skin, and so the juice evaporates more quickly. These are called Valencia raisins. There is not a very good market for these, so that people do not dip them so commonly now as they used to.

We saw the machine where the raisins are stemmed. They pass from a hopper into a space between two woven-wire cylinders. The inner one revolves within the other. In this way the raisins are broken from the stems. They are then run through a fanning mill which cleans them, and they are finally graded by passing through screens having openings of different sizes.

Most of the seedless raisins are made from seedless grapes, but there are machines for removing the seeds from the grapes which contain them.

The superintendent of the packing house said that nearly all of the raisins that we import come from Spain, and that they are exported chiefly from the city of Malaga.

The purple and other wine grapes are taken to the wineries and sold by the ton, to be made into wine.

There are many other things that I should like to write about, but my letter is a pretty long one now, so I will close.