2-28 FB Orchard Work

 What do we do about our American workforce and our economy? Nobody is more depressed about so many people being  unemployed than me. That said listen to the story told by fruit grower Tom Merkle.  “I have 7 different farms that I manage and I have my own also so I do a lot of road time back and forth from the farms and the operations going well. Several of my farms are wine grapes, couple have wine grapes, blueberries, cherries and apples on them. We go all organic apples on my farms. Pink Ladies, Fujis, Grannys, and we have all varieties of grapes, Cabernet, Merlot, Chardonnay, White Riesling, Savion Blanc, Pinot Grigio. In the fruit business when you care for cherries, apples and grapes is it the same regimen? Yes. Pretty much the same regimen. We machine harvest most of our cherries. Our quality grapes that go into some of the higher end wines are hand picked, so that’s a little different for man power but other than that the grapes are pretty much mechanical. Big cost savings for labor. If I understand things correctly over the state of Washington there have been signs saying apple pickers wanted  and we are in this very down economy, people on the streets with card board signs, explain  that to me, can they make a decent day’s wage while picking apples? Yes.  We can’t get those people to work so we use the H2A program. We bring 1000 people up from Mexico.”