Fruit tree diggers hustle through harvest

The scene looks like something out of a movie where lots of extras are hired. Dozens of field hands, warmly dressed, stand in dirt and mud along a row of small cherry trees as far as the eye can see.

They're a small army, usually 60 to 100. If you didn't know, you would wonder what they're doing there.

A tall machine, straddling the trees, approaches at walking speed. It's so loud you can't hear yourself talk. The driver sits about 12 feet above the ground.

The machine's U-shaped blade cuts the ground on either side of the row and about 2 feet down, below the trees' roots. The blade lifts the trees and dirt, not quite out of the ground and then plops them down.

Now the workers swing into action. They pull the trees from the loosened soil, knock the dirt from their roots, bundle them and load them on tractor-drawn trailers that carry them to semis.

This isn't what comes to mind when people think of harvest and the tree fruit industry.

In that sense, it's an unusual harvest. But it happens every year in the narrow window of three to four weeks in November, just after fruit trees go dormant and just before their roots freeze in the ground.

Four tree fruit nurseries in North Central Washington typically harvest about 3.5 million trees annually, making them among the top producers in the state and nation.

C&O Nursery Co., of Wenatchee, is the granddaddy of the four at 102 years old. Van Well Nursery, of East Wenatchee, started in 1946 as an offshoot of C&O. The others are Willow Drive Nursery near Ephrata and Columbia Basin Nursery in Quincy.

C&O will harvest about 900,000 trees this month, down 17 percent from 1.1 million last year, says Todd Snyder, co-owner.

But last year was a big year so this year is a return to just below average, he says.

The decrease, he says, is caused by the company looking at supply and demand trends, the availability of rootstock and the availability of land suitable for growing trees two years ago and pulling back.

The nursery business is always on a two-year schedule. It takes time to change course.

C&O has presold about 90 percent of what it's digging. About 60 percent of the crop will be shipped next spring to growers in the Pacific Northwest. Most of the rest will go elsewhere in the country and about 100,000 trees will be shipped to other nations, mostly Canada and Mexico.

The two-year growing cycle starts with the company buying cloned rootstock trees from Oregon and planting them in the spring. That August and September the rootstock is budded. Buds are cut off a desired variety and inserted into a cut in the stem of the rootstock.

That all grows until the following spring, when rootstock growth is cut away, allowing the bud to take off. It grows through the summer and into the fall. Then trees are cut down to about 5 feet and dug. In bare-root state, they are kept cool and wet in a warehouse through the winter to protect the new bud growth from the weather and be ready to go for spring shipments to growers.

Of the 900,000 trees C&O is harvesting this month, 525,000 are apple with the main varieties being Fuji, Cripps Pink, Honey Crisp and Gala, Snyder says. The number of Red Delicious grown has stabilized after dropping for years, he says.

The main cherry varieties grown are Bing, Rainier, Chelan, Skeena and Sweetheart, he says.

"We're still selling out of cherries but we're growing fewer to sell," Snyder says. "We're trying to adjust our inventory to match the market. We've probably hit a plateau in the quantity of cherry trees going into the ground."

C&O raises its trees on 200 acres of nursery off White Trail Road, southwest of Quincy.

On a good day, the digging crew can dig 80,000 trees, maybe more, says Shad Snyder, a fourth-generation family member and nursery manager.

The trees fill a company warehouse in George first, then the main warehouse in Wenatchee.

"I dig (trees to fill) eight semi-trucks a day. I could dig more but that's the most they can handle in Wenatchee in a day," Shad says.

Apple trees dig faster than cherry trees because apple trees have fewer roots, he says.

Digging doesn't start until the temperature is above 32 degrees, to keep bare roots from freezing.

Roberto Abarelos, 22, of Quincy, is among the army of workers. He lifts bundles and hands them to other workers who stack them on a trailer. He's making minimum wage. He's not complaining but says he prefers picking cherries in early summer because he makes more money in fewer hours.

Shad Snyder speaks more Spanish and English in the field, directing the digger where he wants him to go and using a hand-held radio to help foremen Oswaldo Medina and Raul Hernandez keep the operation on track.

The foremen make sure the bundles are properly tagged so the trees are kept straight by variety in the warehouses.

It's a sunny day, but the crew also works in bad weather.

To the west, the sun shines brightly off new snow on Colockum Ridge.

Winter is coming.

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Information from: The Wenatchee World, http://www.wenworld.com