Fruitgrowers eye production, profitability with smart picking

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Advertiser

Picking quicker - and more profitably - is something any farmer can relate to.

Three Valley orchardists shared a few of their time- and money-saving ideas with fellow Nova Scotia Fruitgrowers’ Association members at their conference January 26 to 28 in Greenwich. “If you’re not doing it this way, ‘get with the program’,” Waterville farmer Lloyd Dyck said.

AgriPoint’s Bill Craig is in a lot of orchards, and he invited Dyck, Craig Nichols of Morristown and Blake Sarsfield of Medford to talk about some of the tips and tricks they’ve adopted to make work - and life - easier. “Labour is one of our greatest costs when it comes to production,” Craig said. “You’d have a labour crew of dozens years ago, and now there is all sorts of engineering and researching on robots: within 10 years, don’t be surprised there will be some kind of harvester out there to replace us!”

In the meantime, hitting the conference theme, “Profiting from Production,” Nichols talked about adding bin trailers to his fall harvest. Used to carry up to six bins at a time, like a long caterpillar through the orchard, with six people working together to fill them; he’s made his own modifications. “People that have picked apples for years didn’t see that this was the way you should pick apples, and it took a really long time to get it in place,” Nichols said. “It’s hard to get six people to work together.”

On the other hand, Nichols’ Jamaican labourers have embraced the idea, they drive the tractor, load and unload the bins. “It’s one-sixth the amount of time you’re in the orchard, rutting up rows,” Nichols said.

He said two trains is ideal, as pickers can start on a new train while the old one is taken out. “Otherwise, you could lose seven or eight bins a day.”

Nichols also converted one of his excavator attachments into a stake driver, which Dyck said saved days of work in his orchard, ripping out old trees and putting in new varieties and staking systems. Using GPS planting, recommended by Sarsfield, it took him 36 minutes to lay out a two-acre plot. “My feeling is, anything you try and do to improve labour - and there is lots of stuff out there you make yourself - is a good thing,” Sarsfield said.

Mechanized blossom thinners, two-way radios for picking crews - even replacing the apple barrels of yesteryear with today’s bins - make a difference. “It’s not new to make things more efficient,” Sarsfield said.

Dyck also talked about simple changes, from opening up narrow orchard roads to let 18-wheelers back to load ready-to-go bins, air-powered pruners and one-trip mowing between trees.