Years ago, a group of fruit growers got together and made an agreement to put up a packing house and hire a salesperson to sell their fruit collectively. Each one of the growers put a certain amount of money in, and they started these fruit exchanges. A lot of these organizations went one step further. Instead of just packing fruit, they became a supplier for the fruit grower. They would buy the chemicals and tractors and pruning shears and hardware that the farmer used. The stockholders in the company enjoyed the privilege of getting the chemicals and the fertilizers and the hose and all the equipment on credit. They would sign an affidavit saying they had gotten this and then at the end of the season, after they take their fruit in and it was sold, they would tally up and see how much you had coming or how much you owed. That is what they called the Fruit Exchange. My father was instrumental, a charter member of the organization. One of the top fruit exchanges was in
In order to reduce labor, we used to hire one hundred-two hundred people to pick fruit on the farm, and that required labor housing and a lot of management. When I bought the farm from my father, in 1962, I believe it was, one of the first things I did was try to reduce the cost of labor because cherries at that time were selling for about only three or four cents a pound. So there was a fellow, a neighbor, who was making mechanical harvesting equipment. One of our neighbors had tried one of these machines and each time they made it, it became obsolete, and they’d improve it. Finally, I got one that I thought would work, but it had never been used on a commercial basis. I was a young fellow and very determined. We were determined that we were going to sell our cherries with machine harvest or get out of the business. We sold our cabins and all our hand equipment. We had a long time, several years, before it ever was sold and accepted by the industry, but we did come through and now ninety-seven-ninety-five percent of all the cherries in the state are picked with this machine.
Halehaven, Kalhaven, Richhaven, Jayhaven, Gullhaven, and Pearhaven were all Haven peach varieties that were originally grown and developed at
Stanley Johnston said it was important to know the weather, and that’s why my dad offered to take care of the cooperative weather station, and I took it over when my dad died. It’s been here since 1924 on the farm. It’s kept daily recordings ever since. It’s one of the longest in the state. Stanley Johnston was also instrumental in working with blueberries and the blueberry industry. Most blueberries are called huckleberries because they grow in swamps, in low lands; but they found this plant, the highland blueberry, that would do well as long as there was water nearby or close to the surface, and it would produce bigger berries. The blueberry industry developed. Then, he developed the apricot as well. He took some of the seedlings and some that were named, made crosses, and developed the apricot too. Some of the apricot trees that he had were right near our house on the highest hill in the country. In fact, we have most of those apricot varieties that Stanley Johnston introduced. It was Stanley Johnston [who] told me when I took over the farm that on the highest ridge, the poorest land, I should plant a bunch of apricots. We still have some of the original trees.
Our average customer drives sixty miles, so they’re pretty determined. We have one customer from
Here in this business, where we have people come out and pick their own, and you get a reflection from them and when I’m packing this fruit, it feels like I’m packing for my mother or my wife or someone who will appreciate it and that’s a better feeling. And you begin to make friends. I think this type of business replaces what we used to have as I remember a relative, an uncle, aunt, grandpa, somebody who had a farm, and you would go out and visit and you could do things like climb a tree or chase a chicken, and there’s no place now.
My family always had fresh peaches processed. When fall came, we’d go into the fruit cellar that we had down in the basement. On the walls were wooden shelves and we’d line these with jars of peaches and pears and all the canned fruit. So in the fall you’d go down and open the curtain on that window, and the eastern sun would shine into that, and you felt rich. You felt like you’re ready for winter now, you got money in the bank right there. It was nice for me as a young person to go down there and reach up on the shelf and get a quart of peaches that had been hand-grown and processed by the family and then sit down to a whole quart of peaches. You had the cow in the back, so you had cream too. You’d whip cream up and you put the cream on the peaches. That was a thrill.
My mother and father established the original farm, one hundred and sixty acres, after my father had gotten an interest in farming, horticulture in particular, after reading a book while he was in
He and his wife would come to the farm and they would walk the orchard, judge the fruit, talk about it, and try to evaluate it. And you can’t help but learn. It was interesting. They’d go in the house and oftentimes my mother would can the fruit. Then they’d judge it for that purpose. It was during the second World War when freezing became popular. And the reason peaches weren’t popular for preservation was they’d discolor. They’d thaw out and change from their frozen temperature to air temperature and they would turn dark. One of the first attractions for the Red Haven was the fact that it didn’t discolor. It came out right after the war started and it was developed for freezing.
There were advances in dealing with spraying materials that were isolated for specific problems, specific insects, specific weeds. There’s one that would kill all the weeds in [an] asparagus field, except for asparagus and sugarcane; so you didn’t have to worry about any of the weeds coming back. [Pesticides have] always been. We have movies of myself when I was three and four years old where they’re spraying the apples. It was more of a broad spectrum of spray. Some of it is still used today. The initial dormant spray is still in oil. That spray is still used today as it was fifty years ago. Most fruit and vegetable farmers today don’t indiscriminately use herbicides and pesticides because they can’t afford to.
One thing about being next to
The elevation here on this land in relation to the ground around it is very important in defending your fruit crops against spring frost. In a spring frost, the air is calm, and that makes the cold air settle into the valleys. The higher elevation has a distinct, warmer climate, moderated temperatures. That gives you natural protection against sudden spring frost. So the last ones to freeze are the ones on the highest elevation. We take the earliest blooming fruit, in our case, apricots are the first to bloom in April. So I plant them on the very highest elevation. The second is sweet cherries, so they’re right up there on the top, and then the peaches and nectarines are next in line, and the last are the pears, and plums, and apples. So we put them [o]n the more marginal side. We do not cultivate except when we replace an orchard, or occasionally if we have [a] need to work the soil. We do very little of that because this is very erodible land.
I often think of the quality of fruit. There’s a short window when it’s ripe and ready, and good flavor, and if you capture that fruit and enjoy it in that time, you will be much happier than if you buy something in February that was picked last August. You have everything but the flavor. I often think of it as a sunset. You can wait maybe all day, but there’s only that one moment, one fleeting moment, that the sunset can really be enjoyed. You can take pictures of it, you can do all kinds of things, but the real flavor of the sunset is that fleeting moment, and that’s it. You gotta remember that.
Apples, peaches, and cherries were our main crops, and then we got into apricots, nectarines, plums, pears, and all these varieties of apples. We’re very diversified in fruit production, and by being diversified, any one of those can be lost because of frost, hail, or something, and we’ll still have several other crops. We don’t normally lose all of them at once. When people come here to buy fruit from the farm, they’re looking for many varieties rather than just one variety. When it comes to the farm here, they like to see it all. We have a nice display in our market and we do taste testing. We encourage everyone to taste the fruit when they get here. And that’s all things that they cannot get from a supermarket very often.
When I was in college and all, the labor was actually by the hour, and it ranged from fifty cents to a dollar, in that range, per hour. Today, you will find farm labor somewhere between five and a half and ten dollars, and that’s just for inexperienced help.
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