By Richard Oswald
DTN Special Correspondent
LANGDON, Mo. (DTN) -- "I had a cup of coffee, read two papers, and texted my son at 6 a.m. this morning." That's how DTN View From the Cab farmer Lane Robinson said he handled the three-hour time change from Eastern to Pacific Daylight Time.
Lane has family living in Washington state. He and his wife, Jo Anne, traveled there for a family wedding. It was late Sunday evening when DTN reached Lane at his hotel in Bellingham, Washington, located about 90 miles north of Seattle on Puget Sound. "I haven't been here for 30 years," he said. "Raspberry farming is very big in this valley. They also do some blueberries here, and there's some strawberries."
Lane spoke to a farm worker who told him he does strawberries in June, raspberries in July and blueberries in August. "The only corn grown up here is so valuable they use silage corn as a rotation with raspberries. (Potatoes are also considered a rotation crop.) My relatives know these guys, the Maberry family are one of the two families (Maberry and Rader) who grow all the berries here. They took me over to see it," Lane said. That's where he met assistant farm manager Jon Maberry.
"We also learned today that Rader Farms had sold out to a corporation but that some family members continue to work there."
Lane worked in the farm machinery industry before returning to the family farm. Out of curiosity, he visited the Oxbo manufacturing plant where berry harvesters like those used at Maberry are made. Most harvesters take one row at a time, using rubberized fingers on rotating vertical shafts situated each side of the row to dislodge fruit and collect it. "It's like going through the (automated) car wash, only it's the car wash that moves," he explained. From there, berries drop into troughs and are carried up a conveyor to an operator's platform above the collectors, where they are crated by workers for delivery to the packing plant.
Harvesters like those Lane saw cost about $185,000 new. Each harvester is used on about 20 acres per season when berries are picked every two days, 10 acres per day; a 36-day season results in 18 trips across the field.
Despite the automation involved in picking, berries require a high degree of manual labor provided primarily by both resident and itinerant workers, mostly Latino. Lane told DTN Maberry Packing, LLC, relies on 100 full-time workers and 600 seasonal workers during harvest on a total of 1,150 acres.
With harvest complete, workers were busy caning, or pruning, raspberry plants, a practice that removes old growth from plants, encouraging regrowth in spring for better light penetration and air circulation. Plants have a productive life span of perhaps 10 years, but fruit quality for the fresh fruit market declines sometime after plants reach three years of age. That's why growers sometimes destroy older plants, rotating to a different crop before re-establishing new berry plants. "Once again, it's just amazing all the ways there are to make money in agriculture," Lane said.
But there is a higher-value crop than raspberries.
"Raspberries are right in the $6,000-per-acre revenue (area), but blueberries are the king at $16,000 per acre. Same harvester is used for both. Blueberry plants can last 20-plus years. Southern British Columbia (Canada) and northwest Washington are blueberry capital of world. ... (A) growers' co-op does exist that about one-third of regional production of smaller producers goes to. Larger farms have their own production facilities," Lane told DTN via email on Monday.
Back home in Cromwell, Indiana, where Lane grows corn, soybeans, and about 600,000 Pekin ducks each year, harvest continues to "rocket ahead" in his absence. "We have a freeze warning at home. It's 20 degrees warmer here than it is there," he said.
Meanwhile, in Nebraska where DTN View From the Cab farmer Leon Kriesel grows and sells certified seed from about 3,000 acres, harvest is almost a thing of the past.
"We got two frosts on Wednesday and Thursday morning. That will slow the (winter) wheat (development) down. The milo leaves all turned brown. I hand shelled some of the milo. It tested 23% (moisture,)" Leon told DTN late Sunday.
Milo is the final crop remaining to be harvested on Leon's farm.
A few farmers who've finished bean harvest are picking up seed wheat from the seed plant Leon operates along with his wife, Cheryl. Demand has been strong this year after drier weather earlier this fall resulted in some thin stands and replanting.
A good seed plant is well maintained. With all his 2015 seed production cleaned, it's time to perform repairs before next year's run. "We've been doing odds and ends and cleaning in the building."
A new facelift will help set the whole thing off.
"We're painting the exterior of the mill. This mill is 15 to 20 years old, so it's time to put some paint on there. We hired a painter in Sidney; he's painted for us before. It'll be two colors. The legs will be blue and the rest is white," Leon said.
Way out in western Nebraska high country, will anyone even notice?
They really can't miss it.
"Our elevator is at about 4,100 to 4,200 feet elevation. We're actually on a high point here. We can see traffic on I-80, about 17 miles away," he explained.
Other than maintenance, there's some fall fertilizer to run as neighbors continue harvest. "Most of the wheat looks pretty good, and they're picking some corn. We heard around 100 bushels on some dryland corn at 15% moisture. Other fields they've started and pulled out. Sunflowers haven't started, but they're turning black (a sign of maturity). They'll be digging sugar beets into December. And we're still loading some wheat seed," Leon said.
Wheat seed sales can continue well into winter. Planting that late is called "dormant seeding" and is usually done after precipitation falls when earlier seeding conditions were deemed too dry for germination. Average annual rainfall of about 13 to 14 inches means dormant seeding in the Nebraska panhandle is not considered unusual.
Richard Oswald can be contacted at talk@dtn.com
Follow Richard Oswald on Twitter @RRoswald
(AG/CZ)
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