Herald and News: Strawberry harvest - Dig ‘em up and ship ‘em out

Strawberry harvest

Dig ‘em up and ship ‘em out

H&N photos by Andrew Mariman Harvesters make their way across strawberry fields in Macdoel. Harvesters work at night to ensure the strawberry plants stay cool throughout the process. The plants must be stored in bins with temperatrues below 45 degrees.

These Macdoel ranchers send their plants away so others can grow and harvest the strawberries

By TY BEAVER

H&N Staff Writer

October 5, 2006

MACDOEL — Globes of light hover over the moonlit fields near this small northern California town, and machinery grinds and strains throughout the night.

The strawberry plant harvest has begun.

From late September through October, strawberry nurseries in this fertile valley bring in workers and equipment to harvest a product not directly for consumption but important nonetheless to the national and global strawberry markets.

“They’re already being planted in Southern California,” Scott Scholer, ranch manager for Lassen Canyon Nursery, said of the first harvested plants.

Lassen Canyon Nursery is the biggest operator in Macdoel and is expected to deliver 600 semi-truck loads, about 220 million plants, during its 30-day harvest season.

Getting the strawberry plants from the fields here down south or anywhere else in the world isn’t an easy task, as evidenced by the conditions necessary for the harvest. Working at night guarantees the plants are kept cool and moist, Scholer said. The bins that hold the harvested plants can’t reach a temperature above 45 degrees. Other conditions, such as wind and rain, can stall a harvest by threatening to freeze or dry the roots of the plants as they sit in the bins.

Fields moistened for harvest

Fields are irrigated the day before harvest to make the process easier. That night, a mower goes over the plants to trim excess leaves and stems. After the mower, a procession of harvesters lifts the plants from the soil, feeding them into a rotating wire drum called a trammel that knocks excess soil from the plants’ roots.

The plants are then dumped into bins that are packed in by foot by a worker on the back of the machine. Bins are deposited in the field for pickup by roving bin carriers that both take the filled bins back for loading into semi-trailers and bring empty bins to the working harvesters. Once loaded into trailers, the plants are shipped to trimming sheds in either Redding, Yuba City or Manteca, Calif., before being sent to growers throughout the country and world.

To achieve all this, Lassen Canyon Nursery has more than 100 people employed during the harvest, from harvester and mower operators to foremen and five full-time mechanics from the company’s main office in Redding, Calif., who patrol the fields, ready to react to any mechanical problem. The vehicles and machinery eat up about 700 gallons of diesel a day, and a cook prepares dinners, lunches and breakfasts for employees that have left their homes and families just to be on call.

But, all the effort and preparations are worth it when the machines are running smoothly and the workers are kept busy throughout their 18-hour shifts.
“When the radio’s quiet and everyone’s working, it’s going good,” Scholer said.

Ranch manager Scott Scholer holds a strawberry plant harvested from the nursery as an example of what is crated and trucked to the California cities of Redding, Uba City or Manteca for trimming.

Lassen Canyon Nursery owner Kenny Elwood watches workers as strawberry harvesting gets underway.