Luckily there's still some pickers available to us...

One of my berry pickers sent that to me. LOL

I think he's more likely to pick berries as opposed to any of his recent predecessors.

President Donald Trump is a very hard worker. Even his detractors can't legitimately argue with that.

Keith

How so. Why can't you get pickers?

I picked berries for 10 cents a quart when I was in middle school. There were plenty of pickers and none from foreign countries.

White folks won't work out under the sun anymore. Can't hire school kids anymore and even if you could you wouldn't want them out there. Homeless folks only want handouts and won't work. Most of them are so messed up with drugs or mental issues you don't want them out there either.

That just leaves you with migrant workers. Many are sitting it out this year for fear of ICE. Just day before yesterday a van load of Guatemalans north of me on their way to a blueberry field got stopped by ICE and taken into custody.

I can imagine that farmer was less than pleased. He will likely lose part of his crop with temps in the upper 90's this week.

The wine grape folks are on pins and needles for the wine grape harvest starting next month.

I guess it's the new reality. I heard Trump saying that he loves farmers....we will see how it all shakes out, but a lot of us will be hurt big time.

Slick, I miss those days and remember them fondly. All that went away about 35- 40 years ago. A lot of school kids were even semi decent pickers. You won't likely ever see that again.

We have school kids picking berries in my area on a regular basis. There was a large cherry crop this year in the flathead. Nothing was lost due to lack of pickers because there was plenty of pickers.

I do not see any effect on crops coming to market here. only thing i noticed was the produce manager said they had to raise the price of bananas from 58 cents a pound to 65. He did mention it was a tariff increase which I did not verify.

Would you get people if you raised wages?

We have been paying about $20-$25 hour. Cant pencil out to pay more than that.

Slick, I'm glad the growers in your area were able to get help.

Wow, that's good money for that type of job.

We have a Hmong crew that does our picking. We pay .50cents a quart. Some of those pickers will pick 400 quarts a day. Hardest working people, I know. When picking gets a bit harder toward the end of the season we pay $1.00 a quart. We are selling the pre picked for $7.00 a quart if they have been sorted. $6.00 a quart unsorted.

Back in the day we hired school kids, and we paid by the Lb. They would put a few stones in the container and fill the top with ripe berries. Or they would put the unripe berries in the bottom and cover them with ripe berries. That didn't last too long.

Sounds like a tall tale to me. I'm callin hogwarsh.

Are you referring to my post? What I posted was all true.

Back when I was new to the migrant housing inspection force, I used to talk to the crew chiefs who hired asparagus snappers. They got 15 cents per basket, which contained at least 2 gallons. The pickers were the ones with short legs and who didn’t mind being bent over all day. Then there were the workers who weighed and sorted the asparagus. They got 6 cents a basket. The canning companies wanted families of workers. The housing provision was in addition to their pay. That was in Dodge and Steele counties in southern Minnesota. In the Hollandale area, the migrants were hoeing onions and potatoes. Southern Minnesota had a lot of Texas area migrants who came north every year to work the fields.

As I recall, doing field work payed better than what they could get in the south. Some of the families drove up every year. Some (about 5%) relocated to Albert Lea and Owatonna, after the seasons were over. The rationale was factory jobs and better education for their families. The companies and crew chiefs all said the same thing. These people worked hard and white people rarely lasted a week because of the back breaking nature of the jobs.

I assume that those fearing ICE are here illegally. Isn't there any process for migrant workers to come here legally? It seems like they would be in high demand even if it took a little effort to do it right.

Our pickers are residents of WI. They have homes here and have raised family's here in Dane county.