central valley – Page 2

HMC Farms participates in Western Growers AgTechX Summit at Reedley College

Posted on September 16, 2021 by Liz Piña

Editorial by Harold McClarty

HMC Farms recently participated in an ag tech summit at Reedley College to determine the future needs of the ag work force in specialty crops over the next ten years. HMC Farms is a progressive leader in mechanization and technology. We recognized years ago that our time and labor sensitive commodities are not sustainable the way they are produced today. Our role, if stone fruit and table grapes are to exist and be viable in the future, is to combine a technological approach with an educated workforce. This year, we made decisions on which blocks to pick, thin, etc. depending on the daily availability of labor which left fruit on the tree and not harvested.

We live in small towns in the Central Valley that all depend on agriculture, and we have a responsibility to the communities that support us and that we grew up in to find solutions to this changing environment. The purpose of these continuing conferences is to educate community colleges and expose our need for a workforce that reflects the change in the way we get our product in a box and to the marketplace. Exchanging entry level, lower paying, difficult jobs for better paying, more sophisticated, less physically demanding ones is our goal. To make this successful, there must be cooperative effort between colleges, our industry and government for these specialty crops and small towns to continue to exist. It was encouraging to see the celebration of talent and dedication it will take to make this successful. Our way of life depends on it.

Autonomous grape cart with four people standing behind in a grape vineyard — *photo courtesy of Western Growers*

HMC News – August 2021

Posted on August 25, 2021 by chelsea

While we are in the final third of the season on peaches and nectarines, we are just rounding second base on the plum season. We are looking forward to some of the highest sugar varieties of the year, including Black Majesty, Red Yummy, and of course our exclusive HMC Holiday plum. Holiday red plums will begin harvest in early September, and will pack and ship into October.

Burro self-driving carts are currently running in our table grape vineyards. After experimenting with Burros for the past couple of years, this is our first time using them for a full harvest season. Burros reduce physical stress on our hard working employees, and make the harvest process up to 40% more efficient by allowing our crews to focus on harvesting instead of pushing carts up and down the vineyard rows. Click to watch a Burro working in a vineyard right outside our office!

Grape harvest is underway in our vineyards in California’s San Joaquin Valley just in time for the kickoff of the 2021-2022 school year. HMC Farms has value-added solutions that make it possible to provide students with the fresh grapes they love. Kids choose grapes more often than other fresh fruit items, which means less plate waste and a higher take rate when grapes are on the menu. Value-added grape packs from HMC Farms make yield and portion control easy, offer significant labor savings, and are a perfect fit for virtually any serving application.

Color development is coming along well in our table grape vineyards. We are going full bore harvesting the mid season red and green seedless varieties. We’ve experienced moderate temperatures on our farms lately, which is perfect for grape development and harvest.

HMC News – July 2021

Posted on July 28, 2021 by chelsea

All of our table grape varieties are in some point of veraison now, which is the stage when red grapes gain color and green grapes shift from grassy green to a creamy green color while the berries begin to soften and ripen. The crop looks good, and we are on the cusp of kicking off harvest season with Flame red seedless grapes. This month we have been keeping an eye on the overnight lows – hot days and cool nights assist the ripening process, but with overnight lows in the mid 70s, the vines sometimes lag behind in ripening.

In the month of July, we dealt with near record heat spikes and prolonged periods of abnormally high temperatures. We’re taking precautions to keep our employees safe, teaching them about heat stress and proper hydration. The heat has limited the hours we can safely operate outside, increasing the importance of proper harvest planning. Growers and shippers that haven’t finished thinning are delayed, with further impacts yet to be known. We haven’t seen excessive heat damage, but there are issues our quality team is watching, such as staining, which may be caused in some part by high heat. We expect minimal damage to our grapes, as many of our grapes have gone through veraison, making them less vulnerable to heat damage. We now have a fuller protective vineyard canopy cover than we did a few weeks ago, when some exposed grapes were burned.

The stone fruit season is about 60% of the way through from a temporal perspective, though just about half of the industry’s volume for the season has now been harvested. There have been many challenges this season, including worker and material shortages and some very hot weather. Luckily though, none of this has translated into poor quality of product in the finished box. It’s been a near-vintage season for quality and flavor, with good visual characteristics. Other than some issues with smaller fruit in the beginning of the season, the finished product has left little to be desired.

You’ve heard us talk about thinning before, but there’s truth to that old saying: a picture’s worth a thousand words. This is why we thin our stone fruit. Fruit that is not thinned (pictured on the right) remains small and doesn’t reach its peak size and flavor potential. Crowded clusters of fruit dilute the nutrients received from the tree, and also block adequate sunlight and air flow. Thinning results in fruit with better size and flavor (pictured on the left), and also protects the tree from damage like broken limbs due to too much weight hanging in one spot.

HMC Farms – Now Accepting Applications Online!

Posted on June 14, 2021August 25, 2021 by Liz Piña

Breaking news! We are now accepting applications online for various jobs under the HMC Farms umbrella. To view and apply for year-round and seasonal jobs, visit the link below. Many of our openings include FREE access to an employer-sponsored healthcare clinic (even for seasonal employees), as well as other benefits!

https://www.hmcfarms.com/jobs/

¡Noticias de última hora! Ahora estamos aceptando solicitudes en línea para varios trabajos bajo el paraguas de HMC Farms. Para ver y postularse para trabajos de temporada y durante todo el año, visite el enlace a continuación. ¡Muchas de nuestras vacantes incluyen acceso GRATUITO a una clínica de atención médica patrocinada por el empleador (incluso para empleados de temporada), así como otros beneficios!

https://www.hmcfarms.com/jobs/

HMC News – April 2021

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Liz Piña

Earlier this month, we began shoot thinning in our table grape vineyards. A shoot is fresh new growth that comes out of the grapevines in spring. As shoots develop, we identify the new growth that has the best size and position. At that point, we remove any excess growth from the vine. This helps keep the vine formed properly on the V-trellis and within the rows, and is our first step in selecting the best bunches for the coming table grape season.

What does it take to become USDA certified organic? Before we can apply for the organic certification, we must farm the ranch completely organically for three years. After the three year mark, we must complete a ranch inspection and a review of field input documentation before the ranch can officially receive organic certification. Each spring, we go through the same inspection and document review process in order to get our organic certification renewed. We went through this process a few weeks ago, so our certification is already renewed for the 2021 season.

Our stone fruit is growing well across our orchards, with sizing and development moving forward right on schedule. These peaches are in the driveway leading up to our office, and right now they are about the size of a ping pong ball. The warm weather lately has helped with this development, but we do have some cooler days ahead. As always, we will closely monitor any adverse weather and keep an eye on how the drop in temperatures may impact harvest timing.

With a chance of hail in the forecast over the last weekend of April, we had to protect our developing Plumsicles™ (and our other plum & plumcot varieties). We covered the trees with repurposed citrus netting, purchased at a discount from our neighbors. Citrus farmers use these nets to keep bees away from their blossoms, but once they’ve got a few holes they are no longer useful for that purpose. We are able to use the nets in our orchards to protect the fruit from hail, even if there are a few holes here and there. We save a little on the purchase of the nets, the citrus farmers reclaim some of their investment, and we all reduce waste by reusing something that would otherwise be discarded!

HMC News – February 2021

Posted on February 28, 2021March 12, 2021 by Liz Piña

We received a total of 3.39″ of precipitation in the month of January. Compared with the past two years, this January had significantly more precipitation. January 2019 had a total of 2.83″ of rain, and January 2020 saw just 0.77″ in the entire month. We hope that this is a good sign for this year’s annual rain total in the Central Valley.

HMC Farms had the honor of partnering with the California Farmworker Foundation to begin to provide COVID shots to our farmworkers this month. Speaking about the event, Harold McClarty commented, “We have all struggled during these very difficult times. We are very grateful and supportive of all the work this organization has done for farmworkers. It gives us some hope that we will persevere and continue to move forward with our work to support the nation’s food supply.”

Blossoms are opening up in our stone fruit orchards and along the rest of the famous Fresno County Blossom Trail. This is arguably the most beautiful time of the year in the Central Valley, drawing people from near and far to drive or bike along the trail and take in the beautiful pink and white blossoms filling orchards for miles. For more information on the Fresno County Blossom Trail, visit their website here.

We are grafting in some of our stone fruit orchards. If you’ve ever driven past an orchard that looked like a bunch of stumps with only one limb, chances are you’ve seen grafting in progress. Grafting is the process of adding a new variety to existing rootstock. This allows us to harvest the new variety in a shorter timeframe by utilizing the rootstock that’s already in the ground instead of starting from scratch with completely new trees. Look closely at the photo above and you will see what appear to be sticks coming out of the cut portion of the tree. Those sticks are actually called scion wood, and are the June Time peach variety that will soon grow in this orchard. The remaining limb, called the nurse limb, is left on the tree to help keep it alive until the grafted scions are growing well, and it will eventually be removed.

HMC News – November 2020

Posted on November 30, 2020December 10, 2020 by Liz Piña

We are pruning trees in our stone fruit orchards to prepare them for winter. Pruning allows us to shape the trees in order to prepare for next year’s new growth and harvest. Pictured above, the left side of this high density stone fruit block is pruned and the right side hasn’t been pruned yet.

Block prep is happening on our farms. Before new plantings, we perform multiple steps to prepare the land. Pictured above, a large machine called a ripper is digging 5+ feet into the ground with a long shank to break up any hard or compacted streaks in the soil, which provides a better environment for roots to grow.

This is the time of year for reflection and giving thanks. Despite many challenges this year, we still have much to be thankful for. Those challenges gave us the opportunity to adapt and grow, and we successfully made it through an unprecedented summer. While Thanksgiving may look different this year for many of us, we hope that you can spend some quality time with your loved ones – whether in person or virtually.

HMC News – October 2020

Posted on October 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by Liz Piña

The grape industry is approximately 50% shipped through the industry estimate of 106,500,000 boxes, though it wouldn’t be surprising to see the industry come up short of that number due to the peculiar growing conditions this season. HMC is not quite that far through the season. We are looking forward to our Allison red seedless harvest, which is our biggest volume variety of the season. Red grapes should be available through December, but it is expected that the industry will run short of green grapes before then.

Each year after harvest is complete, we replenish nutrients in the soil of our orchards and vineyards. We take soil samples to determine which nutrients need replenishment and then select from different compost options based on their nutritive values. This year, our post-harvest organic orchards need more nitrogen and our post-harvest conventional orchards need more phosphorus and calcium, so we selected two different compost options to meet each of these needs.

Our Allison red seedless table grapes are finally in harvest! As we shared a few weeks ago, the smoke from California wildfires slowed the maturity of our late season table grapes. That pushed back the harvest window significantly for one of our favorite varieties. Contact your HMC Farms representative for more information on availability and pack styles.

As we look into ways to make table grape harvest more efficient, we are testing out a self-driving cart called Burro. Our employees can harvest grapes and place them onto trays that the Burro drives out to the end of the row for them, eliminating the need to push a heavy cart full of grapes to the end of the row. Not only does this make grape harvest less strenuous on our employees, but it makes the time spent on harvest more efficient by eliminating time spent pushing the carts back and forth in the vineyards. Tune in to this week’s Farm Friday on our Instagram page for more details.

HMC News – September 2020

Posted on September 30, 2020November 16, 2020 by Liz Piña

The Holidays are here! Holiday plum harvest will begin soon. This proprietary plum variety is one of our favorites, and we wait for it all season. This late season plum features a speckled red and green exterior, and a variety-specific PLU sticker. Ask your HMC Farms® salesperson for more details.

Just as with stone fruit, this is proving to be a great year for grape quality. Grapes were a little slower to start than normal and have been a bit more difficult to pick than in years past because of some delayed maturity, but the finished product looks, and more importantly tastes, great. With new varieties pushing the overall volume later in the season, September is now the heart of the table grape harvest. While grapes will be great for ads for all of fall (and even into early winter), September is the perfect time to set the stage for a great autumn grape season.

As smoke and ash persist in the Central Valley from nearby wildfires, the impact is noticeable in our table grape vineyards. The smoky skies have acted as a giant shade net over the Central Valley. This results in much lower solar activity, and has led to reduced water needs and slower berry maturation. The overall flavor and brix are not impacted once the berries reach maturity, but it’s taking longer to reach that point.

It’s time to start thinking about new plantings on our farms. In the locations where new trees will be planted, we are removing old trees as the first step in preparing the blocks for new planting. Traditional stone fruit blocks, like the one pictured, will be converted to high density planting. When we choose trees or vines to plant, we consider many factors from flavor to harvest timing. Our goal is to create a consistent flow of the best tasting fruit throughout the stone fruit and table grape seasons. Another thing we consider with harvest timing is workload. Keeping the workload fairly steady allows us to staff our teams properly and avoid labor shortages.

Our mid season table grape harvest is starting to wrap up. We are beginning to scratch around a little in our late season table grape varieties that were delayed by the wildfire smoke that blanketed the Central Valley for weeks. We should be in full harvest for those varieties soon.

HMC News – August 2020

Posted on August 31, 2020September 1, 2020 by Liz Piña

Smoke from the multiple wildfires around California settled in the Central Valley this month. We are carefully monitoring the air quality to ensure that our employees working outdoors remain safe, and are deploying additional safety measures as needed.

We’re in the final stretch of the stone fruit season. Though we are closer to the end of the season than the beginning, there is still a lot of good fruit in our lineup over the coming weeks. We are about 80% through peach and nectarine harvest, and about 70% through plum harvest.

It’s hot! Record temperatures this month challenged our crops and people. It’s always hot in the Central Valley in August, but these extreme temperatures require us to take precautionary steps to ensure the quality of our product and the safety of our people. We applied a protective reflecting spray to the tree fruit, while constantly regulating moisture in the ground. We also stopped all field operations at noon when temperatures were too high. While this a big hardship on our time sensitive commodities, the health and welfare of our employees is our top priority. It has been an unusual summer, and this is just one more challenge we’ve dealt with.

We continue to enjoy many of the newer plum varieties that were planted recently. When picked tree ripe, with a bit of give, we have seen sugar levels much higher than traditional plums of the past.