Grown For Planting

Those delicious berries sitting at the grocery store have a long history before they ever become available to the consumer. I had the opportunity to make have a short tour of the Sierra-Cascade Plant while at the REAL Oregon session last week and it was an eye opener.

Driving in from the road showed only a small sign announcing the property. Not showy or heavily decorated, this complex of facilities is the workhorse of getting seedlings to the fields that grow those berries in the supermarkets.

Inside the main building was about 200 people nearing the end of their work day. They were chopping roots of raspberry plants. This is a piece-rate job, the workers are assigned partners for this harvest with up to 20 people on a team. Boxes of completed product are counted as the day goes on and the team gets paid by the amount of boxes properly filled for the customer before the amount is split evenly between team members. The teams are pushing themselves throughout the day to keep the production level up. Even at the end of this long day, the tables were a blur of activity.

Quality control workers are inspecting and weighing each box as it is filled to assure final product is acceptable. Spot checks are performed by a second set of QC after the initial inspectors have done their job.

Time is a valuable commodity not only for the workers but for the health and well being of the seedlings. The lines of processing tables are all about the plants, the knives and blades are sharp, the facility is kept at a temperature comfortable for the tender roots. There is moisture everywhere from the mixture of the newly dug and washed plants mixing with the heat and breath of the workers, to the cement floors where small puddles are a part of the process.

Outside this building, the activity is just as frantic as inside but add to the mix large equipment and lots of root stock getting moved first from a chilled holding building to an area where the dirt gets cleaned off the roots. A machine usually used to dig strawberry plant stock out of the ground had been brought in, hoses attached to spray into the cylinder while the barrel is rolling to remove a large amount of dirt and mud from the roots. From there the roots are distributed into bins that had just been disinfected since it had been used previously. The full bins are moved inside to where the workers are chopping.

After the main building of workers has called it a day, the boxes begin the next leg of their journey. Each of the finished boxes need to be chilled to the correct temperature before they can be stored for shipment a full rail car load of boxes can be chilled all at the same time with a high-tech pressurized box that can perform the task in less than an hour. The entire load can then be set into refrigerated storage containers where they will be shipped to the grower to for planting.

Raspberries take two years before they begin to produce so these bits of root will be at your local retailer no earlier than spring/summer 2021.

There is no waste from this production cycle of digging and shipping root stock. The excess stocks and and roots that are not viable to use as rooting stock is tumbled out into rows  and composted where it will once again be introduced back into the growing fields.

My feet stayed comfortable and dry during my tours of the Klamath area by wearing low-cut Muck boots. By clicking the link I get credit for directing people to their site and you can shop for anything you normally do. Prime and special codes still work, I may make a small commission without any charge to you. Thank you for supporting my stories