Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/668668
46 MAY 1, 2016 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com LAST BITE More Young Growers at goodfruit.com/yg Paul Bavaro grower / Escalon, California age / 27 crops / Peaches, almonds, walnuts business / Orchard manager of Bavaro Ranches Inc. family background / Paul is a fourth-generation peach grower who's been working with his father, Frank, on mechanization trials to help reduce labor costs and improve fruit quality. " " " " How did you get your start? I've always looked up to my father. I'd ride around with him as a little kid and he'd be coaching me on how to work the ranch. I got to see him stretched out to being as happy as anyone can be the very next moment. Originally I dreamed of being a BMW or Mercedes mechanic because I loved the shop. As I got older, I found I didn't love it as much as some people could. My family from Italy was in the peach industry. It's in our family's blood. I enjoy the diversity that comes with being a farmer. Why do you want to farm peaches? I get a kick out of farming peaches. The fi rst couple weeks of harvest — I love it. Just going out there and smelling the fruit and seeing what you've been working on all year long — seeing that little blossom become this big, beautiful peach at the end of the year is pretty great. How many jobs are out there where you're a plumber one day, then a lawyer the next? What challenges do you face? The biggest thing to me is that peach growers are a dying breed. Around here, you'll realize peach growers are losing ground. Nobody wants to grow a canned peach. To survive we are having to be pro- active about labor, keeping our expenses down and keeping our production up. What are you doing to save on labor costs? The last couple years we've been exper- imenting with a string thinner for thinning peach blooms at full bloom. We're hoping to get a lighter set leading to a healthier crop. Our fi rst tests were on a traditional four-scaffold tree and it worked pretty well on that. The fi rst year we blossom thinned on the Tuolumne variety, which sets really heavy every single year. As soon as fruit thinning time came, our labor contractor came up to us and asked what we did because he noticed we had larger fruit compared to past years. Because of those results, we are working on improving the thinning device. We've noticed that it's working pretty well, although the spacing might be a bit too tight to operate the thinner. " We may need to become self-sustainable where we aren't needing the labor of a traditional peach farm. PLAY goodfruit.com/yg scan to watch the interview www.gslong.com SPONSORED BY by TJ Mullinax More from this interview and other Young Growers at goodfruit.com/yg.