Good Fruit Grower

54 MAY 1, 2017 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com LAST BITE More Young Growers at goodfruit.com/yg Derric Kirschenmann grower / Shafter, California age / 30 crops / Grapes and diversifi ed crops business / Kirschenmann Bros. Farming family background / Derric decided to work alongside his family over a decade ago to grow the business north of Bakersfi eld. The diverse family farm grows several types of grapes for wine, raisins and fresh market along with other crops such as almonds, row crops, cotton and grasses. " " " " " How did you get your start? During high school in the summers, I'd do whatever needed to be done around the farm. We had a lot of row crops back then and I remember pulling sprinkler pipes a lot. At that time, we were farming nearly 4,000 acres of ground. Now, we're pretty much out of the row crops, with only about 300 acres, and everything else is permanent. Farming is the only thing I've wanted to do. What is your current path on the farm? I didn't go to a trade school to learn about farming; I've learned by trial and error. There's challenges in that path, of course. When I'm told to call a mechanic to fi x something, I can't. We can't do that nowadays because of how much stuff costs. One of my challenges is trying to fi nd ways to do as much as we can ourselves. What are some of your farm's challenges? Labor is probably the biggest problem now in California. Our goal recently has been to cut all our contract workers back to 10 hours a day to save on our overtime fees, and our grape crews are being cut to eight hours a day. We hope we can get the same amount of work done, but in reality, it isn't going to happen. I've been experimenting with some of our spray crews where we've cut them down to six hours with two shifts. We hope we can do it. Before the recent increases in labor costs, we were running crews on 12 to 15 hour days. Is mechanization something you're looking at? The small farming companies and mom and pop farms — the labor problems could break people. Because of it, I'm trying new ways to get rid of our crews. For instance, if there's a mechanical pruner or vine tying machine, we're going to need them. The task of tying canes onto the wires has forced us to look at machines that could do the job. In your area, what crops challenge you? The variety we've been working with is Petite Sirah. I'd consider it one of the toughest varieties to grow around here. The grape clusters are really small and the ground we grow them in is very sandy, forcing us to water more often then we'd like. With the small berries it grows, if you water too much, you blow the berries out, which makes wineries mad. Our new plantings are all T-trellis with drip irrigation, built for over the row sprayers, mechanical pruning and harvest- ing. This crop is important, and when it's grown well, it's worth a lot of money. " ...you aren't going to learn ag in a book — you'll learn that out on the 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.

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