Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/418083
24 DECEMBER 2014 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com F ourteen members of the Seaquist family are involved in the orchard business at Sister Bay, Wisconsin. Jim Seaquist's great-great-grandfather emigrated from Sweden in the 1860s, but it was his great-grandfa- ther who started planting tart cherries in the early 1900s. Jim's father, Dale, now 81, was a leader in the changeover from hand harvest to mechanical harvest, first with limb shakers in the 1960s, then with trunk shakers. Jim remembers working with limb shakers, which were built by fabricators like Dave Friday in Michigan, and then the sudden change that came with adoption of the nut shakers used to harvest pistachios in California. "Tart cherry trees are very similar to pistachios," Jim said. Today, they use three COE shakers, purchased in 2002, to harvest the crop. On the day Good Fruit Grower visited in early August, a crew from California—men who work with COE shakers in different crops across the country—were spending about 10 seconds on each tree as they sped down the rows. Jim's sons, Cole, 28, and Justin, 26, are the fifth generation in the business. Dale and Jim are partners in Seaquist Orchards. Dale's wife, Kristin, and Jim's wife, Robin, work in the business, Kristin running the farm market and Robin doing the bookkeeping. Jim's son, Zach, and Dale are involved in equipment maintenance, fruit harvest, and readying the Seaquist processing plant for the harvest season. Jim and Justin manage the plant, and Jim oversees all aspects of the business entities. In Jim's generation, sister Ann Cannon runs a har- vester in season, as does youngest step-brother Allen. Step-sister Laura runs the bakery with her sister Bonnie. Cole and his wife, Lisa, run the canning company. There's more to Seaquist Orchards than orchards. Thirty years ago, they started Seaquist Orchards Farm Market, which now employs 30 part-time people. "It's grown a lot," Jim said. "It's taken on a life of its own." For one promotion effort, Laura and her bakery crew baked 2,000 cherry pies in one day. The market opens in May and closes in late October. It's located two miles north of Sister Bay, way out on the peninsula, yet it draws a large clientele of tourists and summer residents. "They come up for a weekend or a week," Jim said. The Seaquists also sell some 500 prod- ucts online. Most of these products are made either by Seaquist Canning Company or in the family production facility. Making and canning preserves out of their own home- grown fruit started in 1986 when Kristin made and sold homemade jam from the farm. In 2010, a local canning business, Dixie's Homestyle Preserves, came up for sale and, in 2012, the canning business officially became Seaquist Canning Company. The company makes jams, jellies, fruit butters, pie fillings, fruit syrups, fruit sauces, and, increasingly, fruit salsas. The bulk of the cherries raised are of the Montmorency variety, a red-skinned, light-fleshed variety, but they grow some Balatons, a darker, sweeter tart cherry. They grow several varieties of sweet cherries. Fresh, hand- picked cherries, both tart and sweet, are sold directly to customers at the farm market. Most of the tart cherries are packed in 30-pound plas- tic containers—25 pounds of cherries and five of sugar, and some without sugar—and shipped nationwide, but they make smaller packs for retail sales, either with or without sugar. The Seaquist production facility, located next to the Seaquist market, was built in 2012 and serves as a processing kitchen for Seaquist Canning Company, for juice pressing and apple packing, and for dry, cold, and frozen storage. Visitors to the market can watch the canning kitchen, cider pressing, and apple packing. —R. Lehnert the market for cherry pie filling, once the major product. Today, major growth areas for tart cherries are for juice and for dried cherries. The Door industry While tart cherry production in the five counties around Traverse City can reach more than 100 million pounds, the Door Peninsula in a good year does 12 million. And while there are about 50 producers there, Seaquist Orchards produces 60 percent of the volume. With the family's facilities for pitting and packing, they handle 80 percent of Wisconsin's production. The crop comes in about a week after the crop around Traverse City. "We tend to be one growing zone colder and a week later than northwest Michigan," he said. The prevailing westerly winds blowing over Lake Michigan moderate the spring and summer climate in Michigan, but the lake effect diminishes on the Wisconsin side. Green Bay, 150 feet deep and frozen in winter, thaws slowly and delays bloom on the Door Peninsula, protecting orchards from spring freezes and pushing the season later. Seaquist's tart cherry orchards are strung for 45 miles northeast to southwest, spread- ing the risk with a range of bloom and maturity dates and providing time to harvest all those cherries. Machine harvest August is a frantic month at Seaquist's. The tart cherry harvest process starts with three crews working with three COE two- piece, self-propelled harvesting units. One piece contains the trunk shaker, an inclined canvas plane, and a conveyor that moves the fruit and drops it into a large tank filled about two-thirds deep with cold well water; the other piece is another inclined plane. Both move independently. The seven-member crews work 15 hours a day for nearly four weeks to gather about 7 million pounds of fruit, Seaquist said. A forklift brings tanks of water and hauls away filled tanks, which are loaded on trucks carrying 12 or 14 tanks that take them to the processing facility. There they are further cooled on the cooling pad and then moved into cold air storage, ready for pitting and packing. SEAQUIST FARM market and canning company. Jim Seaquist looks over tart cherries being cooled to 44 degrees by well water. After water cooling, they'll go to cold storage for temperature reduction to 35 degrees. The harvesting of tart cherries is fully mechanized, from the trunk shakers, catching frames, and conveyers to the large metal tanks of harvested fruit moved by fork lift and truck.