Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/50987
"Platforms are very efficient with the right orchard configuration, but you really don't gain a lot of efficiencies if your system's wrong." —Denny Hayden install to improve conditions for his workers. "It's miser- able to work in the rain all day, especially when you're reaching up and the rain runs down your arms," he said. Since it was finished in June, his four workers have used the platform for almost everything including thin- ning, tree training, summer pruning, and picking. Chudleigh has his workers pick fruit more than seven feet high so his customers don't need to use ladders. His employees—seasonal workers from Mexico who have done farm work for a long time and usually reject new things—took to the platform instantly, he said. Hand thinning suddenly became a fun job. Trial and error Building the platform involved a lot of trial and error and a cost of between $40,000 and $45,000. "I've probably got more money into it than a new one would cost," he said. "The builder and I were a little naive about the cost. He was apologizing, and I was writing checks, and by the time it was finished, it was kind of expensive." One problem is that the self-correcting steering system doesn't work when the trees are far apart, though it works well in his high-density blocks. He is replacing the steering system with photoelectronic sensors. The next modification will be to add lights. "If you have a fairly expensive machine, you, of course, want to use it as much as you can, and the option to have a second crew go through there at night is a good idea," he explained. He figures that one platform can cover about 40 to 45 acres of orchard. And that's the dilemma for Hayden, who has 150 acres of apples, of which 40 are high- density. When he's doing a job where a platform could speed up the work, he needs more than one platform for the size of the crew, but he doesn't believe he has enough high- density acreage to justify buying more. "We'll be running 40 people for thinning, and to keep 40 people thinning on platforms, I'd really need to bulk up my platforms," he said. Hayden said he's just using his platform for select jobs, such as hanging pheromone dispensers in the upper parts of the trees. Another job it works well for is blossom thinning of cherries, with the workers using hand-held string thinners. Scientists at Washington State University have developed a hand-held version of the Darwin mechanical thinner in the form of an electric drill with a head of weed-trimmer strings. He said battery-operated thinners didn't stay charged long enough, but now he puts a generator on an all-terrain vehicle so they can be plugged in. "We played around with it last season, and it worked great," he said. "You can cover the orchard so much faster than by hand. We were, in the past, doing blossom thinning with our fingers. That's pretty time consuming." Hayden believes it wasn't a bad decision to buy the $30,000 platform. "I think we've got our money out of it, but I'm a little disappointed—I would have thought we would use it more. It's not that we don't have some effi- ciencies, but I'm not seeing the 30 percent that you hear of all the time. I'm not running hard numbers—it's in dis- cussions with our crew foreman. If we're gaining enough, we'll use it, and if not, we'll park it." • www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER DECEMBER 2011 37