Today harvest started. I can't remember if i ever experience harvest here at the orchards, but if i did i was too young to pay attention to the work thats done. I was out in the orchard at about 6:30am and it was pretty damn chilly outside. I thought that i was right on time but all the employee were already out picking like mad men. I kind of wish this was an exaggeration but it actually wasn't. Harvest is a pretty big deal to these guys. This is the one time that they actually benefit even more from working even faster. Each employee is paid an extra amount per bin they fill so you can imagine how enticing that is to put some pep in your step.
Bin ticket System
Although It sort of marked the start of harvest, It's not completely in full swing just yet. Honestly, before i came here i envisioned harvest as an all out picking fiesta. Start at one orchard and pick all the fruits off the trees and move on to the next. Thats not how its actually done. All the fruits and trees mature at different times. You can't just schedule the picking of fruits, you sort of have to constantly monitor the different varieties week over week and size them up. We started with Stark Crimson pears today or as i like to call them the purple pears(I'm not sure where they got the name Crimson from).
Full bin of Stark crimson/purple pears
It seemed pretty chaotic. People were picking and moving around left and right. Tractors were in and out of rows picking up bin after bin. One of the other tractor drivers drove full bins down towards the house to await pick up from the packing shed trucks and then came back up with more empty bins. I also wanted to get a feel of how i'd able to photograph amongst all the movement. It was a little tough and i too had to be a little bit more quicker on my feet. I actually carried two cameras on my this time one with a 35mm lens and the other with a 50mm. This made it a little hard to focus on the content to if I'm being completely honest. I typically like shooting one camera and one lens.
Bins out, Bins in
I'm not sure what the reason was this morning but i picked up my Leica M6 and my Leica M262 to take with me. That was clearly a mistake as a learned pretty quickly. It slowed me down a little too much having to choose between film or digital, 50mm or 35mm, left foot right foot. so i just slung the M6 across my back and stuck with the 35mm and digital Leica. This allowed me to capture as much of the action as i could so to speak. Today was the trial run of harvest. Everyone did pretty well. Now we wait till probably Friday for the next batch of pears to be picked. Hopefully i remember what i learned today and only take one camera with me.
One last image