Cherry growers discuss fruit flies, employment eligibility forms
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Though it’s only March and there is still snow on the Mission Mountains, the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers are thinking ahead to pruning, spring, cherry blossoms and ripe red sweet cherries in the summer.
The FLCG held their 76th annual cherry growers meeting on March 26 at the Yellow Bay Club House.
Mike Goodwin from Homeland Security in Denver gave a presentation on the I-9 form, an employment eligibility verification. The law dealing with the I-9 passed in 1986 and makes employers responsible for getting an employee’s name, citizenship and signature as well as documentation.
The employee needs to “check a box and sign it,” Goodwin said.
The cherry growers had questions for the Homeland Security honcho regarding everything from whether a worker should put the employer’s address on the form to the way orchards are chosen for auditing their paperwork.
Although Homeland Security Kalispell manager Steve Stowe said the orchards audited were chosen at random, grower Cody Herring wonders about that. He said the four largest growers on the east shore were chosen. Herring belongs to a coop called Glacier Fresh Cherries with 10 other growers, who mostly ship their fruit overseas.
Flathead Lake is an isolated area, Herring said, with maybe two or three weeks of picking whereas Washington may provide a full season of work. Growers depend on pickers to harvest their cherry crop and are concerned about “anything that pushes them (workers) over the edge of not coming” to the Flathead. The state of Montana helps out by providing daycare and school for children, gas money, medical care for workers, Herring said, but “even the legal pickers don’t want to get scrutinized (during an audit.)”
Another cherry farmer agreed and said he hoped Homeland Security understood the sensitivity of the situation with workers.
More information on I-9 is available on www.uscis.gov or by calling 1-888-464-4218.
Laborers are an important part of cherry harvest, but first there have to be cherries to pick. A new pest is headed Montana’s way, the spotted wing drosophilia suzukii. Washington orchardist Ron Moon told growers about the fly. It has been found in California, Washington and Oregon orchards and lives on thin-skinned soft fruit and is “hosted by so many sources of food outside the orchard.”
The differences between the drosophilia suzukii and the cherry fruit fly are:
1. Four to six generations of the fly per growing season
2. Short term (three days) from emergence from the pupae stage to egg laying so growers need to spray every seven days
3. The flies have a wide host range; they can live on soft fruit, cracked cherries, wild fruit and berries, orchard waste, most hard fruit (pears, apples) after it falls from the tree.
Moon also spoke on grafting and powdery mildew. Moon recommended growers not at the meeting or other interested folks could Google Washington State University Tim Smith or WSU cooperative extension.
Then the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers Ladies Auxiliary outdid themselves with a lunch of meatloaf, green beans, cucumber salad, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, butter and homemade pie, ala mode if desired.
