- [Narrator] Berry crops on
this Farm to Fork, Wyoming. (light music) Berry lovers would
be heartened to know that in Wyoming's
windy, harsh climate even the sweetest, most
delicate of things can grow. (light music) Thanks to some
undaunted farmers, sizable berry patches
bloom each year here in Wyoming. - Probably total in
berries about a half acre. - Okay.
- And so - - [Narrator] For Leroy John's
half acre outside of Wheatland it's about exploring
what's possible. - We've got 13 different
varieties of red raspberries just to find out which ones
are more diseased prone. - [Narrator] From
numerous varieties of raspberries and blackberries. - [Leroy] Best crop of
blackberries we've ever had. - [Narrator] To some
seldom encountered exotics that just might remain that way. - This is the aronia.
- Okay. - The chokeberry. They're not bad, I like them, but it's not one of those
you're going to take the farmer's market
and sell I don't think. They're highly nutritious. - [Narrator] Some of these
plants might be more popular as ornamental. - This is the goji berry.
- Oh, and it's still blooming. - This is second crop. Like eating fresh peas
with an after taste. It does kind of taste like that. And we sell those at
the farmer's market. I like it in a salad. Here's your elderberry. They don't have a lot of flavor but my wife made some
elderberry syrup, oh boy. It tastes almost like blueberry. These are the
yellow raspberries. These are way past
prime obviously. You have to pick those everyday. We had boysenberry this year and again they're kind
of a thorny bugger. They're, I bought some
welding gloves or sleeves to pick those with. - [Narrator] Where Leroy
explores the spectrum, growers like Sonharvest
and Raspberry Delight run more production
focused raspberry patches. - [Female] But this
one is called Caroline. - [Interviewer]
This is a favorite. - And this is our
favorite plant. It's our biggest producer. It's what our new
plants are also because it puts on tons. - [Narrator] But when it comes
to sheer volume in Wyoming Greg Jarvis is the
king of raspberries. - We were producing over
30,000 pounds of berries out of those two acres. - [Narrator] With over
600 acres in production Greg Jarvis is no stranger
to the economic challenges of agriculture. - Uh, 1998 we were still
getting the same price for our hay and stuff
that we were getting when I started back in 1974. So, we started looking
into raspberries then. So, I did tons of
research on the internet and 99 we planted
the first two acres and 2200 plants to the acre. It was a real cool, wet spring and shoot, every
raspberry came up. We're going, wow, these
thing are easy to raise. - [Narrator] With a
98% survival rate, expansion seemed
like a good idea. - The spring of 2000, we
hooked onto these rows and we were going to plant
two more acres below. Ordered the plants, they
came in, got them planted and 2000 was the beginning
to the drought for us. It was hot, dry, no rain. We had a 98% death loss, only
had about 2% of them left. - [Narrator] So, with the
first two acres still standing, they build a small industry
as the humbling seven year drought brought the family
cattle operation to a a close. - There was only two
acres of raspberries and they take a lot of water but it's only two acres. We'd save enough
water so we could keep the raspberries irrigated. We'd usually get the
alfalfa hay irrigated once. When they were talking about
making spoil off the pasture we didn't have anywhere
to go with the cows. We had to bring them
in and feed them hay. We sold them in 2001. Then the raspberries
started kicking in, so they kind of bailed us put. - [Narrator] For the Pyle's,
raspberries have also proved successful on limited resources. - The size of our parcel here has determined what
we can grow on it. Raspberries are perfect for that because you only
need an acre or two to be well supplied with
berries during their season. - [Narrator] But finding
profits let along a market is a great challenge. Corporate chains manage
regional inventories through central
distribution centers making small scale local
sourcing impractical. - We checked on
selling the raspberries in the grocery store and they
had to go to Daniel first to the warehouse
and then come back. That's not good. Want to keep them fresh. At that point we just
decided we were going to direct market everything. So, we learned a lot
about marketing real fast. - [Interviewer] Oh, yeah? - Especially when
you're street marketing, you have big signs and
stuff that waves around so that people, it'll
catch your attention. - [Narrator] Fortunately,
the farmer's markets were starting to take off. - It was a lot of work. We leave here at 10 o'clock
on Thursday morning, go to Lander, set up, sell
til eight, get home at nine. A year or two later, Laramie
started their farmer's market. We participated in that one. Get up the next morning and
start loading the trailer at seven and head for Laramie. We couldn't haul enough
berries down there. - [Narrator] The Pyle's
have also become experts in self distribution. - Every day's different. We have several markets,
some that go to Jackson Hole. Some containers go to Worland, which actually then get
sent on to Billings. Then we really love to
cover our farmer's markets around Fremont County,
so we sell in Lander, we sell in Riverton,
we sell in Casper at the farmer's markets. We just package those
according to what we need for which person is
getting our berries. Then of course, we also
sale right off the farm quite a bit. - [Interviewer] Oh, okay. - [Narrator] Living just
outside or Riverton, they invite You Pick
visitors to the farm and that keeps them
connected to their neighbors. - We have kids
coming from schools and we have groups coming. It is a joy, it is so
much fun to be there when all of that's going on. - [Narrator] The
Jarvis's do the same. (joyful music) But unlike pumpkins and other
crops you replant each year, raspberries are a
long term commitment. - [Greg] They had a life
cycle of about 12 to 15 years and we're on year
17 this year, so. - [Narrator] In order to
withstand Wyoming winters fall bearing varieties
that die back each year to the ground are the key. - This is all new growth,
regrowth that you see here. - Summer berries, which are
a whole different management than fall berries. Summer berries you get in
the middle of the summer and it's a wonderful
time to have raspberries, but then what you have to
do to get berries every year is go through acres,
however much you have and cut out every
cane that bore fruit. That isn't a management thing that my husband
and I can manage. We just can't get to that. But these, we don't worry. Now, if we had summer
berries, a big concern and probably more
so for a home grower rather than a commercial grower, are deer eating them. Because when the deer devour
the canes and they love them, you wouldn't think with
the thorns they'd love them but they do. Then you end up losing
a lot of your crop. We buy and we raise
and grow fall berries. They grow up every year, we cut them off in the
spring, early, early spring, like February, March. And then they grow
up brand new hedge. - [Interviewer] Okay, so
they go all summer to grow a new cane and then - - Right and put on fruit, right. - [Narrator] The trade off is a later starting berry harvest. - They usually come
off between the first and the 15th of
August, they start. And they're ever bearing, so they continue berrying
until we get a freeze, a hard freeze, about
25, 26 degrees. - [Narrator] But the Wyoming
wind is the most reliable mid season menace. - Just destroys these
berries for about two days til we get all soft
ones picked off. All these varieties
are semi-thornless. See, they have a
little short thorn, just really short. They'll rub against each
other when wind is blowing. Looks like somebody
got murdered out here. Just red all up and down
the rows and on the ground. (laughing) - [Narrator] When it comes to
picking, raspberries may be the most labor intensive
crop in the state. - The peak of the raspberries when they were producing so
much in 2004, five, six, seven. We were running about
12 pickers everyday. We had 12 pickers to keep up. They were cranking out 6800
pounds of berries a day. - [Interviewer] Wow. - [Greg] Six days a week. For each two pickers
in the field, I need one lady in the packing
barn packing the raspberries, sorting and packing. And so we needed like
six people in there. - [Narrator] Like the
rest of the country, Wyoming cannot bring
in a seasonal harvest without migrant labor. - we definitely need
the migrant workers because we can't find
anybody here that will do the hand labor
and stuff like that. They don't, they just
don't want to do it. - You have to be quick enough
to make it worth your while. For some people
just starting out, the money may not be worth
the heat and the bees and whatever else they
encounter out here. - [Greg] Tried the
college kids at TWC and it was okay but they
couldn't get enough hours in. - [Narrator] You Picking
is more of a social benefit than a practical solution. - That is what this little patch will be designed for is
our Pick Your Owners, so that we're not competing
our Pick Your Owners with our other - - [Interviewer]
Production, yeah. - [Narrator] Visiting pickers
don't clean the rows off as thoroughly as
the grower needs and coming in after
the You Pickers only makes a production
pickers job more difficult. - Because otherwise we do go
into each other's territory and we don't want
that to happen. We really want to be able
to supply what we need for our custom pickers. - [Narrator] Fortunately
for the Pyle's, they've struck a good
arrangement with Pablo. - Pablo is one of the best
pickers that we've ever seen. In fact, he showed up at our
farm probably 15 years ago. We were thinking we would
need to show him what to do and he took off. We realized we don't know
how to pick raspberries. It was a learning experience
for us, not for him. We have just enjoyed him
every year he's come back. And Gabriela is phenomenal also and she's a new
addition to our farm because he married her I
think just a few years back. She's a wonderful,
wonderful person and a fantastic picker,
which we really need. - [Narrator] The Jarvis's
also have a long standing relationship with
Raphael's family. (speaking in foreign language) - Sixteen years.
- Oh, wow. - Yeah, picking ever year
and the beans every year. - [Narrator] Raphael feels
Wyoming is a healthy change from the California central
valley he calls home. - [Male] Like this,
the raspberry, they
don't spray at all it's just natural. (speaking in foreign language) - Like every time, all
the time in California you get really itchy. (speaking in foreign language) - [Interpreter] He said
Wyoming is a little bit cleaner than in California because they
don't use as much chemicals on their fruits and stuff. - [Narrator] There's
another labor force making a big difference
on these farms. - [Greg] Ten o'clock
in the morning, it sounds like the
field's going to fly off. There's so many bees out there. - [Narrator] Beehives
are a huge benefit. - We partner with
Wind River Honey. They had them on the alfalfa and the closest ones are about three quarters of a mile away. When we planted the raspberries,
you'd see the bees here but not tons of them
on your face though. I talked to Larry that one
day when he was out here. He said, well, next year
we'll just bring out 16 hives and set them right there
on the raspberry field. When he did that, it almost
doubled the production. - [Narrator] While 98% of our
insect friends bring benefits a few trouble makers have
found there way into Wyoming. - We've had insect problems and it seems like they're
getting to be more and more and I don't know if it's because
we've had the raspberries long enough now, you
know, that different pests have moved in. - [Narrator] Avoiding
pesticides is the goal, but there are times when there seem no
reasonable alternatives. - Every year is different. One year we had a
little green caterpillar and it was before we
had berries or blossoms on the plants but they
had devoured the leaves and we were afraid,
really afraid that we going to lose
our whole crop to them. That was the fifth or sixth
year that we grew raspberries so it was long ago. But we did spray our
plants with Sevin because there were no blossoms we felt like that
was fairly safe. That was the only
year we've ever put anything on our plants. I've never seen them since. I've seen one here,
maybe one there but it was just an
infestation of them. It was just the year for
the little green inch worm. But, it was a matter
of losing everything, and so, you have to
make decisions sometimes that you don't like. But your livelihood
is at stake sometimes. - [Narrator] Recent years
have brought one of the most challenging invaders yet. - The drosophila, that
thing has been killing us. It came from Japan and it
spread all across the lower 48 in just a little over a year. What's bad about the
spider growing drosophila is has a saw toothed ovipositor
where they lay their eggs, so they can actually saw into
that droplet on the berry. They nest during the berry
soft and just ruin the fruit. - Here's what the spotted
wing fruit fly looks like and this is what you
end up with the next day and it'll look just like that. - [Narrator] Temperatures
seem to be a major driver in fruit fly outbreaks. - Generally they like
between 70 and 90. Anything over that the
male becomes sterile, anything under 70, they're
not very productive. - [Narrator] During the
worst outbreaks early on pesticides seem like
the only option. - When we first had them, I don't know, about four years
ago, we tried the spraying and it kind of
worked but it just, you had to do it
every three days because the life
cycle's three days. You got to keep spraying them until you finally
break that cycle. - [Narrator] Even
with pesticides there is no cheap, easy answer. - The stuff that I
bought is Delegate which it's the same family
but it's not organic labeled. It was $200 for 28 ounces, so it's about seven dollars,
eight dollars an ounce. - [Narrator] In the
last four years, the Jarvis's have opted
not to spray at all. - Raspberries, they're
just like little sponges, you can't really spray
anything on them. There's a few things
you can spray on them, there's Pyrethrin which supposed
to be really safe and stuff but then you have to
be careful of the bees. - [Narrator] An organic
form of Pyrethrin has been derived from
the chrysanthemum seed for thousands of years. While this natural form
breaks down easily, Pyrethrins attack
the nervous system of a broad spectrum of creatures ranging from fish to incests
and especially effecting bees. - We have 16 beehives, so if you do spray anything
to control anything you have to do it at night
so the bees have gone to bed. - [Narrator]
Alternatives to spraying have been the focus of
our Wyoming producers. - The trapping is a way of
trying to keep a handle on it. I've got probably
about 50 of these traps or maybe even
probably close to 80. The idea is just to
trap as many was we can. - [Narrator] The most effective
method is labor intensive, but has worked well
for the Pyle's. - They like overripe fruit, so one of the management
tools that we have is to pick our fruit clean,
as clean as we can pick it. Always, always make
sure it's all off there. All of our good fruit. We have a few other
things that we do. One of the things is that
we bring our temperatures in our cooler down
to 32 degrees. Which is the nip
of frost in there, so when we pick and
produce and put our fruit into our cooler, we
know that it is going to actually nip anything
that might be there. That and when we work our
raspberries in our workroom we make sure that there
is not a single berry that's left overnight. Anything that we don't want, like this one that's been eaten, we put them in Ziploc baggies and we make sure
that they're sealed and nothing gets into
them, nothing gets out. We don't give the fruit
flies an opportunity to reproduce in anything
in our workspace. It's not to say that
it couldn't resurge, because pests do. We have grasshoppers, we content with
grasshoppers all the time. We just have to plant
enough that they can have their portion and
we can have our portion. What's new as far as
pest control this year, we noticed it last year
but we also noticed it in greater quantities
this year are wasps. They are a pest and they
also eat the bottoms out of our berries. - So, now there's a new pest?
- So, now there's a new pest. (light music) - [Narrator] But unbothered
by any of these problems, Chris Hilgert has been happily
picking his strawberries in a Laramie hoop house. - Actually seen flowers in
this high tunnel in February. When it's 20 degrees outside
and the wind's blowing and there's snow on the
ground, I walk in here and I see green plants
with flowers on them. I start picking these
strawberries in May and in the last two years, I've picked the week
before Thanksgiving. - [Narrator] Chris
is in his third year of a productivity trail for
the University of Wyoming. - The idea behind the project
was we were going to compare yields of high
tunnel production,
strawberry production verses greenhouse production using a hydroponic
growing system. The hydroponic growing
was a complete failure, but the high tunnel production
has been a huge success and so, this is the third year of this particular
strawberry patch. Three years is sort of
the industry standard. After about three years,
incests, diseases, start to spread and the yields
really start to decline. - [Narrator] Like raspberries,
strawberries are perineal and come in three different
fruit bearing varieties. - They're June
bearing strawberries, and as the name suggests, they produce
strawberries in June. And they only produce
one crop per year. Those types of strawberries
can be very productive but given the weather that
we have in Wyoming in June means that there's a
good chance we could get freezing temperatures, snowfall, that could completely
wipe out that crop. (light music) Other varieties
include day neutral and ever bearing
type strawberries. Those give you a
little more flexibility because they'll produce over the course of
the growing season. So, this particular
variety that I'm looking at is called seascape, it's
a day neutral variety. Once we start getting nights,
nighttime temperatures that remain above freezing, we'll start getting
strawberry production. - [Narrator] Putting these
plants under a high tunnel extends their growing season
by at least one climate zone. - Earlier this year, we
had a snow in late May and I was already
picking strawberries. Then the last two years, I've been picking
well into November. Last year, we had our
first freeze in August. August, September,
October, you know. I got three months
just on the tail end of the season last year. The high tunnels really do
make sense for a day neutral type strawberry that's
going to produce through the whole
growing season. Besides the season extension
benefit, yeah, you've got the benefit of protecting
your plants from the wind which is a huge problem in
growing anything in Wyoming. Deer, mice. Oh, now here's one that looks
like a mouse nibbled on. There's another one. Birds, they all like to
eat strawberries too. I grew the same
variety in my backyard and the birds would get
to them before I would. - [Narrator] The ventilation
design of the high tunnel is important. - I like the design
of this high tunnel because it has walls that
come up about three feet and then open up. If they roll up from the ground, any critter can just
wonder right in. Plus, the wind is going to
blow right through there. - [Narrator] That is not to
say that these high tunnel don't get visitors. - Anytime you're growing in a
closed environment like this if you have an insect
problem or a disease problem it can become widespread
in a short period of time, so you really have
to be diligent. We get slugs and the, well
we call them the roly polys, the pill bugs. That's a type of damage
those pill bugs do. Those are probably
the worst two pests that I have in this tunnel. - [Narrator]
Pre-planning preparations bring many benefits as well. - We amended the soil first. We installed drip
irrigation lines and then we put this
weed fabric down. The weed fabric helps keep
the weeds down obviously, but also keeps, one of
the problems you can get with the fruit if it's
laying on the soil, can start to rot. It's actually
sitting on something that keeps the fruit clean too. With strawberries, really
any type of berries, fertility is crucial. These plants need
water and nutrients. I water two to three times
a week with drip irrigation and I fertilize with iron because we do have
alkaline soils here which are common
throughout much of Wyoming. You'll see leaves that
have yellow leaf tissue with green veins and that's
a sign of iron deficiency or iron chlorosis in plants. Basically, as the pH increases or alkalinity of
the soil increases, iron becomes less
available to the plants. It's a clay loam out here. It's got a pH of about 7.7. The long term solution to
that is to amend the soil and adjust the pH but that's
really difficult to do. The short term fix
is to use a granular or a chelated iron and
fertilize your plants with that. I fertilized with
iron twice this year. Actually twice every year since
we've had the strawberries and I fertilize with nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium and organic general
fertilizer two or three times over the course of
the growing season. - [Narrator] Chris sees
pest and weed control going hand in hand
in the high tunnel. - We've done everything we
can to keep the weeds down, we don't like to
spray chemicals. We've tried every
organic approach possible from the weed fabric
to pulling weeds instead of spraying weeds. Planting densely and
that sort of thing. But one of the things
I've noticed is that when the weeds do get
a little out of hand, that's when I start to
notice more slug problems, disease problems on the
fruit and on the plants. So, just keeping the weeds down seems to make a huge difference. - [Narrator] After
three seasons, the return has been
pretty gratifying. - The first two years, I
harvested about 250 pounds, so, about $1,000 of strawberries
off of a $75 investment. That's of course ignoring
all the other costs that went into it. I mean, the cost of the high
tunnel was roughly $1,000. It cost me about $50
to $60 to fertilize every time I fertilize here. To buy the iron product and
then the general fertilizer. Then the drip irrigation
and the weed fabric were the other expenses. They're great for
the backyard gardener who just wants something
fresh that they've grown that tastes good, strawberries
are a great candidate. If you're growing for a market, this is something that
you could diversify your production system. Continue to grow your
tomatoes and lettuce and green beans and all of
those other great vegetables, but this is something that
your customers will seek out at the farmer's market. - [Narrator] If Wyoming
farmers can turn a profit on something as
delicate as a raspberry, anything seems possible. (light music)
