Cherry Drying in Columbia River Gorge

[JCM5]

How does one go about drying cherries? Do you hover over a section at a time? How do you know when to move on?

It seems like there ought to be a more efficient way to do it; not that I'm trying to take jobs away from anyone.

 

 

[turbotay]

A slow hover taxi, proper altitude, and counting rows. You want to be up on how many rows your helicopter can do in a pass. If you get on with a good company they will teach you these things and you'll come out of the season with a mean hover.

[silver-eagle]

A curious use of a helicopter but I bet the first couple of hours could be fun. Am I correct in presuming you're hovering out of ground effect? And who tells you you've dried the field or are you there for a specific time period? Is there a specific timeframe while the cherries are growing that you need to be doing this?

[aeroscout]

Come to think of it, almonds suck too,...and fish!,...BLAH!

 

Cherry drying, frost patrol, and tuna spotting,...three very dangerous jobs pilots need not risk they're lives on! Cattle mustering on the other hand? A cheeseburger,...now there's something worth risking my life on!

 

Anyone know how to get into that?

 

I currently resemble that remark ! Which one I'll leave you to guess.

[SBuzzkill]

"Honey I just finished washing the cherries, don't drive anywhere yet they are out in the driveway. I'm going to go out back and fire up the helicopter."

Edited February 18, 2013 by SBuzzkill

[DS_HMMR]

Hmmm. I wonder how wide a swath, a bo105 would dry?

[BH206L3]

And I still say She is a Legend in her own mind!!! Nearly Retired forgot more about helicopter flying than she would ever know and to be honest about it, that goes for me too. and I been around the block a few times.

[DS_HMMR]

And I still say She is a Legend in her own mind!!! Nearly Retired forgot more about helicopter flying than she would ever know and to be honest about it, that goes for me too. and I been around the block a few times.

 

Yeah, but she's rockin' a mullet, so I"m not going to mess with her.

[SBuzzkill]

It's all about the skullet.

[DS_HMMR]

"hello broker" ….

[Boatpix]

How does one go about drying cherries? a previous poster asked. In 2008 I sponsored a seminar by a professor with doctorate who wrote a paper on what he called "cherry cracking." In short, after a rain the dimple in the cherry fills with water and when the sun comes out it can crack and ruin the crop. You fly over the tree and the downwash shakes the branches, leaves and cherries free of the water in the dimple. Since 1986 I've always been looking for uses of R22's and this was a natural to send some up to Washington. I sponsored the seminar after having a booth at a tradeshow where I was competing with Silver State Helicopters recently acquired turbine operators up there and the farmers were aware of the competition. No farmer wanted to sign a contract for any amount of minimum time they would rather run the risk. I didn't want to run the risk of sending a helicopter when we fly photo 52 weekends a year and like 16 hours per weekend and sponsoring those two events was cheap money versus sending a helicopter. As it happened, we had a Seattle based helicopter that year and a middleman with 150 hours and CPLH contracted with us to dry. After a couple hours on a Friday my 400 hour CFI said he was concerned with the electric wires and wooden poles and in his choice was to fly boats on Saturday and Sunday (which are the only days we fly 52 weeks a year). So, that was that.

 

I thought of this recently when a woman with a150 hours and a cplh contact me about using our Raven II for this "new" cherry drying thing after she read about it on a website or met someone who was looking for an R44. She had flown a couple of hours of boats with us and was checking out all her options. She's like everyone and wants a permanent job and not to be an unemployed helicopter pilot. We were talking to her about getting up to 300 hours with us, CFI, and we would guarantee her a job. The cherry drying website is brutally honest about how limited the flying is and there are no further guarantees of anything. Perhaps cherry drying has lead someone to a permanent job but there are only so many rainy days during cherry season and that doesn't jumpstart a career. She challenged me on if cherry time would apply towards boat photo time and my offer and I said that she wasn't learning what we do and that perhaps "Let's hold our thoughts until someone guarantees you a job or I do."

[aeroscout]

Beware the long shortcut.

[Nearly Retired]

Not to be pedantic (then again, when did THAT ever stop me?), but I'd like to expand a bit on what Boatpix just posted. If I've already posted this stuff, feel free to stop me.

 

First, a clarification: The "dimple" that Boatpix refers to is actually called the stem-bowl - it's where the stem enters the cherry. We'll get to that in a minute.

 

Like many fruits, the cherry can absorb moisture through its stem. As it grows, it will continue to absorb moisture (water). If it absorbs too much the skin of the side of the cherry can split open. Farmers have to limit the amount of water the cherry "sees" to keep them from absorbing too much.

 

Also, when it rains, water pools in the stem-bowl. A ring-shaped crack can appear around the bowl. We call that a "smiley" because it resembles a...well, you know.

 

Cherry-growing season is June-July, obviously a hot time of the year. If the cherry gets wet and the sun comes right back out (as often happens in that part of the country), a water droplet on the cherry can act as a magnifying glass, creating a little burn mark on the skin of the cherry.

 

The farmers can always *add* water to the cherries through irrigation or just plain ol' rain...but they cannot easily remove water when there's too much rain. That's where the helicopters come in.

 

After it rains, the helicopter will hover over the cherry tree, drying the fruit through various techniques. First is direct application of air, of course. But cherries grow in clumps, so just blowing them dry is not enough. We use the downwash to shake the branches and thus shed water from the clumps of cherries. Trouble is, if you shake the branches too vigorously you run the risk of bruising the fruit as they slam into one another (we call it, "making cherry juice!").

 

When it comes time to pick the cherries, the orchard owner will send a sample to the packing plant. With the potential loss of $25,000 to $40,000 per acre, it's important to the farmer that he provide top-quality cherries to the packing plant. "Splits," "smileys," burn marks and bruising are all reasons that the packing plant will reject a whole crop. If you look at a bag of cherries in the supermarket in August, you will see "some" of the defects I've listed above - hopefully not too many.

 

Obviously, different helicopters produce different levels of downwash. Although any helicopter can be used to dry cherries, some do a better job than others. I won't get into the advantages/disadvantes of each particular helicopter. But I'll say this: After it rains the farmer wants *all* of his cherries dried RIGHT NOW. An R-22 *can* be used in this task, but its downwash is limited and it would take a long time to dry a big field if you can only effectively dry one or two rows at a time. At the other end of the scale, the Sikorsky S-58 produces quite a lot of downwash, and it must hover very high to avoid bruising the fruit. This makes it hard for the pilots to judge how good a job they're doing, especially when the wind is blowing the downwash out from under the ship. The helicopter I fly (Sikorsky S-55) stays "about" one rotor diameter above the trees. (This height varies depending on a number of factors.) Even so, it's hard to "see" the downwash when the wind is blowing strongly from 3 o'clock. And yeah, sometimes we dry in fairly strong winds.

 

When I was learning the job, I was flying with the owner of the company I was working for. The orchard was irregularly shaped, and it had a little triangular area with three little rows of trees (about seven trees total) near the house of one of the orchard foremen. To avoid blowing stuff in the foreman's yard, I didn't quite get close enough to those trees. The boss noticed it and told me to go back. I said that I thought I "got" the trees; he said I did not. "They're paying us to dry every single tree," he said sharply but without being a dick. "They're not paying us to just generally hover over the orchard and 'hope' we got 'em dry. You've got to make sure you get every tree. So go back and get those trees."

 

So I went back and got those trees. You can do that.. I mean you're just hovering, after all. It's not like you *have* to keep foward motion, like if you were spraying. When I dry, I keep a close eye on my downwash, and I make sure that I "hit" every single tree in every row in the field. That's fairly easy to do with an R-22/44...more difficult (sometimes) with an S-58.

 

There's a lot to ths cherry-drying business. It's more than just getting a helicopter and randomly hovering over some guy's trees. The farmers pay a hefty premium to have a helicopter sitting around just in case it rains. And they pay another premium when we actually fly. As a cherry-drying pilot you don't just want to do a good job, you have to do a good job; you're literally protecting the farmer's crop and therefore his livelihood.

[Guest pokey]

everyone on this site knows the only way to thoroughly dry a cherry field is with avbugs ! just don't forget your bugspray

[rotormandan]

I can ad the NR post. I'm local who has worked in the area before.

 

Some one asked if it's efficient to use a helicopter? The other choices the farmers have are to turn on the wind machines which aren't very effective. They usually turn them on anyway while you fly. And/or, run the ground sprayers through amd blow air on the trees by hand. This involves driving up amd down each row on a slow tractor. A farmer would have to gather the whole crew to drive all sprayers through. Very time consuming. If the orchard are of any size, there's a good chance they wo 't get it all in time. In the summers, we get these pop up storms that last a few min sometimes and drench it all. They couldn't get anything done if they get more then a few storms in 1 day.

 

Other then Golden Wings and Versitle(are they still around after owner passed?). There really isn't anywhere to get hired on the dry unless you come with a helicopter. The lady of topic is correct. Most helicopters come with a pilot. But if you have 1, even a temporary lease on a 22, someone will put you on an orchard.

 

As far as the season goes June/July is the main season up here, Brewster-Wenatchee and around. Farther north so higher elevation orchards mat go slightly later. And SE WA and OR even start early May. I'm not familier with CA but I understand their season starts even earlier and you could essentially travel up following the seasons from CA to Canada.