And with the snow the winter pruning starts, the beauty of Yakima Valley means a hard time for farm workers.
Team work apple pruning. Alberto teaching how to prune.
Pear fields Yakima Valley
Some coffee to share
Native america from Wapato WA
From the Wapato Harvest festival,Native american girls getting ready for a dance presentation.
Mothers getting the costumes ready
Hops Harvest
From the Unknown Faces project. The hops are being harvested, this will the end of the female work in the fields of the hops. Maria is one of the top cutter that makes sure the vines are place in the truck all the way through the whole cut.
Maria
Talking around in the Yakima fields with the workers, I learned this: Fruit this year could be very expensive. Last winter Yakima Valley did not get enough snow. Snow is primordial for the trees to produce the fruit.
The trees, the workers said, aren't full of fruit like the other years. This is going to reflect in the prices in the market. Right now is affecting the field workers, the fruit is small, it will take a long time to fill the cases, and they are pay by case.
The prices by case is about 23 or 27 dollar, depending of the field and companies, women are barely filling two cases a day. They started their day at 6:00 am and finishing at 2:30.
From the Wapato Nectarines
On July 2015, I went to the fields of Wapato looking for Julia, as I follow all kinds of jobs that she does on the field. I got lost, I ended on the nectarines fields. I got to know a group of men working in the nectarines harvest.
They were as usual so helpful and welcoming. Here some pictures of that particular hot day.
Wapato fields
