John Griggs | #014 03/16/2020
He's only 24 years old, but John Griggs is determined to keep his family's 120-year-old cherry and apple farm running. He shares what it's like growing up in a small Eastern Washington town, and why farming is harder than it used to be.
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Transcript
John Griggs:
It’s getting hard to do it now. I mean, minimum wage, H-2A. It’s just kind of, we’re still getting the same pricing as we did five years ago when it was $9. It’s hard. But we got to make it work. I don’t see myself losing this farm, and I’ll do anything to keep it.
Announcer:
This is the Real Food, Real People podcast.
Dillon Honcoop:
Okay, so I’m going to geek out a little bit on this week’s episode. I grew up on a family fruit farm in Washington State and so did our guest today, but on the other side of the Cascade Mountains. And so, so many of his experiences fit with mine, yet the specific details are different, if that makes sense. So forgive me for just wanting to know everything about how his farm works. We’re going to talk with John Griggs. He’s a fifth-generation true fruit farmer. They do cherries and apples and a few pears over in Orondo, just north of Wenatchee.
Dillon Honcoop:
And he reminds me of myself and I guess kind of who I would have been if I would have decided to stay with the farming thing, which I had to think a lot about when I was in high school and deciding what was I going to do after high school. Was I going to stick with the farming thing? Was I going to go to college for farming? Or for something else? I was also passionate about communications. I took the communications route, obviously. But there’s still part of me that wonders, “Should I have done the farming thing?” I still have it in my blood, I still love it so much. And that’s the life he’s living. He’s a true-blue farm kid, so that’s why I’m really pumped to share his story and the stuff that he faces day-to-day.
Dillon Honcoop:
So again, John Griggs, Jr. His dad is John Griggs as well. Join me now in getting to know him and hearing what his life is all about, somebody who’s super passionate about farming and growing apples and cherries and pears. This is the Real Food, Real People podcast documenting my journeys across Washington State to get to know the real people behind the food that we grow and eat here.
Dillon Honcoop:
You grew up around this.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
From being a baby, you were on the farm.
John Griggs:
This is life.
Dillon Honcoop:
What was that like growing up?
John Griggs:
I learned how to drive a tractor at 10 years old and I was working, swamping during the summer. Right after school it was, “Go work.” But it was really nice. I really enjoyed it.
Dillon Honcoop:
So when is cherry season? When do things really get crazy, like right after you would get done with your school year?
John Griggs:
Yeah, mid-June is right when it starts. But build up to that, still, and getting the dormant sprays on. And then we end usually third week of July, is when our sweethearts come off. No, it was friends came second, obviously, but it was always fun to run around in the orchard and hang out and enjoy the sunshine.
Dillon Honcoop:
As a kid, what did you do like during harvest time? What was your job, like once you maybe were a teen and stuff?
John Griggs:
Yeah. When I first started, I was down with my dad at our loading area and watering down the buckets and getting them ready to put in the reefer. But when I was about 12 I started swamping, which, that was a task.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah so what does that mean? What is swamping?
John Griggs:
Swamping, you’re really just putting buckets in bins and following tractors around, making sure you don’t miss anything.
Dillon Honcoop:
So like full buckets? Like buckets that people have picked into?
John Griggs:
Yes.
Dillon Honcoop:
The crews pick into a bucket.
John Griggs:
Yeah. The crews pick into a, it’s like a 17.5-pound bucket, and put them into the bins, so that’s for yellow cherries. And then, red cherries, we do pick into these 30-pound crates and then dump them in the bins.
Dillon Honcoop:
Probably got to dump pretty careful not to-
John Griggs:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Soft. Soft, soft. It’s a heavy day.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, how many hours a day?
John Griggs:
Usually you’re up at 3:00 and go until about 2:30 and then you go talk to dad and see if you have to spray at night.
Dillon Honcoop:
So, now I’ve heard things about sometimes with the heat you have to take time off.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Heat’s a big part of it. You don’t want to pick when it’s above 90 degrees. That’s when you’ll start to get some bruising and it’s just, cherries don’t like heat.
Dillon Honcoop:
So you were working like crazy as a kid on the farm. At what point did you decide, “This is what I want to do”?
John Griggs:
I think when I was like five years old. Just seeing my dad and how he worked. And he drove a semi after work to Seattle and to the airport to dump cherries off. And just seeing his drive and providing for us and I really wanted to be like him. Still do.
Dillon Honcoop:
You get to go along on those trips sometimes?
John Griggs:
I did, I did. I slept in the back on the bunk and I’d go over with him, try to go as many times as possible until mom said, “No. You’re staying home for the night.”
Dillon Honcoop:
How many pounds of cherries on a semi?
John Griggs:
Our semi’s rated for 105,000 pounds. So, you got about 110 bins in that semi. We got four reefers that are 53 feet long.
Dillon Honcoop:
So what happens to your cherries? How do they marketed? Is that a fresh product that people are consuming?
John Griggs:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, so we do a lot in our export. So Asia, Taiwan, Singapore. We go through a marketing company and they’ll kind of tell us what to pick and we’ll go with it. And this past year, we used to be in the packing business as well, we owned Orondo Fruit Company, and it was for about 40 years, and so we packed cherries and we did it ourselves. But now, things change, and we’re going through them. We do some domestic. We got our own cherry and that goes domestic.
Dillon Honcoop:
What do you mean your own cherry?
John Griggs:
We actually have our own patent on a cherry.
Dillon Honcoop:
Oh, really?
John Griggs:
Yeah. It’s called the Orondo Ruby, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
So explain, what’s special about it?
John Griggs:
It’s kind of an early Rainier. It’s a little bit more tart than a Rainier, but still yellow flesh and really pretty red, like a ruby, I guess. But we found that about 12 years ago, my grandpa.
Dillon Honcoop:
Explain. How does that happen, that he found it?
John Griggs:
He was walking through one of our blocks, actually, on our home blocks, and he noticed the cherry was a little earlier, and it was in a Rainier block. My grandpa was like, “Let’s send it off. Let’s take a sample and give it to a nursery and see if they can…” And it was totally different. It’s a hybrid. We don’t know, the alleles are totally different, it’s just kind of one in a million, like…
Dillon Honcoop:
So wait, was it just a happenstance cross between something else that happened to be in your…?
John Griggs:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it was dead center in one of our Rainier blocks.
Dillon Honcoop:
And it was just one tree?
John Griggs:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), one. We call it the mother tree. Yeah, it’s weird, and he doesn’t know how it happened. And he’s been farming, he’s almost 80, he’s 75, and he’s never seen it happen before.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s crazy.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Because I know, like, growing up with the raspberry business on my parents’ farm, it was always, you know, coming up with a new variety, which varieties to cross. And, you know, there were scientists that were working on this to come up with a berry that’s better or more hearty, or, you know, all these desirable qualities, which is why we have a lot of the fruits and veggies that we have.
John Griggs:
It is. And a lot of people don’t know that.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, yeah. Anything.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Almost every apple now, it’s crossed either with a Honeycrisp or an old apple back in Michigan or New York. I mean, it’s weird.
Dillon Honcoop:
But for it to just happen spontaneously, that’s crazy.
John Griggs:
Yeah. And even the nursery was like, “We don’t know.” But we farm that, it’s about the third week of June that gets harvested. Got about 80 acres of it.
Dillon Honcoop:
How many acres total do you guys have fruit on?
John Griggs:
About 480. Yeah. About 230 of it is cherries.
Dillon Honcoop:
And what’s the rest?
John Griggs:
Apples and four acres of pears.
Dillon Honcoop:
So talk a little bit about your family history. You’re fifth-generation on this farm.
John Griggs:
Yes.
Dillon Honcoop:
And you’re, what, like 23?
John Griggs:
24.
Dillon Honcoop:
24 years old.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
How did your family end up here? Where’d they come from?
John Griggs:
I think my great-great-grandma was from Norway and she was a fisher. And then she moved here in like the late 1800s. And she moved, her husband built a house, first stick-built house in Douglas County, and then started farming. We started with peaches. We farmed about 50 acres of peaches, which, that was a tedious task.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. What’s the deal with peaches? Being from western Washington, I don’t know about growing these kinds of fruit.
John Griggs:
They’re just hard… if you look at them wrong, they’ll bruise.
Dillon Honcoop:
Really, wow.
John Griggs:
When they’re ripe. And just packing them is tedious. We packed them in a red barn. We packed them until I was 15 in a red barn and then we finally took them out. But the family, we’ve been farming I think since 1900, and started. And we just tore down our last cherry tree from, it was at least 100 years old, and finally stopped giving us fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
So that was like one of the original trees?
John Griggs:
Yeah, it was about 25 feet tall.
Dillon Honcoop:
Wow.
John Griggs:
Yeah. And it had one limb that had fruit left on it.
Dillon Honcoop:
So that’s what happens? The cherry trees just get too old and don’t put fruit out anymore?
John Griggs:
Yeah they’ll start to get some rot in them, and it’s just time for them get out. But it was hard, especially on my grandpa. But no, I’ve never moved out of the valley. I mean, I went to college in Wenatchee and went through the tree fruit program, and it’s the only place I really live[d].
Dillon Honcoop:
What was it like, you grew up right here in Orondo?
John Griggs:
Right.
Dillon Honcoop:
How big is this town?
John Griggs:
It’s got a gas station, a golf course, and one restaurant. And that’s about it.
Dillon Honcoop:
I guess I could Wikipedia this, but what’s the population of Orondo?
John Griggs:
Like 500, probably. And then during harvest about, probably 3,000.
Dillon Honcoop:
Just because of all the workers.
John Griggs:
Just all the workers coming in.
Dillon Honcoop:
So what’s it like growing up in a town that small?
John Griggs:
You kind of are free to roam the land, really. Everybody knows each other. You’ll see the old folk at the gas station in the morning, drinking coffee and talking about what their orchard’s doing, really. All my family lives here, really, or Waterville, which is just up the hill from us. I don’t see it any other way. Like going over to Seattle or Spokane, it’s still just wide-eyed, like, “Why is there so much traffic?” But no, I went to school, I guess there’s a little schoolhouse. But I mean I grew up with all my buddies and I’m still friends with them, and they’re still out here, too.
Dillon Honcoop:
Sometimes when you grow up in a small town there are a lot of kids. I grew up in a small town, not as small as Orondo, but there were a lot of kids who were like, “I want to get out of here,” you know, “I’m just waiting to get done with high school and I’m going to go to college and I’m gone.”
John Griggs:
Yeah. My mom and dad wanted me to but I was like, “I don’t see it.”
Dillon Honcoop:
They wanted you to leave?
John Griggs:
Well, they wanted me to get out and experience another town, even if it was like WSU Pullman or wherever. They were like, “I was never given that chance, so do it.” And I was like, “No. I’m going to be stubborn and stay here” and I don’t regret it. I don’t know, I just can’t see myself any other way.
Dillon Honcoop:
Are there bad things about growing up in this small of a town?
John Griggs:
Yes and no. The drive to town is about 35 minutes, which is fine.
Dillon Honcoop:
To Wenatchee?
John Griggs:
Yeah. During the summer you get a lot of boats on the river, people being dumb, but that’s it, really. I don’t see it. I don’t see very many negatives. Sometimes the fires, we get pretty good fires. But that’s it.
Dillon Honcoop:
Ever had a fire affect the orchards?
John Griggs:
No. We’ve had one close but nothing burned, thank goodness.
Dillon Honcoop:
What’s the future look like, do you think? What are your plans? What do you want to see this become?
John Griggs:
I want it to get a little bigger, but it’s getting hard to do it now. I mean minimum wage, H-2A, it’s just kind of… we’re still getting the same pricing as we did five years ago when it was $9. But I see us, we’re in a good spot. We can still grow, and we’re planning on it, just finding the right opportunities and partners and stuff like that.
Dillon Honcoop:
So you talk about the minimum wage. That’s a higher cost for the farm with-
John Griggs:
Oh yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Not like you’re getting more money for your fruit, you’re saying?
John Griggs:
No, no. We’re getting same pricing five, 10 years ago on fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
And you mentioned H-2A, too. How has that affected this whole situation?
John Griggs:
That’s made the minimum wage go higher than regular minimum wage, and I think it’s like $15, high $15, and we had to bring in 100 guys this year. And we have about 275 people working during cherries and pears and stuff, which is, I mean, we pay by bucket. But if they don’t pick the bucket rate, which, minimum wage, I mean, it’s hard to pick that many buckets in an hour. It’s just made costs go way up. Chemicals keep going up, and land prices are up, and just kind of a tough spot.
Dillon Honcoop:
How do you handle working with employees? There’s been a lot of talk about that and are workers being treated fairly.
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. The foreman, our foreman, he’s been here for 35 years. I grew up with his kids, I’m friends with them, I hang out with them, I go to the worker dinner, like potlucks and stuff. Every year we do like a soccer game down at the school and we’ve got about 30 guys that I’ve, they’re pretty much grown up, and taught me a bunch, pruning. I’ve worked alongside with them, I’ve been to people’s soccer games, I’ve gone to their kids’ wrestling matches. Our guys, I’m very thankful for them for being here for us and try to treat them good. They all live in our housing and stuff like that.
Dillon Honcoop:
Right now, in any line of work anywhere, people are just looking for good people.
John Griggs:
Yeah, yeah. You got to be there for your employees and stand up for them and help them out, I feel like. That’s what my dad’s taught me.
Dillon Honcoop:
There’s been a lot of talk, though, about how hard it is to find people who want to work on a farm.
John Griggs:
It is. Especially the swampers, the teens, the high schoolers, they’d much rather not work. They’d rather go up to Chelan and go swimming up at the lake. It’s really hard to find a young kid that wants to work in an orchard, get their hands dirty, be hot all day, and work, get up at 3:00. You can’t find very many. I’ve got cousins that are having to work for us and they like it, but it’s not their favorite.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. If you’re good, how much money can you make during season?
John Griggs:
Oh man.
Dillon Honcoop:
Like, by the hour?
John Griggs:
Well, we do by bucket if you can pick that many. One day we worked until like 5:00 at night picking before a rain storm, and I was driving a tractor, and I came up to one guy and was scanning his card and I was like, “He has a 105 buckets already!” And that’s like $600, $700 and I’m like, “Oh my God!” And I go and tell my mom and she’s like, “I know. I know.” You can make good money. If you work hard for it you’ll make a decent, you’ll probably make $10,000, $15,000 in a month and a half.
Dillon Honcoop:
Really.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Wow.
John Griggs:
Yeah. If you’re fast, you’re good.
Dillon Honcoop:
So that difficulty of just finding enough people to do the work, though, that’s why you guys had to bring in H-2A?
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, we used to be able to do just 150 guys but our production’s gone way up. Nobody would even stop by. We used to have people stop by looking for work. Now it’s almost nonexistent. We go to like the WorkSource and put our name out there. I mean we even upped our per-bucket pay, and… nobody. So we were like, “We got to do this or…”
Dillon Honcoop:
What if you paid even more?
John Griggs:
I don’t know. I’d hope people would come. I mean, I’d much rather work outside than in an office. But we’ve tried almost everything, ads in the paper, put them in Orondo stores or Wal Marts. Nobody. Calling my cousin’s friends, “Hey, you want to come work for a couple weeks? You can stay out at our place,” but they’d say no.
Dillon Honcoop:
You talk about your dream, as you continue on with this family farm, to get bigger. Could the issue of finding workers keep you from being able to do that?
John Griggs:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. You’d almost have to bring a whole, probably a couple of hundred H-2A in. You also need housing for them, which, we had to bus them out from Cashmere. We bought three school buses just to get– we even pay people’s rent for their housing and that didn’t work. But the H-2A, they’re here to work and they’re slow at first, but they catch on pretty good.
Dillon Honcoop:
Just because they’re people, you know, they haven’t done this particular kind of work before?
John Griggs:
Yeah. Some of them have been up here before, but mostly this isn’t even their profession. I mean they’re contractors or just farmers themselves. But yeah, when they come up here they’re kind of like “ugh,” and of course they’re far away from home.
Dillon Honcoop:
So from what you’re saying that’s pretty expensive to do, though, to bring those people.
John Griggs:
It’s very expensive, yeah. It’s about, I think it’s like $1,500 a person to get them up here.
Dillon Honcoop:
And then the wage that they make.
John Griggs:
And then the wage they make and the housing we have to pay for, which, yeah, it adds up.
Dillon Honcoop:
But you have to do that-
John Griggs:
You have to do it.
Dillon Honcoop:
Just because there’s nobody else?
John Griggs:
Yeah. You got to do it. The farther north you go, the harder it gets to find people, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
So you talk about getting bigger. That would be just adding more acres of cherries? Or do you want to branch out into other stuff?
John Griggs:
Probably go more into apples. I feel we’ve got plenty of cherries, got about three million pounds of cherries.
Dillon Honcoop:
Wow.
John Griggs:
Yeah. It’s crazy.
Dillon Honcoop:
What kind of apples do you guys have?
John Griggs:
We got Buckeye Galas, it’s a high-color Gala, Aztec Fujis, high-color, pretty much everything high-color. Honeycrisp.
Dillon Honcoop:
What does that mean, high-color?
John Griggs:
Really red and more… the older varieties were lighter and the new ones are bam-in-your-face red. And Honeycrisp, Royal Red Honeycrisp, the newer version. And SugarBee, SugarBee’s a club variety.
Dillon Honcoop:
What does that mean?
John Griggs:
The warehouse that owns the variety, well, the marketing company owns it, but we have to go through our packing house to get it.
Dillon Honcoop:
This is like a proprietary thing where you get licensed to do it?
John Griggs:
Yeah. Yeah we pay a royalty for the trees. We got about, I think we pick 1,200 bins of those, it’s like a really sweet apple.
Dillon Honcoop:
I’ve seen them in the store but I can’t honestly say I’ve had one, now that you bring that up.
John Griggs:
They’re very good, they’re super sweet. It’s almost like a candy.
Dillon Honcoop:
Awesome.
John Griggs:
But no, that’s a very good apple. And I guess we got some Ambrosia, too, that are grafted. And Grannies.
Dillon Honcoop:
So you’re busy in, like, June into July with the cherries.
John Griggs:
Yep.
Dillon Honcoop:
And then, what, you have a lull in the middle of the summer?
John Griggs:
We have about three weeks and then we start pears. But thankfully, we only have a little bit. But then right after pears is apples, Galas, and it’s go until about a week after my birthday, which is in October. Yeah. Last year we went a little late on the Fujis and Pink Ladies.
Dillon Honcoop:
Now, I read somewhere that there’s some people who had apples they didn’t even pick this year. Was that because of weather?
John Griggs:
Yeah. We had a freeze come through in the Quincy area and stuff and they literally froze. And I mean, you can’t do anything, they’ll shrivel and it’s just no good. A lot of people for their Fujis did that.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s a late variety?
John Griggs:
It’s a later variety, yeah. But help was pretty hard this year, too, so some people were picking with half a crew. On the bigger orchards, too.
Dillon Honcoop:
Just because they couldn’t get enough workers?
John Griggs:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And they were paying, like, $35, $40 a bin, and that’s a lot of money.
Dillon Honcoop:
Wow.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s what this state is famous for.
John Griggs:
It is.
Dillon Honcoop:
What’s it like to know that you’re raising and providing that food that’s world famous?
John Griggs:
It’s kind of cool. But at the same time, it’s a task. I mean, you got to get in a good market to even hope to make some money. I think we grow the right varieties, and the new varieties which people are seeing in the stores. But it’s definitely different. You can’t have old orchards anymore. You got to have new, high-density, really high-density orchards to do it.
Dillon Honcoop:
Why is that? Why does the density make a difference?
John Griggs:
More bins per acre, just more volume. People are trying to up the volume. You can’t do like 40 bins an acre anymore, you go to be 80, 100. Some are at 120.
Dillon Honcoop:
How much does a bin weigh?
John Griggs:
About 800 to 1,200 pounds.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s a lot of weight.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Pears are heavier.
Dillon Honcoop:
Per acre.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Yeah, you’re picking a lot of fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s amazing.
John Griggs:
And we don’t have, it’s still picked the same way as it was way back when. There’s no picking machine yet. You still got to have the bodies. And people don’t like picking apples.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah?
John Griggs:
It’s heavy, your back is shot.
Dillon Honcoop:
Hard work.
John Griggs:
Hard, hard work. Your fingers hurt and you’re all sweaty.
Dillon Honcoop:
You talk about different varieties and stuff. There’s been a lot of buzz about Cosmic Crisp.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Anybody doing that around here?
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. We didn’t have any acreage to open up for it. But yeah, almost everybody north planted some.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s another one of those like SugarBee where you have to pay a royalty, right?
John Griggs:
I believe so. But I know it’s only us in the state that can grow it, the apple growers. But it’s a great apple, stores really well, it’s crisp. I like it a lot, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
It’s always interesting because you hear the buzz in public. I always wonder, you know, what are the farmers saying behind the scenes on something new like that? Like, “Oh, this is our champagne in the butt,” or something like that.
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. It’s a pain to open up the land, get it all ready, buy the supplies and materials, and then plant it.
Dillon Honcoop:
To put a new variety in.
John Griggs:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Otherwise, how long does a planting last in apples?
John Griggs:
We’ve got some trees that are 40 years old.
Dillon Honcoop:
Really?
John Griggs:
Yeah, some Granny trees in our driveway.
Dillon Honcoop:
Do they still produce good?
John Griggs:
Yeah. They’re 80 bins an acre right now.
Dillon Honcoop:
When you say Granny, you mean Granny Smith?
John Griggs:
Granny Smith, yeah. The old… I don’t like those apples.
Dillon Honcoop:
Too tart for you?
John Griggs:
Way too tart.
Dillon Honcoop:
See, that’s what I like about them.
John Griggs:
Oh, really?
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah.
John Griggs:
They make a good pie. But yeah. I like Galas, Goldens, and Fujis are my main ones.
Dillon Honcoop:
What makes a really good apple, or for that matter, a really good cherry? What’s the secret to that? Because I know the fruit that we produce here in Washington, and particularly here in this area, Wenatchee, Orondo, is some of the best anywhere.
John Griggs:
Yeah. You need the weather, good weather. You need a good microclimate. Where we are in this valley, I mean, I think we produce some of the best cherries in the world. I know it’s my family’s orchard, but we’ve been in billboards in China, I mean, I’ve seen people fighting over our fruit over there.
Dillon Honcoop:
You’ve been over there a few times?
John Griggs:
Yeah. Well, at least my dad has. He’s sent me pictures, of course, but no. You got to work hard for it, you can’t miss a task. If you miss one you might be like, “Oh shoot, it’s not this big.” You got to have the right sprays, you got to have the Mylar pulled out to make them red.
Dillon Honcoop:
Now explain, how does that work?
John Griggs:
So the sun reflects off the Mylar underneath the cherries. The tops of the cherries get red, for yellow cherries. Red cherries, they get red no matter what. But you pull out, we have this, it’s like a fabric-y kind of stuff. It’s called Extenday. It’s a white Mylar film, it’s reusable. So you pull it out, the sun reflects off it, you got about seven hours of good sun for it to pretty much, my grandpa says it bakes the fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
So you’re basically, it’s reflective, bounces the light back up.
John Griggs:
Bounces off into the bottoms of the fruit to redden the bottoms and sides, and it’s pretty much a mini-sun on the bottom of the trees.
Dillon Honcoop:
Like people who use reflectors when they’re out suntanning or whatever, I’ve seen people do that before.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Exactly, exactly like that. Just on a bigger scale.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, I guess. It’s got to be quite the job to put all that out.
John Griggs:
Putting it out and picking it up, it’s a pain. You’re hot and it’s just, ugh, no.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, because you don’t do that when the weather is cool.
John Griggs:
No, no, you’re baking if it’s cool. If it’s hot, you’re like, “What do you want me to do now?” I’ll go pick it up… It gets water on it… Yeah, it’s hard.
Dillon Honcoop:
Does it take a lot of irrigation for these trees?
John Griggs:
Yeah. On apples, we use overhead cooling, overhead sprinklers to keep them cool. Or else it will… apples will bake on the tree. Cherries-
Dillon Honcoop:
Sunburn, or…?
John Griggs:
They’ll get sunburned. They’ll start to shrivel if it’s hot and then cool. Apples are a lot harder to keep cool.
Dillon Honcoop:
And they have to be out there for more of the hot summer, too, since they aren’t ripe until-
John Griggs:
Uh-huh, they got to make it through until fall, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
I don’t think the cherries could probably make it, could they?
John Griggs:
No. Cherries would-
Dillon Honcoop:
If they were.
John Griggs:
They’d turn into a raisin. Yeah, it takes quite a bit of water. But we got a bunch of wells. Summers are hot, but not enough to make things difficult.
Dillon Honcoop:
So somebody going grocery shopping, what should they be looking for when they’re looking for cherries, for instance?
John Griggs:
Well, check the stems. The stems, if they’re not green, I wouldn’t buy them.
Dillon Honcoop:
What does that tell you?
John Griggs:
It’s just, the cherry’s been sitting there for a while and it’s probably really soft.
Dillon Honcoop:
So it’s an indicator of freshness.
John Griggs:
Yeah, yeah. And check and make sure the stem’s like not that big, not tiny, but more long. It’s just how you… I say the quality of the fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
Right.
John Griggs:
Yeah. That’s how I was taught to look at fruit. But you got to think of how long it takes. You got to have them packed, you got to… you won’t get to a fruit until it’s probably a week old, but they hold their freshness.
Dillon Honcoop:
Probably also should check and make sure it’s grown in Washington.
John Griggs:
Yes. Check and make sure it’s here, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
What’s competition for you guys? Is there fruit that comes in from other parts of the country or the world [inaudible 00:31:11]?
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. California, Turkey. Chile is a big one. Chile, I think they’re either picked or picking soon, their fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
Right, because they’re-
John Griggs:
They’re totally different, it’s their summer.
Dillon Honcoop:
Opposite side of the year. Right.
John Griggs:
Yeah. Europe has quite a bit of cherries, surprisingly. Who else…
Dillon Honcoop:
Those don’t end up over here, though, do they?
John Griggs:
Sometimes you have to buy them.
Dillon Honcoop:
Just different timing of seasons?
John Griggs:
It’s different timing, markets change, tariffs change. I mean, things lift and they’re like, “Flood the market, let’s go!” And you’re sitting here, “No!” You got to check with all that kind of stuff. And sometimes you’ll get fruit that’s not even from the United States, but yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
No thanks.
John Griggs:
No thanks.
Dillon Honcoop:
I want fruit from here.
John Griggs:
I want fruit from here and to be my fruit.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. Well, and there’s, it’s just different standards here.
John Griggs:
It is. I think this state grows, by far, the best fruit. Whether it be apples, cherries, peaches, I think we get it done and right.
Dillon Honcoop:
Why is that?
John Griggs:
The weather. The people growing them, they care. They want their product to be well, and they’ll complain if they don’t get it done right. I mean, I know my family does if the cherry doesn’t… if we’re picking a little green on one day, we’ll say, “Oh, we’re done.” We want them to be good for the consumer. We care about them. That’s what keeps us [in] business.
Dillon Honcoop:
With it being tougher and tougher to find labor and other pressures here, do you think there could be a future where there’s more and more stuff that’s just brought in from other countries?
John Griggs:
There could be, yeah. That’s definitely, I mean, our standards are way different than elsewhere, I can tell you that. I’ve seen some that I’m like, “How is that even possible? I would never do that!”
Dillon Honcoop:
From, like, other countries?
John Griggs:
Yeah, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Like what kind of stuff?
John Griggs:
Like I’ve seen, my dad’s sent me pictures of like apples on the ground, like bare ground, dirt, and they’re selling them like that with a tarp over them. I’m like, if we did that we’d get in a lot of trouble.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, no kidding.
John Griggs:
And we got really strict standards here, not just us but everywhere, and you’ll get bit for it if you don’t.
Dillon Honcoop:
What’s the biggest pressure for the farm? What’s the hardest thing for, like, thinking about the future, to keep it going?
John Griggs:
I’d say labor, mostly. Yeah. Our guys are getting older. I’d say most of our guys are over 45, 50 years old and they’re going to want to go do stuff. And it’s scary but you got to keep doing it, I guess, one way or another. We’ve thought about bringing platforms in, going more mechanical, but they don’t have a picking machine yet. But they’re trying. We just… Efficiency, I guess. Labor, equipment’s not cheap anymore. But yeah, everything, everything’s gone up tenfold.
Dillon Honcoop:
So what do you do, then, to do deal with that? Because you’re saying you’re not getting any more, really, for your product.
John Griggs:
You got to make sure you got the right stuff. Labor, equipment. You got to keep up on equipment more, you’re going to have to put more hours on the already over-houred tractor, you’re going to have to be smart, try to be more efficient. Just think of creative ways to farm now instead of just do the same thing your dad did.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. That doesn’t get it done anymore I know, for sure.
John Griggs:
Sadly.
Dillon Honcoop:
What do you think about the whole organic thing? You guys aren’t doing the organic thing?
John Griggs:
No. Organic, I think it’s getting flooded. The first people that did it, they hit home runs. But we tried to go organic on our pears and we were spraying more then than on our conventional stuff.
Dillon Honcoop:
Wait, your organic?
John Griggs:
Yeah, you’re spraying more on your organic than your conventional. You don’t have the same potency, everything’s like a virus. For insecticides, they’re pretty much a biological virus for the insect, doesn’t affect anybody else. But yeah, we were spraying two times a week instead of once, or sometimes three. If we were getting a lot of coddling moth, or any insect, really, we had to go back through.
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah. I know previously we had April Clayton from up the road on the podcast here and they were doing organic cherries and had to stop for that reason, because the organic products that they were having to use were killing their cherry trees.
John Griggs:
Yeah, oh yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
You’ve seen that?
John Griggs:
I’ve seen that all the time. Organic cherries are, that’s hard, hard, hard to do. Chemicals are totally different. And even right now, our stuff isn’t like it was.
Dillon Honcoop:
I guess people are worried about chemicals being on their fruit.
John Griggs:
Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
What would you tell them?
John Griggs:
I wouldn’t be nervous. I eat fruit right off the tree and I’m fine. But I don’t see it being a big issue, not anymore.
Dillon Honcoop:
Back in the old days.
John Griggs:
Back in the old days, no.
Dillon Honcoop:
So why do you have to do that, I guess, for somebody who’s curious, why do you have to spray anything? Why do the organic people, why do they even have to spray? What are they trying to deal with?
John Griggs:
Keeping pests down. I mean, ou don’t want to be the guy that has a coddling moth, or a cherry fruit fly, which, if you get cherry fruit fly, you’re done with the warehouse. You got to stop.
Dillon Honcoop:
They’ll kick you out and they won’t take your fruit.
John Griggs:
They’ll kick you out. They’ll… “No, sorry.” They’ll even, what they have they already packed, they’ll throw away.
Dillon Honcoop:
Is that probably what leaves little tiny worms in the fruit or something?
John Griggs:
Yeah, it’s a little tiny worm in the cherry.
Dillon Honcoop:
Ugh.
John Griggs:
Yeah. But very few people get that. If they don’t upkeep their orchard, they’re the ones that get it. But you got to spray to keep pests down, you got to spray nutrients on the leaves, you got to get the leaves big. You got to fertilize them, you got to feed the tree. It can’t do it on its own. If it does, it’s going to be a gnarly-looking tree. After a cherry season, the trees, they’ve produced 20, 30 pounds of fruit on their tree, some more. You got to give them some food and put them to bed. Put ’em to sleep.
Dillon Honcoop:
Do they go, like, dormant then? Or what do they…?
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah. They’ll go dormant, they’ll lose all their leaves. Buds will start coming in, they’ll be tight, but they’re just getting ready for the spring.
Dillon Honcoop:
I can tell you love it.
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
Why? Why do you have so much passion for this?
John Griggs:
It’s freedom. I mean, I get to work with my family, I get to help just give product that I’m passionate for. And it’s all I’ve known. I didn’t see myself sitting in an office all day long. But even here, I can be working from 3:00 to God knows when. One time I sprayed 22 hours straight and then had an hour off to sleep and I had to go drive a tractor in the cherries. Yeah. But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I get to see my family. I live on the farm. I’m two minutes away from my grandpa. He’s probably my biggest motivator, biggest to do anything, I’ve lived right next to him for 24 years.
Dillon Honcoop:
What have you learned from him?
John Griggs:
I’ve learned what the varieties are, I’ve learned how he does things, I’ve learned how to tree train. I’ve learned how to plant orchards. I’ve learned what a high density orchard is compared to a medium density, to a low density. I’ve learned how to know when fruit’s ready. Pretty much everything.
Dillon Honcoop:
Being raised in this world, what was it like going to college for that program? It sounds like maybe you could have taught the classes yourself.
John Griggs:
Yeah, it was… I learned some stuff. I had to get something to work out here. I don’t even work out here full-time yet.
Dillon Honcoop:
So what else do you do?
John Griggs:
Inside sales for an ag chem company in east Wenatchee.
Dillon Honcoop:
A lot of farmers have jobs off the farm to keep doing it.
John Griggs:
Yeah. They need to now. You’ll get people working for the DOT in the winter to plow roads. Some of them don’t even… they’re hobby farmers. They’ve got five, 10 acres and they’ll do it, “Well, I got to go prune,” they’ll do it by themselves.
Dillon Honcoop:
Do you hope to one day be entirely on the farm?
John Griggs:
Oh yeah. I hope soon.
Dillon Honcoop:
What will that take?
John Griggs:
My dad, my family’s young. They had me young, so he’s about 18, 19 years older than me. So I’ve got a… and he doesn’t own the orchard fully yet. So, kind of got to wait for that to happen then.
Dillon Honcoop:
Keeping a farm like this in the family is hard if you’re-
John Griggs:
It’s hard, hard. But we got to make it work. I don’t see myself losing this farm, and I’ll do anything to keep it.
Dillon Honcoop:
I’ve asked other people in your situation if they feel a lot of pressure, but it sounds like, to me, it’s not that you feel pressure other than just your own, like you’re passionate about it and want to keep doing it.
John Griggs:
I’ve got to do it.
Dillon Honcoop:
Not because somebody else is telling you to.
John Griggs:
No. My dad told me, “You go do you,” whether it not even be in the farm. He doesn’t care. As long as I’m making a living and doing good in society, I guess.
Dillon Honcoop:
But you’re like, “No, I want to keep this going.”
John Griggs:
Yeah and same with my sister. I mean she worked in the orchard but she was like, “Ugh, I got to do this.” But she liked it and now she wants to be on the marketing side. And in the orchard, too, but. As long as you’re passionate about it, go for it, they say.
Dillon Honcoop:
What would you say to folks in Seattle who are eating [inaudible 00:42:06] fruit from over here, or food from anywhere grown in Washington?
John Griggs:
Know it’s grown with passion. Even if it’s a big two, three thousand-acre farm, I mean, there’s people behind it. You got to know they have families and you’re here providing for them, really, I mean this is their job, their life. They’re just as passionate as I am. Whether they’re in that situation or not, they still do it. Big farms are still owned by families, too. I’m really good friends with big growers and they’re just like us, just two or three times bigger. But they don’t see themselves leaving, they want the small growers still, and everybody helps each other out in the farming. We share people with our neighbors, I mean, I have an uncle that lives right to us that has a 13-acre pear orchard and we come and pick it for him, and he helps us out, too.
Dillon Honcoop:
Can the consumer trust the fruit that they’re buying that’s grown in Washington?
John Griggs:
Absolutely. Know it’s grown with care.
Dillon Honcoop:
What’s your biggest fear with all of this?
John Griggs:
Not being able to do it. That’s a big… disappointing, I guess. I mean, that’s tough. Getting told that you’re done, that’s probably the biggest fear.
Dillon Honcoop:
You remember hard years in the past?
John Griggs:
Oh, yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
What have been the roughest times that you can remember?
John Griggs:
I remember my dad saying, he’s like, “We might not be able to fix this tractor.” Back when, early mid-2000s, I mean that was a tough time for orchards. Even people that had the new varieties were still, “Nobody’s buying our fruit. What do we do?” Well, everybody goes through a tough time. Even the big boys go through times. You can tell.
Dillon Honcoop:
What did that mean for your family during that time? What was that like?
John Griggs:
It brought us close. We were really close already, but we were eating dinners together trying to, “Hey, what do we do? What can I do to make things better?” Even when we owned the packing shed, we were still, “What can we do? Do we pack this variety? Do we say no?” I mean, that’s one of the tough things. No grower wants to be told “no.”
Dillon Honcoop:
Yeah, you just want to keep growing more.
John Griggs:
Yeah they’re like, “We just want to farm.” I mean some people, that’s all they’ve been doing. That’s all my family’s done, but we don’t see it any other way.
Dillon Honcoop:
You hope to have a family and kids one day and have them continue it on into the [future]?
John Griggs:
Yeah, I’d hope so, but I mean I’ll give them option, I mean it’s always here for you. But don’t just abuse it. That’s what I’ve been told.
Dillon Honcoop:
What would abusing it be?
John Griggs:
Oh just kind of, “Oh, I farm but I really don’t work,” “I have got a bunch of free time on my hands and I’m not doing anything.” That’s kind of what I see it as. That’s what my dad’s told me, playing X-Box when I’m 18 years old and, “What are you doing?” “Uh, relaxing.” “Come on, we got to go.” “Oh, no.” Yeah.
Dillon Honcoop:
That’s not typically what the 18-year-old playing X-Box gets told.
John Griggs:
No, they’re like, “Okay, 15 more minutes.” No, it’s, “You’re done right now or else I’ll shut it off.”
Dillon Honcoop:
Well thank you for sharing your story, I appreciate it, and thanks for what you do. I can tell you just put everything you have into producing the fruit that you guys do here.
John Griggs:
Yeah, thank you.
Announcer:
This is the Real Food, Real People podcast. These are the stories of the people who grow your food.
Dillon Honcoop:
Talking with John and hearing that conversation again, now, just makes me want to get back into farming in some ways so much. And I don’t know if it affects other people that way. I think it’s because of my upbringing and growing up on a fruit farm. So much of that stuff just makes sense to me. But in some ways it’s part of me that’s sort of dormant, I guess.
Dillon Honcoop:
This is the Real Food, Real People podcast. I’m Dillon Honcoop, and this is kind of documenting my journeys around Washington State to get to know the real people behind our food. I loved talking with John. We’ve got a lot of really cool conversations coming up. And we really would appreciate a follow on Instagram, on Facebook, if that’s what you like to do, or on Twitter, whatever your preference is, or all of the above.
Dillon Honcoop:
Also, if you could subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify or whatever platform you prefer, that would really help us, too. And share these episodes, we’re trying to bring more people into the conversation and get the word out that farmers here in Washington are real people, too, and I think it’s important that we get to know them and understand the realities that they face, because we want to keep farming and farmers and farm land here in our state. And making sure that farmers have a face is, I think, important.
Dillon Honcoop:
Again, this is the Real Food, Real People podcast. Subscribe, follow us on social media, and if you want to reach out directly to me, dillon@realfoodrealpeople.org is my email address.
Announcer:
The Real Food, Real People podcast is sponsored in part by Save Family Farming, giving a voice to Washington’s farm families. Find them online at savefamilyfarming.org.