Specialty Crop Tour for Young Growers - Heller Orchards & Schwalm Farms — Research — Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences

April 2013

Clair Kauffman, Young Grower Alliance

On April 2, a small group of Young Grower Alliance (YGA) members assembled for a spring tour. As usual, I was educated and inspired by the tour and by the chance to share stories and ideas.

Our first stop was Heller Orchards in Wapwallopen, PA. Greg Heller, whose grandfather once farmed the same land, was our tour guide. Heller Orchards has a long history of dwarf apple plantings. Greg's father was possibly the first grower in the U.S. to plant M9 rootstocks in 1956.

The Hellers grow peaches, apples, pears, and cherries and market the fruit about 50/50 wholesale and retail. With the recent purchase of some new acreage, Greg has been able to plant quite a few more trees on an impressive array of intensive training systems and rootstocks. His most intensive planting is on 32 inch spacing in the row. The entire orchard is either irrigated or has access to irrigation water.

Heller's recently purchased a Munckhof Pluk-O-Trak harvesting machine. The Pluk-O-Trak doubles as an orchard platform with adaptability for a variety of orchard tasks. Greg has high hopes that it will improve labor efficiency and enable him to hire only local workers.

For lunch, we headed to Schwalm Farms in Hegins, PA. Our tour guide, Andrew Schwalm, served up some impressive pork barbecue made with his own recipe.

Schwalm Farms was purchased by Andrew's grandfather and is now operated by three generations of Schwalms. They raise apples, peaches, pears, corn, and soybeans. Currently, they are expanding their tree fruit acreage with trees and transitioning to more intensive plantings. They sell almost all of their crops wholesale.

A significant portion of our tour was spent looking at their staggering 10 acres of asparagus. Andrew built his own asparagus washer/cutter and two harvesting machines. The harvest machine is a gas-powered machine that straddles the row and is operated by foot pedals to allow a person to both operate the machine and cut asparagus with both hands. Andrew would like to build a third machine and modify his two existing machines to be run with electric motors.

Andrew also shared with the group his positive experience with GPS technology for yield monitoring and planting.

Thanks to all who made this tour possible!

Oldest block at Heller Orchards originally of Reds and Goldens

Controlling tree vigor can be a challenge in these soils so this block of HoneyCrisp, grafted onto the root stocks of the prior trees, is kept in check with periodic girdling.

Controlled girdling

View across Heller Orchards

Giving their new Munckhof Pluk-O-Trak a try

The guys have gotten into a good rhythm of sizing and attaching vertical support wires to the trellis assisted by this new piece of machinery for the farm. The platform drives and steers autonomously so they can focus on their task.

Gala on a Tatura trellis is one example of several innovative systems the Hellers are using.

Andrew Schwalm shows us their newest asparagus field.

Both Andrew and his uncle emphasize the importance of taking the extra time for proper field preparation. Soil compaction from harvest machinery can negatively affect the crowns so only lightweight equipment is used on the fields.

Apart from asparagus, Schwalm Farms is diversified into tree fruits, corn and soybeans.

The Schwalms are transitioning into more tree fruit. Visible here are older plantings of pears and peaches.

Asparagus Harvest Assist

Andrew Schwalm designed and built this aid for cutting asparagus. It allows easy access to the stalks while in a more comfortable position. He's working on version 2.0 which will include an electric motor and other improvements.