Door County Almanak – The Hill Orchard

“You’ll need a tractor, prayer, shaker—a new one can cost as much as $80,000—a disk or a drag,” Lyle continued. “And a hole digger for planting trees,” Jean added. Uncle Ray noted that you can hire other orchard growers to perform these services for you, but then you make no profit. “You have to have a big outfit and do all the work yourself to make any money.”

“And what people outside the orchard business can’t understand,” Jean laughed, “is that we sell cherries without knowing what we will be getting from the crop.”

When you have a good crop, the mice, rabbits, and deer are foes to the orchard during the winter, according to Lyle, and the birds the bane of the cherries during the summer.

And don’t forget the weather, mentioned uncle Ray, recalling 1936 when Lake Michigan froze over and the orchard growers had to survive a severe winter kill. Every year, there is the danger of frost during that critical water stage a week before the cherry blossoms open. A still, foggy spell during peak cherry bloom can mean poor pollination. Once the fruit has set on the trees, there is the worry of wind damage.

Together, Lyle, Jean, and Uncle Ray listed the pestilences which plague orchards: yellow leaf, brown plague rot, lesser peach tree borer, June drop,.

The three orchard authorities agreed laughingly that people who don’t have cherries seem to know the most about the effect of a frost, the abundance of a crop, or the price which will be paid. The armchair cherry experts alternate between sending the cherry men to the poorhouse and to easy street.

In 1982, the price of cherries feel from the preceding season’s 40-some cents a pound to 13-and-one-half cents. Lyle Hill blamed this phenomenon in part on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s prediction of a bumper cherry harvest. While the crop did not materialize, brokers responded as if it had with exceptionally low price offers. Unfortunately, the cherry grower has no choice but to stay with cherries. Farmers may plant corn the next year if soybeans do poorly; however, an orchardman has a multi-year investment in the trees he plants and is always looking several seasons down the road.

A small crop, such as the 1983 harvest brought 50 cents per pound. Conversely, last summer’s bountiful picking only commanded a mid-20s figure.

“During a good year, though, “Uncle Ray pointed out, “orchard growers can spend the winter in Bermuda, unlike dairy farmers who have to work year-round.”

“We’ve never spent the winter in Bermuda, Uncle,” Jean laughed.

On a poor year, like 1982, we hope to at least get across the Brussels Hill,” Lyle laughed with her.

“You have to like it,” Uncle Ray repeated,” to be an orchard grower.”

The Hills and Uncle Ray Nordeen obviously enjoy the orchard business. Jean proudly mentions that she has never missed a cherry harvest since she was a little girl. She smiled when she remembered that her mother could pick 103 pails of cherries a day, after taking time off to fix three meals for the other pickers. Even after going away to college, where she met Lyle in the registration online on the first day of school and married him promptly after graduation for years later, she still came home summers to pick cherries.

However, Jean’s life has not been entirely devoted to cherries. After her marriage, she taught second grade in Michigan. Following her return to Northern Door, Jean worked as a teacher in the program for the children of migrant workers. Then during the 1970s, she was Director of the Peninsula Day Nursery.

Lyle, on the other hand, wasn’t bitten by the orchard bug until he met Jean and came with her to the Door Peninsula during the summers. In the fall of 1968, they moved to Northern Door permanently, raising three children: Beth, a senior at University of Wisconsin/Eau Claire; Jody, a sophomore at Bethel College/Minnesota; and Randy, a seventh-grader at Gibraltar. The comfortable Hill household rests appropriately atop a hill on Scandia Road just outside of Sister Bay.

Until a year ago, Lyle worked as a teacher, and for a time as a principal at a junior high at Sturgeon Bay. While he enjoyed education, commuting 70 miles round trip daily was a grind. But even more rigorous were the demands of two full-time jobs. Summer presented no problem, but the pruning, planting and fertilizing of spring had to fall primarily on the shoulders of Jean, both as a supervisor of hired hands and as a chief worker herself. The fall harvest again conflicted with the start of school.

But the Hill Orchard consists predominantly of cherries with the August harvest occurring during summer vacation, Lyle was able to lead a double life for a decade and a half.

Presently, approximately 70 acres are planted to cherries. Another 16 are devoted to apples, mostly McIntosh, Cortlands, and Delicious, although the Hills grow other varieties of apples in lesser amounts, along with apricots, plums, pears, and recently grapes.

The Hill children are a big help with the orchard, especially the eldest, Beth, who enjoys orchard work the most of all. She has helped with nearly every aspect of the work, including operating the forklift and shakers. Jody does not take as naturally to the orchard, but willingly does her share. Randy, while still young for orchard work, is learning to do his part. During the cherry season, for example, he is expected to pick a certain number of pails of cherries each day and is beginning to drive tractor and forklift.

Jean Hill likes the family togetherness demanded by the orchard. The work is seasonal and intense. The times that are optimum for fertilizing or planting or harvesting are relatively short, and the hours that must be worked when the conditions are right are long. Subsequently, the kids are expected to pitch in.

Some college students, as well as friends and neighbors, have worked picking cherries season after season. In many ways, the harvest becomes a reunion. In fact, a couple of summer ago, a picker from over four decades past returned with his family “to see if I was dead or not,” Uncle Ray laughed, and to show his children where he had picked cherries as a young man.

Cherry picking back in the days when there were movers rather than shakers in the orchards was accomplished by migrant labor performing the tasks now completed by automation. The Hills and Uncle Ray recall those times. Uncle Ray remembered Oneida Indians coming to pick cherries in the 1940s, pitching their tents in the orchards and proudly displaying their beadwork. One year during World War II, Jamaicans worked the orchards; only working age men came into this country, no families. Prisoners of war were available as workers at this time, too. In the 1950s and 1960s, the pickers were primary Mexicans and Southern Blacks.

During this later period, Ray Zimmerman served as a state-funded coordinator for the utilization of migrant workers in the orchards. His agency functioned as a clearinghouse for orchard growers looking for labor and for the recruiters who brought buses of workers from the South.

Jean recalled the excitement of preparing for the arrival of the cherry pickers. When she was a child, it was her job to fill with straw the tickets which would serve as mattresses in the workers’ quarters. The buildings had to be thoroughly cleaned, the curtains and bedding laundered, and everything set in readiness for the arrival of the migrants.

Many of the same workers came back year after year, and quite naturally friendships developed between the orchard owner’s families and the migrant workers. Lyle recalled fondly one worker who was also a cropland farmer in the South. He was called Blackie by owners and workers alike. “Blackie was considered to be really black, even by the other Blacks,” Lyle offered by way of apology for what seems by modern sensibilities an insensitive nickname. Blackie picked a predictable six pails per hour, regardless of the time of day or season. Most good pickers filled only four or five pails per hour.

The secret to efficient picking, Jean explained, is to use fingers independently to pick cherries without raking them. The cherries cannot be mashed, but a rapid picker will let the cherries fall into the pail, rather than placing them one by one. She pantomimed the technique.

Lyle remembered the singing of the Black workers who began the workday at five or five-thirty in the morning. The clear voices penetrated the foggy peninsula dawn, working through endless improvisations based on familiar songs.

Cool summer days seemed frigid to the pickers from the Deep South. They bundled up, much as Northerners dress for winter, and sometimes even built fires for warmth in the orchard. Having never seen a Wisconsin winter, the workers were incredulous when told that Green Bay froze over each winter.

Now that the cherry picking days belong to the past, it is easy to romanticize that era. However, Ray Nordeen is quick to point out that those times were not golden in every respect. A recruiter might promise 40 pickers, only to report to the grower later that the workers had left on a different bus and would not be available after all. Or the workers might be held up at another harvest and arrive too late for the cherries.

Although the six-week season achieved through a balance of early Richmond and later Montmorency cherries was longer than the present two-week harvest of Montmorencies alone, time was still of the essence. Not all workers were as industrious as the fabled Blackie. Some were reluctant to rise and begin the day’s work. Others were sluggish once they were in the orchard. And a few practiced deceit, filling the bottoms of their pails with leaves or denting the pail bottoms upward to make them fill more quickly, or punching their own work cars to falsify the number of pails they had picked.

Several factors combined to end the era of the cherry picker. The most obvious was the introduction of mechanization to the harvest in the mid-’60s. Government regulations concerning hosing for migrant workers and minimum wages increased the cost of manual labor of the owners. “We almost had to build motels for the workers!” Uncle Ray exclaimed. Still another factor was the incompatibility of migrant workers and tourists.

But were things better in the good old days? “Not necessarily,” said Lyle Hill. “It’s a tradeoff. There is a loss of the personal aspects of the harvest and a lot of the color surrounding the industry. But on the other hand, modern growers are financially better off. They don’t have to worry about strikes or unreliable workers.”

One local grower, Willard Kramer, whose orchard is located just outside of Sister Bay, still hand picks cherries an occasionally employs a few migrant workers. But apart from his small operation, the only vestige of the bygone era of the cherry picker is the occasional appearance of a rundown row of bunkhouses lingering apart from the other buildings on a mechanized modern orchard. Many of these old buildings have become shabby with neglect, paint peeling, windows broken, spending their final year as storage sheds.

The cherry limb shaker was the first to nudge aside the pickers. The mechanism was attached to a major branch of the tree, and the resulting vibrations shook the ripened cherries free to fall on the waiting canvases. Each tree had to be shaken three or four times, depending upon the number of major scaffold limbs.

Harvey Haen developed a limb shaker with two wrap-around wings in his shop in Egg Harbor. About a dozen of the custom-made shakers were completed, and in a sense having become collectors’ items. Lyle Hill had one of the machines.

The shakers presently used are attached to the trunk of the cherry tree and complete the operation with only one shaking. These machines tend to be one of two different types: One sort is the double-inched plane shaker. Here, two machines are used: One is a slanted bed of canvas with a vibrating mechanism which fits under half of the tree; the complementary machine consists only of a canvas bed which fits under the other half.

The second type of shaker is the roll-out sort. In this instance, a single machine has two wings which roll out, forming a giant canvas letter “U,” enfolding the tree trunk in the center. Again, the tree is vibrating and the falling cherries caught on canvas beds.

The one-man harvester represents the latest trend in mechanization or larger growers. Several of these machines are in operation in the county, and, according to Lyle Hill, are the wave of the future.

The cherry orchard business has not only become mechanized, but it has truly become an industry. Nearly gone are the four- to six-acre orchards of the past, tucked away on some unproductive corner of the farm. With every year, the orchards become larger and fewer, an observable trend in every branch of agriculture.

And not only have the remaining orchards expanded, but they have formed corporations for processing their own cherries, rather than selling them to middlemen as in the past. The Hill orchard joined with four other growers in 1980 to form the Northern Door Cherry Corporation, located not far from Baileys Harbor. In fact, all of the processing plants in Door County are now grower owned. While in the past cherries were hot packed, much as vegetables are still processed in canning factories about the state, most cherries today are pitted and then frozen, either sugared or unsugared, a much simpler procedure. Still, the Northern Door Cherry Corporation employs 30 workers per shift each season to man the factory. (Electronic cherry sorters will reduce the need for manpower in the future.)

The Northern Door Cherry Corporation in turn belongs to a marketing cooperative, Cherry Central. Located in Michigan, the cooperative services several processing plants and distributes fruit products under the Wilderness label, found on the shelves of most Midwestern grocery stores.

The Hills are also members of the Wisconsin Red Tart Cherry Institute, an organization which promotes consumer usage of cherry products, sponsors research, and conducts legislative lobbying. The consumer tends to think of cherries only terms of cherry pie, a confection avoided by weight-conscious Americans. Non-fattening and non-dessert uses of cherries abound, if only the consumers were aware of them.

The Hill family has certainly done its part to promote the cherry industry. Jody Hill reigned as 1983-84 Wisconsin Cherry Princess. In addition to her parade appearances, Jody met the governor, introducing him to cherry products from Door County, and spoke to state legislature, thanking them for their support of a bill favorable to orchardmen.

Although the Hill orchard has an ongoing expansion program that involves planting an additional 500 cherry trees each year, the operation is by no means an impersonal agribusiness enterprise. While the cherries are sold through a corporation, the other fruit is marketed traditionally. Many of the Hill apples are sold locally from the orchard, although the Hills do not maintain a salesroom as such but rely on word of mouth and local newspaper advertising. In addition, the Hills retail apples in Northeastern Wisconsin cities across the bay, selling them from a truck.

“Many people think fruit tastes better when it is grown here on the peninsula,” Jean said, “Maybe because of the limestone,” Uncle Ray explained. It could be,” Jean agreed. “But we let the apples ripen on the trees, and that makes a real difference. People say to me, ‘Apples just don’t taste as good when they come from a store.’”

Lyle pointed out that some large orchards, the ones that market to grocery chains, store their apples in refrigerated warehouses with carefully controlled atmosphere of carbon dioxide. While the apples may be stored for long periods of time, they don’t go through the natural breaking down process which occurs after harvest, a mellowing that improves the taste of the apples. Hence, the grocery store apples tend to be very crisp but appear to have less flavor.

The pears, plums, and apricots are marketed primarily by subscription lists. “I’m at the top of the list for apricots,” one acquaintance boasted to me, “because I’ve been on it for more than 10 years.” Once you have your name on the list, Jean calls you when your fruit is picked.

But the aspect of the Hill Orchard operation which makes it most unique is its personality. Uncle Ray Nordeen cautioned me not to go into the orchard business for the money, and money is not the prime motivating factor with the Hills. For them, orchard growing is a way of life, a lifestyle that for Jean extends back to her earliest memories. It is an operation that brings the family together to work with a common goal, the same spirit which bound pioneer farm families together. The children learn a sense of responsibility, the success of the orchard depends upon their contribution.

Jean’s hand-picking crews which follow the cherry shakers and harvest young trees are in the tradition of husking bees and threshing crews. Every year, the same friends and neighbors come to help with the harvest, resulting in a social occasion as well as an economic venture. The practice seems fitting considering the rich folklore surrounding cherries. Who can eat cherry pie without thinking of either George Washington or Billy Boy?

Above all, the Hills are sensitive to the beauty and the bounty of the orchards. “Every year, we still take pictures,” Jean said, spreading photos before me on the kitchen table of cherry trees in bloom, cherry trees loaded with fruit, family members working in the harvest.” “Yes, Lyle laughed, “each year we herd grandparents, kids, everyone down into the orchard to have their pictures taken next to the cherry blossoms, standing on a carpet of yellow dandelion blooms.” “I go out in the orchard and stand and stare and stare,” Jean said. “Each year I marvel anew at God’s creation.”

“You have to like it to stay in the orchard business,” said Uncle Ray again.

—Gary Jones

In the early 1980s, Kevin Wade Combes and Fred Johnson conceived the idea for a “…new journal for published authors/poets, as well as yet-to-be-discovered talents.” The result was the Door County Almanak series, published by The Dragonsbreath Press, which was ultimately issued in five editions over the next ten years. With the exception of No. 1, each Almanak had an overall theme, which they each cover “in considerable detail and from many different angles,” as noted by Wisconsin rare book dealer Charlie Calkins. The edition themes are — No. 1: general Door County topics; No. 2: Orchards; No. 3: Commercial Fishing; No. 4: Farms; No. 5: Tourism/Resorts/Transportation. The Almanak series has been out-of-print for almost 20 years, but is still available in limited quantities from both Passtimes Books, downtown Sister Bay, at the corner of Mill Rd. & Hwy 42, 920.854.2127; and from Charlie Calkins, The Badger Bibliophile, Olde Orchard Antique Mall, Egg Harbor, 262.547.6572, wibooks@yahoo.com.