DUETTE -- Felicia Tappan of Duette was up at 5 a.m. one day this week to drive a load of organic blueberries to a processing plant in Winter Haven. She had no problem with the early hour. Tappan was happy to have been able to just get her niche crop harvested given the current shortage of farm labor.
Initially, she was only able to find a crew of six to harvest the berries on her Vintage Organic Acres farm at 30902 Taylor Grade Road.
“It’s real intense work, even though it’s only 3 1/2 acres,” Tappan said.
Pickers have to be able to sort by color and size, and the berries are picked one at a time below waist level.
In the quest for farm labor, her foreman went door to door in Wimauma, while Tappan beat the bushes in Duette, checking Social Security cards and photo IDs to come up with 40 legal workers.
She was able to avert having to throw her field open to U-pickers to keep the prized berries from going to waste.
It’s not a problem unique to Vintage Organic Acres.
Hunsader Farms in East Manatee had to open its fields to the public because there weren’t enough workers to do the back-breaking work.
“Last year we did this because the price for a 25-pound bucket of tomatoes on the wholesale market was only three or four dollars so it didn’t make economic sense to pick,” co-owner David Hunsader previously told the Bradenton Herald. “This year the price is good, about $14 for a bucket, but we can’t find enough labor to pick them.”
Tappan, Hunsader, and other growers understand the problem with undocumented workers in the United States but would like to see a workable solution to the farm labor shortage.
“It’s a hot topic, but we were all immigrants at one time,” Tappan said. “As farmers we shouldn’t have to plant our crops around these kind of issues. We’re feeding the world.”
Tappan and her husband, Wade, have lived in Duette since 1987, and know full well the challenges of farming, even when labor is plentiful.
The Tappans planted their first blueberries in 2007 on former orange grove land. They plowed under the diseased orange trees and started over, planting the blueberries in 40 semi-tractor loads of pine bark.
They had also operated a tree farm on the property for 20 years, but that business went into a tailspin after the disastrous hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, and a collapse of the market.
“It got to the point that it wasn’t worth taking the equipment out,” Felicia Tappan said.
Due to the riskiness of the business, Wade Tappan has a job off the farm. He works at Mote Marine’s aquaculture project in eastern Sarasota County, raising sturgeon.
Each year, however, the maturing blueberry bushes improve their yield and at the height of the season, pickers were collecting 1,200 pounds of berries three times a week.
“Next year, we expect to double that,” Tappan said.For the next two weeks, she will allow U-pickers into her field, but she says call first at (941) 920-1801 before making the long drive.
Neighbor Betty Stewart said she is impressed with how hard Felicia Tappan works and how she keeps reinventing herself.
“We have seen her working on her tractor and whatever else needs to be done. She’s not afraid to tackle anything,” Stewart said.
