A Doubly Difficult Apple to Pluck

In orchards throughout New England, the Mclntosh, Red Delicious, Northern Spy and Cortland apples have been ripe for six weeks, ready to be trucked to markets round the country or sold to nearby roadside stands. Last week as the harvest drew to an end, growers were hard pressed to gather in their crop--worth more than $50 million to them--before the fruit started spoiling and dropping to the ground. The weather and the Federal Government had, in the Northeastern farmers' view, conspired to make this a doubly difficult year. A snowstorm last spring destroyed blossoms. Heavy rains in September made picking nearly impossible and knocked an estimated 10% of the crop from the trees. At harvest time the growers had trouble getting crews of pickers into the orchards. Even though few Americans are willing to do the work, the U.S. Department of Labor has in recent years made it harder to hire foreign pickers, arguing that farmers should instead provide jobs for unemployed American citizens. After a legal battle with Washington, the New England growers got permission to import some 1,500 Jamaicans and Canadians just in time to bring in the crop at many of the orchards. TIME'S Judy Jarvis visited the foreign pickers on the job and sent this report:

In the ramshackle one-story barracks near Bolton, Mass., 16 Jamaicans relax after their ten-hour day in the orchards. Some sip canned Budweiser as they sit on a steel-framed bed watching The Rookies on TV. Others play dominoes or listen to country music blaring from a stereo radio. In the steamy kitchen, its walls painted a drab military gray, chicken soup with dumplings, sea In the ramshackle one-story bar racks near Bolton, Mass., 16 Jamaicans relax after their ten-hour day in the orchards. Some sip canned Budweiser as they sit on a steel-framed bed watching The Rookies on TV. Others play dominoes or listen to country music blaring from a stereo radio. In the steamy kitchen, its walls painted a drab military gray, chicken soup with dumplings, seasoned rice, beans and peas simmer on a stove and fill the barracks with on a stove and fill the barracks with what for these men are the smells of home. No one seems to mind that the windows have been hastily boarded up after local kids threw bottles through them. The weather is unseasonably mild, and the men know they will be heading south before chill drafts begin whipping through the wooden structure.

Despite the long days and spare quarters, the Jamaicans seem to enjoy their stint at Bolton. For Trevor Brown, 20, a native of Portland, Jamaica, apple picking has been a steady and therefore welcome source of income for the past four years. At home, Brown guides tourists on a bamboo raft down the Rio Grande near Port Antonio, earning as much as $35 a day. But the tourist trade is unpredictable, so in the slack fall season he flies to Miami and from there travels by bus to New England, where he can make up to $50 a day picking apples. Wilbert Hutchinson, 28, a truck farmer back home, says he comes to New England "just to have a nice time. I like to watch Wonder Woman." And for Clinton Duncan, 38, who has a wife and seven children home in Kingston, "It's just good to leave your country every now and then."

Five miles from Bolton, in Harvard, Mass., Grower William Hermann relies on Canadians to pick his crop of 100,000 bushels of apples off 9,000 trees. Many are Nova Scotia lobstermen and clam diggers who go south after their own season ends on July 30. They are attracted as much by the change in scenery and milder weather as by the money. John Brannen, 27, of Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, says he traded in his lobster pot for an apple bucket "to have a little holiday." He sends home $125 a week to his wife and child. Unlike the Jamaicans, who leave their families behind and stay mostly to themselves during their stint in the U.S., the Canadians sometimes bring their wives down to a motel near the orchards for week-long visits, and are known as gregarious customers at local bars.

For all their apparent good cheer, Canadians and Jamaicans alike have an arduous and demanding job. Before the men can get to the apples, they must maneuver into place cumbersome wooden ladders that stretch up to 24 ft. and weigh 30 Ibs. The pickers have to remove the apples gently from the trees so as not to bruise them. They place, not drop, each fruit into a bucket suspended in front of them by shoulder harnesses. Once filled, a bucket weighs up to 35 Ibs. Using both hands to pick, experienced workers balance themselves on their perch by gripping the rungs of the ladder with their knees.

The U.S. Labor Department has increased its efforts to keep all foreigners out of the orchards. This year, according to Washington Attorney S. Steven Karalekas, who represents a group of apple growers from ten East Coast states, the growers had to appear before five district courts in five states, two U.S. courts of appeals and Supreme Court Justice William Brennan before they finally got approval to bring in foreign labor.

The Federal Government has insisted that the orchard owners seek American workers, using imported labor only as a last resort. The growers argue that even past intensive recruiting programs in inner-city neighborhoods such as Harlem in New York City and Roxbury in Boston, as well as among the unemployed in Vermont, failed to attract nearly enough qualified pickers. In Harlem, a $10,000 recruitment drive mounted by the Department of Labor last year attracted only 75 job applicants. Only 15 reported to work --and all of them quit within a week.

Says Grower Hermann: "I think it's become a case of harassment. The Labor people have the facts: there just aren't enough Americans willing and qualified to pick apples." Or as Bolton Orchard Owner Robert Davis complains, "We know how to get the apples off. We just want the right to get them off."

The pickers themselves are feeling anything but harassed now that the harvest season is coming to an end. As they bring in the last of the crop, each can count on being about $1,500 richer. In the barracks at the Bolton orchards, the Jamaicans celebrate the end of the harvest by passing around a bottle of blackberry brandy, a favorite that they break out only on rare occasions. Vernon Spaulding, 44, is looking forward to moving south. But he won't get home to Paredon, Jamaica, where he raises goats, until next March. This year, as he has done for the past ten years, he will spend the winter in Florida cutting sugar cane --backbreaking ground-level work that makes the loftier labor of apple picking seem easy by comparison.

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