Local news

Valley orchards go into apple season short on pickers

Growers from Belchertown to Shelburne say visa paperwork ran late again, and the early Galas will not wait.

By Priya Chandrasekhar · July 28, 2026

Sawmill Hill Orchards in Belchertown expected 34 pickers for the first week of August. It has 19. The rest are stuck somewhere in the H-2A visa process, and owner Frank Mulvehill said he has stopped guessing when they will land.

Growers across the valley are telling the same story going into a season that starts whether the crew does or not. The early Galas at Sawmill Hill color up around August 12. They hold on the tree for about ten days after that and then they drop.

"An apple does not care about paperwork," Mulvehill said. "I have 62 acres of Gala and Ginger Gold and I have got about half the hands I need for it. Some of that fruit is going to hit the ground and I already know which blocks."

Applications in on time, workers not

The H-2A program lets farms bring in seasonal workers from outside the country when they can prove they could not hire locally. Growers file with the state, then the federal labor department, then the consulate handles the visas. The whole thing is supposed to run about 75 days.

Mulvehill filed February 4 for an August 5 start. His certification came through June 19, which is late but survivable. The consulate appointments for eleven of his workers were pushed twice, first to July 22 and then to August 11, six days after they were supposed to be picking.

The Hampshire County Growers Association surveyed 31 member orchards in early July. Twenty-three said they were short at least a fifth of the crew they had certified. Six said they were short more than half. Association director Nell Ostrowski said the pattern is now four seasons old.

"Every year we are told it was a backlog and every year it is a backlog again," Ostrowski said. "At some point a thing that happens four years running is not a backlog, it is the schedule."

What short crews actually cost

A good picker fills roughly 90 bushels a day in a well-set Gala block. At Sawmill Hill, a crew of 34 clears the early varieties in eleven days. A crew of 19 needs about twenty, and the fruit does not wait twenty.

Mulvehill put his likely loss at 4,000 to 6,000 bushels. Wholesale is running about $22 a bushel this year, so call it $110,000 on the low end.

Up in Shelburne, Arden Beecroft farms 41 acres of Macoun, Cortland and Honeycrisp with her brother and had five of her nine certified workers arrive on time. She said the Honeycrisp is the piece that keeps her up.

"Honeycrisp bruises if you look at it wrong, so you cannot rush a crew through it and you cannot put untrained people on it," Beecroft said. "I would rather leave it hanging than have it come off wrong and rot in the bin in October. That is the choice I am making this year and it is a stupid choice to have to make."

Nobody is hiring locally instead

The obvious question gets the same answer at every farm gate. Beecroft advertised for three weeks in June at $17.20 an hour, the adverse effect wage rate the program requires, and got four local applicants. Two came for a day. One lasted until Thursday.

"It is bending at the waist for nine hours in the sun on a ladder, and it is piecework speed," she said. "College kids will do the farm store. They will not do the ladder."

Efrain Castellanos has picked at Sawmill Hill for eleven seasons and got through on time this year. He said the short crew changes the days for everyone who did make it.

"We are doing eleven, twelve hours instead of nine, and the blocks are further apart because we are chasing the ripe ones," Castellanos said. "The money is fine. I am here for the money. But I have five guys from my town who are still sitting at home with their bags packed, and they are losing the whole season."

The pick-your-own math

Several orchards are widening pick-your-own hours to move fruit the crews cannot get to. Sawmill Hill will open its Gala blocks to the public on August 15, two weeks earlier than usual, at $32 a half bushel. Two Hadley farms are doing the same thing.

It helps at the margin. Ostrowski said pick-your-own moves maybe 8 percent of a mid-sized orchard's crop in a normal year, and pushing it hard might get that to 12. It does not cover a missing crew, and a public in the rows breaks more limbs than a trained picker does.

Dates worth writing down

Ginger Gold and Gala open at most valley orchards around August 15. Macoun and Cortland come in early to mid September. Honeycrisp runs mid September into early October, and Ostrowski said to expect it to be both shorter and pricier this year, probably $3.29 a pound at the farm stands against $2.79 last fall.

The growers association meets Wednesday, August 5, at 7 p.m. at the Belchertown grange hall on North Main Street. Ostrowski said the agenda is the visa timeline and what a letter from all 31 farms might accomplish, which she guesses is not much, and which they are writing anyway.

Mulvehill will be there. He said he will be picking until six and then he will drive over.