The Rural Voice, 1987-08, Page 21THE LASSALINE ORCHARD:
HARVESTING THE REWARDS OF
EFFICIENT AND FLEXIBLE MANAGEMENT
Huron County boasts a
number of fruit growers,
and one of the best known
in the Goderich area is the
Lassaline farm. Lawrence Lassaline,
together with his wife, Leslie, and
their three young children, took over
the 240 acres in 1983. Apples are
their largest crop, covering 60 acres,
and they are supplemented by 8 acres
of peaches and a few acres of plums,
pears, and cherries.
Orchards are a year-round job,
the Lassalines note, and harvesting
accounts for only a quarter of the man-
hours worked. But the harvest is
labour-intensive, and the Lassalines
employ up to 30 workers at peak
times. "Labour is getting to be a
problem in our industry," Lawrence
says. "Finding enough people willing
to work is getting more and more
difficult each year."
Workers are found through
advertisements in local newspapers,
word of mouth, and Canada Man-
power. Because of a shortage of local
labour, the Lassalines will be employ-
ing two Jamaicans and several out -of -
province workers this year through
Canada Manpower. Until this year,
the Lassalines could not employ any
non -Canadian workers. By law, only
farmers with a history of employing
non -Canadians could obtain workers
each year. But that law was recently
altered. Although Lawrence says he
would prefer to employ Canadians, he
also expects to employ more non -
Canadians in the years to come if the
labour shortage continues.
One of the major changes in fruit
farming in recent decades has been the
transition from standard to semi -dwarf
trees. Before the 1950s, the apple
industry in Ontario was based entirely
on the standard tree. Since the mid-
1950s, the number of trees on size -
controlling rootstocks in Ontario has
by Iris Brown
The Lassalines hire up to 30 workers at peak season.
grown steadily. The latest tree census
figures indicate that in 1981, 45 per
cent of bearing and 36 per cent of non-
bearing (one to five-year-old) apple
trees were size -controlling rootstocks.
Smaller trees make for much more
efficient orchard management, require
lest costly equipment, and allow more
harvesting from the ground, which
increases harvesting efficiency. The
expense of pest control is lowered, and
smaller trees also tend to have less of
the fruiting canopy under shade. For
this reason, the smaller tree produces
more fruit in the high-grade classes.
An orchard of size -controlled
trees, however, is less tolerant of error,
and an efficient orchard -management
program is essential to the success of
dwarf trees.
The Lassaline orchard was origi-
nally 15 acres of standard trees. The
first size -controlled trees planted were
the semi -dwarf M-106. Since that
time, the Lassalines have been plant-
ing the M-26, a dwarf tree which
crops early and is highly productive.
Half of the apple crop is now harvest-
ed from the M-26 trees.
M-26 as a rootstock has been
quite popular in Ontario in the past 10
years, and now accounts for about 40
per cent of all size -controlled trees in
the province. With the M-26, the
Lassalines are able to harvest 800
bushels of Maclntosh apples per acre.
The dwarf tree is definitely the way
of the future for fruit growers.
The Lassalines buy their trees
from a supplier in Leamington. Two
AUGUST 1987 19