THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 5, 1996 TAG: 9607050141
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PAINTER LENGTH: 78 lines
Dusty cucumbers, straight from the field, clatter off the truck and onto a noisy conveyor belt. They bounce along the belt into cleaning and waxing machines that work like miniature car washes. Water sprays and floppy rolling brushes coat a continuous stream of vegetables with edible wax.
The cucumbers pop out onto another conveyor, shiny clean and bright green. Then a line of seasonal workers sorts the rolling cukes by size, tossing bad ones over their shoulders. The good vegetables are boxed and loaded onto trucks.
Two men work steadily making new boxes. The grizzled foreman pokes a board under one conveyor belt to clean it, rakes debris from the washer, then ladles wax into the waxer.
``This is a small, old-fashioned packing house,'' said Jack Duer, owner of the operation. ``It doesn't owe the bank anything.''
Grocery stores across Hampton Roads stock their produce shelves with the help of Eastern Shore vegetable growers and brokers like Duer, said Bill Mapp. Mapp is regional marketing manager for southeast Virginia with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
``In season, the bulk of their vegetables come from the Eastern Shore, the items we produce,'' he said.
That's good for Hampton Roads consumers. It means their vegetables, grown nearby, are fresher.
``What's in the stores today was probably in the field yesterday,'' said Mapp.
In 1992 - the last year for which Mapp had figures - Virginia ranked second in the nation for cucumber production, and third for tomatoes and summer potatoes. Most of that produce was grown in Accomack and Northampton counties.
Accomack was by far the largest tomato and cucumber growing county in Virginia, with Northampton second in both. Accomack County also ranks first in the state for wheat and soybean production.
Big crops like this pump major money into the local economy. In 1994, Eastern Shore farmers shipped $47.5 million in tomatoes, $21.2 million in potatoes and $9.1 million in cucumbers. With wheat crops bringing high prices this year, and thousands of acres of ripening soybeans, agriculture is easily the Shore's top-grossing industry.
``It's what pays the bills,'' said Mapp. Vegetable farming may be profitable, but it's not easy, he added.
``One does not farm by the seat of his pants,'' said Mapp. ``He farms by computer and skill. It's a very high-tech industry.''
A pivot point for area vegetable growers is the Eastern Shore Farmers' Market. The $2.4 million facility houses three brokers who buy produce from small farmers who otherwise would have difficulty getting their crops to market.
The market's coolers are stacked high with boxes of yellow wax beans, green beans and yellow squash. Forklifts load pallets of peppers and cucumbers onto trucks. In the afternoon, small-yield farmers arrive with their harvests in pickups, and the process begins again.
Vegetables flow in and out of the market, a stream of edibles destined for shelves in Canada and the Eastern Seaboard. When farmers start picking tomatoes in the next few weeks, up to 200 tractor-trailer loads of produce will leave the Eastern Shore each day. Mapp said about 10,000 truckloads are hauled to regional and national markets from the Shore in a growing season.
``That's a lot of trucks, a lot of diesel fuel,'' said Mapp.
Regionally, the economic impact of Eastern Shore farming mushrooms to unmeasured heights. Truckers and fuel companies make money shipping it. Stores sell it. Then there are the box and pallet makers, and the shops where farm laborers - and everyone else in the chain - spend their wages.
At the base of this ever-expanding pyramid are the farm workers. The weight of an industry rests on the shoulders of low-paid, seasonal employees like the women sorting cucumbers in Duer's grading shed.
There, they stand all day on a narrow wooden ledge tossing damaged vegetables into a mushy pile on the floor.
``You just get tired of standing, that's all,'' said one woman as she pulled out the big cukes for boxing. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Barbara Giddenn sorts a seemingly endless stream of washed and waxed
cucumbers in Jack Duer's grading shed in Painter. by CNB