Historic Hood River
Fruit Packing Revisited
Notes
One hundred years ago August Guignard and his Ideal Fruit Company were producing state-of-the-art fruit processing equipment in Hood River. Last week I visited Duckwall Fruit Company in Odell to see what the state-of-the-art looks like today. This is the tail end of a machine with washes, sorts and packs pears. After through washing each pear is photographed from top and bottom and software decides how to sort it based on side, color, blemishes, stem, etc. Each pear you see in this picture has already been graded, so when it passes the appropriate off ramp it will gently drop down and be routed to a bin. When three full bins of a particular grade are full, they are moved to a controlled atmosphere storage facility. The will sit at a specific temperature and humidity with limited oxygen for many months, until they are needed at market. The bin is then packed into boxes or bags for distribution to grocery stores.
Roger H Sheldrake
Roger and Arlen Sheldrake heard stories of their Mom Lois Sheldrake packing fruit. I don’t know if she ever wrote down an hourly wage? But it must have helped get the family started!!
L. E.
Quite amazing how we have advanced in sanitation, technology and automation.
Arlen L sheldrake
As part of last years HRHS class of 1959 reunion, Scott Webster kindly arranged a tour of the AGA packing plant in Odell….absolutely amazing!! When asked how did you fund the automation, the answer was we couldn’t find workers to do the packing. Roger is right, our Mother’s packing purchased many items. She and others spent a LOT of hours on their feet.
Arthur Babitz
To be fair, while you see no people involved in this part of the sorting, there were several behind me, as well as forklift drivers moving the fruit. Also, this automation is only for some of the fruit. Many other parts of the packing house are full of people working at unbelievable speed sorting and packing the pears.
Judy
Not only earning money for a Mothers family BUT the women worked at the cannery downtown for many years some even retired from there.