Hollister
– Walnut grower Greg Swett recently welcomed a new set of wheels
to his orchards.
Hollister – Walnut grower Greg Swett recently welcomed a new set of wheels to his orchards.
Swett only held onto the Walters Pow’r Trak shredder – which carries a hefty price tag – for a few hours, but County Farm Bureau President George Bonacich said such devices will become an increasingly common sight in local orchards. And as they do, the shredders will bring an end to the large fires that growers traditionally set to burn pruned branches.
On Thursday morning, the 450-horsepower shredder barreled through row after row of Swett’s 14-acre walnut orchard, swallowing piles of pruned branches and spitting out thin, soft chippings no more than a few inches long.
Bonacich said the shredder saves an enormous amount of labor. The chips will decompose and add their nutrients to the soil in about two years, he said.
“What would take a week and a half or two weeks is being done in one and a half hours,” Swett said.
The device, which Bonacich said is one of the first of its kind, costs about $310,000, and the $245 per hour that Swett paid to rent the equipment isn’t cheap either.
“It’s an expensive piece of machinery, so I don’t know if we’ll see any machines purchased locally,” said Bill Coates, a farm adviser to the local University of California Cooperative Extension.
Growers are more likely to follow Swett’s lead and rent the machines from companies in the San Joaquin Valley, Coates said.
Bonacich said he’s already started using a similar machine in his apricot orchards, and he plans to encourage local growers to do the same.
He noted that the more common chippers are much smaller and less powerful than the Pow’r Trak shredder. The chippers are towed behind a truck, rather than driven by their own power.
An orchard’s annual pruning creates a pile of branches the size of a small house, Bonacich said. Traditionally, those piles have been burned.
“(The shredder) is much better, because it goes back into the soil,” Bonacich said. “If you burn it, all you’re left with is a pile of ashes.”
Obviously, avoiding fires also means a lot less smoke will escape into the air. For that reason, Coates said, state law prohibits orchard growers from burning their trimmings starting in 2010.
“A lot of the laws originate with problems in San Joaquin Valley, but they were put into effect for the whole state,” Coates said. “It’s not a major problem in San Benito County, because of our nice breeze.”
He added that it’s possible pollution created in San Benito County could drift into the San Joaquin Valley and collect there.
As Swett watched the shredder at work, he said he was very impressed.
“It’s like ‘Fargo’ on steroids,” he said.
Anthony Ha covers local government for the Free Lance. Reach him at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or [email protected].
