The Skagit Valley Herald Refuses To Cover The Mystery of the Missing Skagit Valley Strawberry Crop

In the palm of a hand you are looking at one of Sven & Ole's giant Skagit Valley strawberries. If you have only had a California Driscoll type strawberry you have really not had a strawberry in all its deep red, juicy, tasty glory.

This year much of the Skagit Valley strawberry crop was not picked, even though it was a bumper crop.

Why were the strawberries not picked? Not enough pickers. The reason there were not enough pickers I do not really understand, but it has something to do with a strike against the Sakuma Brothers and their farming operation.

What ever became of the Skagit Valley's school kids picking berries to earn a few bucks during summer vacation? I have yet to get an answer to that question.

Mr. Martin Burwash, he being the chief operator of the Sven & Ole strawberry growing operation tried to verbalize his frustration via a letter to the editor of the Skagit Valley Herald, that being the local newspaper, which apparently had been turning a blind eye to the plight of the valley's farmers.

The Skagit Valley Herald refused to publish Mr. Burwash's letter, so Martin then published the letter himself, on Facebook, along with a paragraph preceding the letter, explaining his frustration with the inability to be heard....

Interesting....during our plight to get a crew to pick our berries, my partner went to both the local radio station and the local newspaper telling them of the problems growers were having finding labor. Neither the radio station or paper saw fit to run any kinds of stories or announcements. Even the community as a whole did nothing to help us. In response I wrote a letter to the editor of the Skagit Valley Herald, taking them, the radio stations and the community as a whole to task. Today the paper called to say they would not print the letter as they categorically deny they were ever informed growers other than the Sakuma Bros were having problems finding pickers. Really?

Here's the banned letter.....

Collateral damage has been defined as “damage to things that are incidental to the intended target.”

In the ongoing dispute between Sakuma Brothers and their workers, we are the “collateral damage.” Who are “we?” We are the other farmers in the valley growing strawberries. “We” are the farmers for which there are no printed signs of support or shiny tractors driving through the streets. 

Our fruit also rotted in the fields due to a lack of pickers. Although we had no dispute with our workers, to show support for those on strike, the people we traditionally hire each year were encouraged not to pick. Where normally we hire 45 pickers, we struggled to get 15. Proportionally, 2/3 of our crop was lost.
When you are merely collateral damage, you find there is little interest in your plight. When the local newspaper was told of the labor crisis facing all local growers due to the Sakuma Brothers dispute, they showed no interest in expanding coverage to report the entire story. When asked to announce growers needed pickers in the fields, local radio stations followed suit and showed no concern.

Printed signs or tractors parading up and down local streets and roads are an appreciated show of support. But that is the issue, they are just that, merely a show. Those of us suffering collateral damage did not care about your signs or demonstrations. What was needed was support in form of people willing to help us save our crop.

Collateral damage is impersonal. It is a shake of the head. It is a “that’s too bad you got caught up in this.” But in the end it is a loss suffered for which there is little or no outcry and concern.

__________________________________________

I have blogged about the Sakuma Brothers a couple times, once about the lack of pickers issue, once about their Sakuma Brothers Market Stand.

This is all very vexing and perplexing to me......

The End Of A Skagit Valley Sakuma Strawberry Legacy

It has been over 15 years since I lived in the Skagit Valley zone of Washington. A couple years ago the subject of picking strawberries, decades ago, came up. Who picks the berries nowadays we wondered?

Years ago migrant workers arrived in the Skagit Valley to pick the crops. Many opted to stay. Some of those who opted to stay were among my favorite classmates.

At some point in time, was it the 1960s, or 1970s, or later, that the camps which provided temporary housing for the migrant workers ceased to exist?

When I was a kid most of my fellow kids worked in the fields of the Skagit Valley, along with the migrant workers, picking strawberries, raspberries and cucumbers. My picking career ceased before blueberries became a big Skagit Valley crop.

I remember the experience of picking berries and cucumbers as a good thing. Particularly the picking of cucumbers after I graduated from being paid by filling a heavy bucket to being paid by the hour whilst laying on a padded board on a mechanical picking machine.

Picking strawberries you got paid by the flat, with 12  boxes to a flat. You were issued a ticket which got punched whenever you checked in a flat. At the end of the season the berry grower would put on a big party, after which we got our paychecks.

I do not remember ever seeing anything that I thought was some form of child labor abuse. We were a rather feisty bunch of pickers. I remember a group of us banding together once in a cucumber field, going on "strike" til the owner fired a supervisor we thought to be wrong-headed and over bearing.

So, with all that as preface, I was very surprised by an Open Letter from the Sakuma Brothers that I saw today on the Sakuma Market Stand's Facebook page.

From that letter I learned that this generation's kids don't have the chance to make some money like kids did when I was young. I am a little confused by what I read in the Open Letter, but one thing seemed real clear, that being that berry pickers are no longer paid for how much they pick. They are now paid by the hour, as in $11.87 an hour.

No wonder berries are so expensive in a grocery store.

Are kids still allowed to have paper routes? I had a paper route when I was in 7th and 8th grade. Do kids still load up their bikes with newspapers and deliver them? And then go collecting at the end of the month? I hated the collecting part.

Anyway, below is the entirety of the Open Letter from the Sakumas. And before I copy and paste that, in the interest of full disclosure I must admit I have always liked the Sakumas. Tess and Karen Sakuma were classmates of mine. My right knee still has a scar where Tess Sakuma whacked me with her clarinet......

An open letter to our community:

“LOCAL KIDS CREW” – A LEGACY ENDS

It has been said that hind-sight is 20/20 vision. Today, at this vantage point, we are able to clearly see the problems that faced us during last year’s harvest season and the actions that we could have taken if we had known better. And like most companies, it is hindsight that allows us to make better decisions today and prepare us for tomorrow.

Like many of you who have generations of history in this community, we too feel a deep gratitude and indebtedness to Skagit County. Our family moved to Burlington in 1937 where we began farming strawberries and where we were welcomed by our neighbors. In 1941, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the start of World War II, we were forced to vacate our property and move to relocation camps. Because of the compassion of the Oscar Mapes family, who willingly became stewards of our land, our family was able to return to our home and farm at the end of WWII.

We are committed to Skagit County because of the people that have allowed us to continue to be a part of this community and because of what our community has given back to us. This commitment is the foundation of the business decisions that we made in the past and will continue to make in the future.

Our signature crop is strawberries and since the end of WWII, our Company has been the employer of large numbers of both local and migrant labor. Our summer jobs drew local youths from Concrete, Sedro-Woolley, Anacortes, Oak Harbor, Mount Vernon, Bow, Edison, and Burlington. Many of you will remember the bus loads of local pickers that would arrive at our farm at dawn to pick in the strawberry fields. Many of you earned your first paycheck from our Company. We also provided advancement opportunities to our best pickers and hired them to work as they continued their high school and college education.

We continued to provide summer employment even after the child labor laws invoked a minimum age requirement which reduced the pool of eligible youths who could pick in our fields. Because of the popularity and demand by our community, we continued the “Local Kids Crew” and parents drove their children to the fields at 6 AM and returned to pick up their sometimes muddy children at noon.

In 1997, when our Company took over the responsibility and ownership of the last small fruit processing plant in Skagit County, we were able to provide more jobs for our local youth. Graduates of our Local Kids Crew were offered positions at both the farm and processing facility. The Sakuma Market Stand also provided additional employment opportunities for the young people of our community.

Fast forward to 2012. We were hit head-on with a labor shortage. As a result, we were forced to leave 400,000 pounds of our crop unpicked in our fields. With our 20/20 hindsight, we entered 2013 with the knowledge that we would again be short on labor. Our domestic labor pool was shrinking and we could not find alternative sources. It was because of this situation that we made our decision to apply for the federal H2A Guest Worker Program. The H2A program provides a means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring non-immigrant foreign workers to the U.S. to perform agricultural labor or services of a temporary or seasonal nature. These Guest Workers are intended to “supplement” the local work force, not displace. Our experience in 2012, supported our belief that we would require 160 H2A Guest Workers to supplement our local and migrant labor. We also believed that we could harvest our strawberry crop without the use of the H2A Guest Workers and chose to bring them in mid-August for our blueberry and blackberry harvest.

Unfortunately we were wrong on two counts. First, we did not have enough domestic labor to pick strawberries, our first crop of the season. And second, we did not expect the targeted attacks made on our Company and employees by special interest groups who opposed our decision to bring in H2A Guest Workers. As a result, more than 400,000 lbs. of strawberries were left unpicked in our fields. The interest groups spread false information as they rallied against our Company and called for a boycott of our products. The interest groups believed that the H2A program took away jobs from our domestic local and migrant workers. This was and remains untrue. H2A regulations require the hiring of any domestic U.S. worker that is willing, ready, and able to perform the job requirement of a blueberry and blackberry picker. In addition, the H2A regulation prohibits the displacement of a domestic U.S. worker by an H2A Guest Worker. In other words, the Company did not and could not deny a qualified domestic U.S. worker the opportunity to work in favor of an H2A Guest Worker. However, because of the disruptions caused by the activities initiated by these interest groups, our labor force remained unsteady and the number of workers insufficient.

Farming requires a stable, legal and a cost-effective work force. Given our experience of 2013, we anticipate more of the same challenges this year. As a result, we are prepared to expand the coverage of the H2A program across all of our crops. We recognize that this decision creates unintended consequences. Our desire to continue supporting the youth of our community can no longer be sustained because of the economic consequences of using the H2A Guest Worker Program. The requirement to guarantee all pickers the Adverse Effect Wage Rate of $11.87 per hour, makes it economically unfeasible to operate the Local Kids Crew. As many parents already know, the average strawberry picker in the Local Kids Crew picks 86 pounds per day. In order to achieve the $11.87 per hour we must guarantee under the H2A program the average picker would have to pick 360 pounds daily. As you can see from this example, our decision to close our Local Kids Crew is based on economic necessity. Federal law, as it currently stands, does not give us the option to provide work to our youth that teaches the skills of a strong work ethic at an economic acceptable level. 

We trust that you understand and support our decision.

Steven M. Sakuma
Sakuma Bros. Family Business

Spencer Jack is Picking Strawberries Somewhere in the Skagit Valley

From photo evidence I found minutes ago on Facebook, it appears my Great Nephew Spencer Jack has taken a liking to picking strawberries.

And eating them whilst picking.

I do not know whose strawberry field Spencer Jack is picking in. I do know it is somewhere in the Skagit Valley of Washington.

I suspect, maybe, Spencer Jack is doing his picking and eating at Ole and Sven's.

Ole and Sven are known for having the sweetest strawberries in the Skagit Valley.

Maybe Spencer Jack is at the Sakuma Market Stand. The Sakumas also grow some very sweet strawberries. Tess Sakuma was the sweetest Sakuma I knew when I was in high school.

Maybe Spencer Jack is picking strawberries at his Great Grandpa/Great Grandma's field. Spencer's Great Grandpa and Great Grandma's raspberries used to be the sweetest in the Skagit Valley. I suspect Spencer's Great Grandpa and Great Grandma have likely retired from the berry growing business.

When I was a kid, in summer, kids just a little older than Spencer Jack were loaded onto buses and brought to the fields of the Skagit Valley to help harvest the strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and cucumber crops. And likely some crops I'm not remembering.

Child labor laws have since made it a no-no for young kids to work the fields.

I remember it as fun, for the most part, particularly picking cucumbers while laying on a padded board on an automatic cucumber picking machine.

Strawberry fights were also fun, though those could get you in trouble.

Getting a Berry Milkshake at the Sakuma Market Stand in the Skagit Valley

Saturday, August 2, 2008, on the way to Bay View State Park to meet my great nephew Spencer Jack for the first time, we stopped at something new that had been added to the Skagit Valley since my last visit to the valley.

As far back as my memory goes, the Sakuma Brothers have been renowned farmers in the Skagit Valley. When I was a kid, as I remember it, it was mostly Strawberries that the Sakuma Brothers grew.

The new thing I was taken to was the Sakuma Market Stand. This is the very well done brainchild of Sakuma brother Richard. I remember him as a football star.

Nowadays I regularly get beaten, at Scrabble, by a Sakuma Sister living now in California.

The Sakuma Market Stand is a big operation. There's the Market, the Ice Cream House and the Bakery.

At the Sakuma Bakery you'll find shortcake suitable for Strawberries. You'll also find a variety of pies, including berry pocket pies.

Seattle Restaurant magazine picked the Ice Cream House's Sakuma Market Berry Milkshake as the best milkshake to be found in the Seattle region.

At the Sakuma Market Stand you'll find fields of Strawberries, Blackberries and Blueberries, where you can pick your own. Sakuma Brothers have added something called Haygrove Tunnels to protect the berry pickers from inclement weather.

Sakuma Brothers Mass Transit takes berry pickers out to the fields in wagons pulled by tractors.

You'll find Strawberries, Blackberries, Raspberries, Boysenberries, Tayberries, Wild Mountain Blackberries, Loganberries, Marionberries, Apples, Sweet Onions, Tomatoes, Carrots, Cucumbers, Sweet Corn, Pumpkins, Squash, Lettuce, Garlic, Cauliflower, Broccoli and Potatoes.

And, on top of all that produce, the Sakuma Brothers are one of only two commercial tea growers in the Continental United States, with more than 5 acres of the fertile Skagit Valley planted with tea leaves.

It is easy to find the Sakuma Market Stand. It is a short distance east of the intersection of Cook Road and Chuckanut Drive. Exit I-5 at Cook Road and head west on Cook Road toward Chuckanut Drive. The Sakuma Market Stand will be on your left in about 1/3 of a mile.

The next time I'm in the valley I will be on a mission to have one of those Sakuma Market Berry Milkshakes. The last time I was in the valley Blackberries were late in ripening. I badly wanted to have a fresh Blackberry milkshake. To no avail. I did have a fresh Strawberry milkshake though.

If you grow up with Skagit Valley Strawberries being your Strawberry, Strawberries grown elsewhere always disappoint, sadly lacking in real Strawberry flavor. Yes, I am talking about you, California.

The Sakuma Market Stand has a very well done website.