THE DALLES — Mel Omeg, grand marshal for the 44th Annual Northwest Cherry Festival Parade in The Dalles on Saturday, April 26 beginning at 10 a.m., has seen one transformation after another in his decades as a cherry grower.
His family has been farming in Wasco County since 1880. By the time he was born in 1943, his family had been in cherries for 23 years.
The Omegs gained more cherry orchards over time and today they have 90 acres, which are leased to Orchard View Farms. His son Mike Omeg is the director of operations for Orchard View.
From his earliest days, he can remember seeing the tepees pitched on the grounds of the orchards when Native Americans were hired to harvest cherries.
They were careful and thorough in their work. “The Native American women would not pick any bad cherries, they would only pick good ones,” he recounted.
Eventually, the workforce became largely poor families fleeing the Dust Bowl, an extended drought in the farmlands of the Midwest in the 1930s.
“I remember that as a kid, poor families that arrived and had nothing,” Omeg said. “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck, a book about penniless Midwesterners fleeing the Dust Bowl, “is a vivid story of the truth,” Omeg said. “I remember seeing that as a child, how poor families work.”
In those old days, it was non-irrigated dryland farming, cultivated during the spring. “It was very dusty during the summer,” he recalled.
The big change came in 1970. He was having trouble finding enough pickers, and, in a stroke of luck, two carloads of Mexicans arrived asking for work. They were kind, here legally, and he needed the help, Omeg said.
So he hired them, one of the first orchardists to do so. Through word of mouth and building connections, he grew a workforce of 300 Hispanic workers over the course of time.
He built trust and relationships, including visiting families in Mexico and California. “You treat people with honor and respect and fairness, and they will come through,” he said. “Those are the people that keep agriculture going.”
Cherries are a popular crop with fruit harvesters because it offers a better paycheck than crops like pears and apples, Omeg said.
Also in the 1970s, The Dalles Irrigation Project brought significant water to orchards, Omeg said, increasing the yield from one ton per acre of cherries to five tons per acre, and even more in a good year. Trees that used to be planted 40 feet apart are now planted 10-15 feet apart.
The profitable cherries are the fresh cherries. That switchover to exclusively fresh cherries happened about 10 years ago, he said.
And while Omeg loved being an innovator as an orchardist, he had an equal passion for the 12 years he spent being a sixth grade public school teacher at Dry Hollow Elementary.
He knew school teaching was compatible with being an orchardist, but it reached a point where he had to pick just one.
“I had a very hard decision on whether I wanted to be a fruit grower or a sixth grade teacher, and I loved being a school teacher and I loved kids,” he reflected.
He’s still torn about his decision. “Some days I’d say I’d teach above all else. And other times, I’d say, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me. I love my farm.’”
But ultimately, he realized farming was the skill he wanted, that offered performance and growth, and he could do it the way he wanted.
Farming allowed him to be “very innovative in my farming practices and I loved it. The kids were more important than the trees, but the profit was in the orchard business vs. teaching.”
Omeg served on many committees through Oregon State University, and he worked with research plots testing new methods. His constant drive was to produce a better cherry and be more profitable. That was driven out of need. “I had to grow in order to have a profit margin to meet my family’s needs,” he said.
Cost is more prohibitive today than 10-20 years ago. That narrowing profit margin caused him to increase his acreage to offset the marginal profit per acre.
He has stepped down from his committees, but he keeps up on things and still has a passion for soil and water conservation. His goal is simple: “To protect our land, our soil, for ourselves now and for future generations.”
He can nerd out about soil. “I like good soil and it involves a lot of components.”
He said of his continual interest in what’s going on, he spoke like a true teacher: “You can’t afford to stop learning.”
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.