—story by Ross Courtney
—photos by TJ Mullinax and Ross Courtney
Tom Gausman of AgriMACS in Chelan, Washington
2024 Good Fruit Grower of the Year
If Tom Gausman has learned one thing, it’s how to work with scale.
AgriMACS, the management company he co-founded in 2000, oversees the operations of 6,000 acres of apples, cherries and pears in Washington — more than 9 square miles. About 4,000 of those acres have been planted since 2016, with Gausman, Good Fruit Grower’s 2024 Grower of the Year, leading the way.
Though the large scope and intense timelines took adjustment, Gausman said he finds planting hundreds of acres at a time “really fascinating.”
Over the years, Gausman has become known as a careful planner with spreadsheets documenting soil profiles, rootstock/site/cultivar relationships, netting costs and labor.
“He is really good at it,” said Mark Stennes, current vice president of AgriMACS and the employee buying out Gausman as he retires.
Today, Gausman considers those vast stretches of productive, high-density blocks among his proudest accomplishments. He shared a few of the lessons he and his fellow managers have learned about large-scale orchard development.
Infrastructure first.
This seems obvious, but managers under a deadline might be tempted to plant trees because they have them. However, having trellises and irrigation ready sets up trees for success the moment they are in the ground.
Embrace specialization.
Gausman noticed that workers who installed wires became very good at installing wires. Same thing for planting trees or setting anchors. So, his managers staggered work to let smaller crews specialize. “They got really fast, and they would figure out ways to do stuff faster and more efficiently,” he said.
When AgriMACS built White Alpha Orchard in Ephrata, orchard manager Cesar Ortiz recalls the challenge of rocky ground. Certain crews became proficient with vibrating plates, post hole diggers and metal bars used to install trellis posts. They worked at it Monday through Saturday, up to 12 hours a day, at times.
“They got really good at it,” Ortiz said.
The construction happened in stages, starting in 2018, before Washington’s current 40-hour overtime threshold went into effect.
Go with retractable netting.
Gausman led the development of Monument Hills Orchard in Quincy for a client, starting in 2017, but he and team members began planning the year before. At the time, curtain-style retractable netting was not common.
However, the client wanted netting, so Gausman and company ordered what was available: large panels that stretched over several rows at a time. To roll it up each fall, crews use ladders or scissor lifts to hoist panels up and over each row, rolling and tying it as they go. It takes a week for a crew of 12 to do 125 acres.
By the time construction started, curtain-style retractable netting had become more popular, but it was too late to switch.
In contrast, at White Alpha, AgriMACS installed curtain-style retractable netting. This year, crews used guide ropes to simply drag the panels out of the way to expose apples to cool late-August weather. When hot days returned in September, it was easy to drag the nets back over the trees again.
Expect surprises.
When planting White Alpha from alfalfa fields, AgriMACS expected bands of shallow, rocky soil, full of caliche. Excavation pits confirmed that. The team convinced investors to budget extra money for installation, but Gausman wishes he would have asked for more.
Today, he sees advantages in the shallow soil, because it offers more vigor control.
“You can turn the dial really easy here to crank a tree up or down, because the soil is not as fertile,” he said.
Do your homework.
Gausman’s colleagues call him an expert at matching rootstock with cultivar and site.
Developing that expertise took research. Gausman discussed rootstocks with Washington State University’s Stefano Musacchi, former WSU extension specialist Tom Auvil, and Tye Fleming, who owns an orchard and a nursery. He visited other big plantings, especially McDougall and Sons’ Legacy Orchard in East Wenatchee. Over time, he understood which rootstocks were better when he needed vigor and which were better when he needed precocity, sourcing from four or five different nurseries.
Some plots feature M.9 roots simply because they were available, and time is money with investors. He wouldn’t have done anything differently, he said, but given the choice today, he prefers Geneva.
Use what you’ve got.
During construction of Monument Hills, Gausman’s team built a block for PremA129, the New Zealand apple marketed as Dazzle, with 12-foot wooden trellis posts, leaving 9.5 feet above ground. They had planned to install overhead sprinklers but changed their minds and switched to foggers, which need to be higher.
They could have installed new, taller wooden posts. Instead, crews cut 4-foot lengths of leftover V-trellis steel and tacked them onto the existing uprights, giving them about 13 feet in the end.
It penciled out better, Gausman said.
As another example, at White Alpha, crews finished planting one WA 38 block with enough leftover trees for about 5 acres.
The next project called for SugarBee apples. Rather than let the WA 38 trees go to waste, AgriMACS managers cut them back and grafted them over to SugarBee with a WA 38 interstem. Those few acres got into production sooner, saving money.
SugarBee and WA 38, both Honeycrisp crosses, have similar growth habits. •
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