Yakima Valley Orchards designed and built its own three-row tree planting machine. Yakima Valley Orchards used to plant trees by hand, with workers digging holes with shovels. Now, it has a three-row planting machine that has cut labor costs in half. But, Travis Allan, operations manager, said the real value of the machine has been in getting the trees planted more quickly and in the optimum time frame, which yields bonuses down the road. Brett Calhoun, general manager of Yakima Valley Orchards, a division of Allan Brothers, Inc., in Yakima, Washington, designed and built the company’s planting machine, which is […]