From the Fields: Peter Johnson, Mendocino County pear and winegrape grower 

By Peter Johnson
Mendocino County pear and winegrape grower 

We’re wrapping up our Bartlett pear harvest and getting ready for our Bosc pear harvest. The Bartletts turned out really nice. Quality has been good, and the tonnage was up from last year. 

We send some of our pears to canneries, and we also send some to Scully Packing in Lake County. Prices have been down somewhat from last year for both canned and fresh pears. Hopefully, the extra tonnage will make up for that. 

With labor, you never know how it will work out, but we haven’t had a problem this year. We’ve had some great people working for us. We have local people that go back and forth between the grapes and pears, and then we have some that come from the Central Valley just for the pear harvest. After they leave us, they’ll go pick olives in Northern California. Then they’ll do the citrus all winter long, and then the cherries, and then back to us. 

In between our Bartlett and Bosc harvests, we’ve started picking some white winegrapes. Our chardonnay quality looks very good. We’ve had a mild summer, but I don’t think the cold weather will delay harvest. 

The grape market has not been so great. Prices are a little lower than they have been the past couple years. We try to have contracts for most of our grapes, but we still have some here and there that we need to sell. We’ve been making some sales, but not very quickly. It’d be nice if people were knocking on my door instead of me knocking on theirs. The grapes we’ve sold have gone for decent prices. The buyers just want to take a little less than before. 

We’re not planning to take out any orchards or vineyards, or to plant more either. It’s hard to decide what to plant right now, and we’re trying to think long term.

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