Rachelle Zalaney is the owner of a local farm just outside of Vernon.
Zalaney Farms is getting ready for market season.
She told Am1150’s Early Edition, certain vegetables are much more hands-on than others.
“When it comes to carrots those are mechanical but when it comes to say broccoli, every one of those is hand planted in the field by a worker and then they’re hand harvested.”
She said broccoli in particular is a more labor-intensive variety of vegetable.
“You’re walking along the row and you’re bending down to check each plant to see if the head has formed and if it’s large enough to harvest and if it’s not, you move onto the next one and if you find a big one you bend over and cut it. So, yeah you’re up and down.”
Zalaney said her farm currently employs all local residents, but that is becoming increasingly difficult with the times so they are not ruling out hiring foreign workers for harvest season.
“We have had many discussions of whether that is going to be something that we do in the future. We’re taking steps to make it so that if we’re required to do that to get our crops out of he ground at harvest time that we would be able to hire the foreign workers,” said Zalaney.
She said they trying to keep their money right here in the community.