Saving labor (and lives) in the orchard

When I was younger, I used to enjoy picking a pint or two of huckleberries in the mountains in the summer. But even when you work hard, huckleberry picking doesn’t yield a lot of fruit per day. Picking raspberries goes faster because the fruit is larger and the berries grow more thickly on the plant. And picking apples is faster still, with output measured in bushels rather than pints.

Still, it’s one thing to pick a bag of apples from an old tree by the side of a gravel road. It’s quite another to spend all day in an orchard trying to earn a living climbing ladders and harvesting box after bo...