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mote their wines in the great market of the greater Washington area, he noted. “What they’re doing for wine is what we should be doing for fruits and vegetables,” he contended.
To that end, Mr. Williams has an ambitious plan for publicizing Rappahannock’s agricultural products, letting city markets and independent chains such as IGA know what is available just an hour away. And while he thinks the possibilities for a standard farmers market here are limited at present — “Everybody already knows where to go to get fruits and vegetables” — he thinks a large-scale market where urban retailers could buy, say, a truck load of Red Delicious apples may be feasible.
Apples
Mr. Williams belives that the orchard business in Rappahannock must adjust to the changing times. “Our orchardists cannot sell to the canneries any more. They have to sell to the fresh market or through pick-your-own.” At roadside stands and from the packing houses, farmers can get twice the price paid by the canneries, which now import a substantial portion of cheap, tariff-free apples for juice, Mr. Williams said. “You’ve got to go where the dollar value is, and the dollar value is in the fresh market. But for that you have to have quality fruit — spot free, blemish free, bruise free fruit — and that has to be hand picked, and in Rappahannock, that means by migrant laborers,” he conceded.
The proximity to Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia is a mixed blessing, according to the ag extension agent. The metropolitan area presents tremendous marketing opportunities for the sharp farmer and orchardist, but its job market, particularly the “labor hungry construction industry,” is also attracting the workers who might otherwise, be available to
harvest apples and do other ta^n labor, Mr. Williams pointed out. “How are you going to get them to pick apples when they can make $6.50 an hour at a fast food place?”
“Labor is the problem for farming here,” agreed County Administrator John McCarthy. “From orcharding to running cattle to raising chickens over in the valley. And it’s not so much the expense of paying labor but the difficulty in finding labor.”
Neither the county administrator nor the extension agent has an answer for solving the labor crisis. Farming has to be dohe on a large scale in order to justify the purchase of expen
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