Volusia seeks fruit pickers for sweet business

Careful, experienced orange pickers, listen up: It’s almost picking time, and Volusia County is hiring.

Just be prepared to pick by hand.

The county, which owns a roughly 200-acre citrus grove in its southeast corner near Oak Hill, is looking for crews to harvest and sell oranges, grapefruits, tangerines and tangelos starting this fall.

It might seem a little unconventional as far as county business goes, but choosing a citrus picker has become pretty routine for Volusia. The county has owned the citrus land off Beacon Light Road since the mid-1990s. Last year, the county took in $110,000 from fruit sales.

This year’s harvest is not expected to be a bumper crop — a heavy freeze in February dashed those chances — but the county still expects to churn out about 18,000 boxes total. (A box is typically 90 pounds, give or take 5 pounds depending on the type of fruit.)

That doesn’t explain why the county’s in the citrus business, though. Here’s the reason: wastewater. Years ago, when the county built a water treatment plant nearby, it purchased the grove, too, as a disposal site.

As part of Volusia’s conservation effort, the plant’s treated wastewater goes into the grove rather than into other bodies of water.

For that reason, while last year’s $110,000 crop didn’t cover all the grove’s costs, the county still feels it’s a good arrangement.

“The expenses exceeded the sales slightly, but that’s OK, because reclaimed disposal has a value to it,” county spokeswoman Pat Kuehn said. “We need to have a place to put our reclaimed water.”

And the fruit’s still safe. In 2008, a study in Orange and Lake counties found reclaimed water produced citrus groves that were as good or better than groves irrigated with well water, according to the Water Environment Federation.

Growers don’t have to apply as many nutrients — lime, zinc and magnesium, for example — to their soil because they’re already present to some degree in the reclaimed water.

The county’s utilities department oversees the fruit grove, and it’s fairly picky in its search for a picker. The contractor has to have at least 10 years’ experience in citrus harvesting, and mechanical pickers aren’t allowed because they can damage the fruit and the trees.

Pickers are supposed to treat the county’s tangelos and tangerines especially carefully — clipping them from the branch instead of tugging at them — because those varieties are more susceptible to “plugging,” or losing part of the rind when pulled.

The county even requires the citrus boxes to be “smooth inside and free of rough edges or protrusions that can damage the fruit,” and they are only supposed to be filled within two inches of the top to avoid overcrowding.

Harvesting begins in mid- to late November, with the contract officially beginning Nov. 1. The chosen picker is only signed to a one-season contract. To submit a quote, start by visiting volusia.org/purchasing. If you need to visit the grove first, call 386-804-3782.

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