FRUITLAND, Idaho (CBS 2) — For today's adventure we head out to Fruitland and into the orchards to discover the sweet things mother nature is helping to grow.
It's by far the 'sweetest' adventure I’ve ever been on -- a tour of Henggeler Packing and one of its apple orchards.
Those who are familiar with their famous fruit know it's all about getting the best produce from the orchard into your lunch box.
"This is where it starts, and this is kind of a culmination of really eight months of growing this crop, pruning it, watering it, putting out pheromone dispensers, keeping the insects away from it," said Kelly Henggeler, owner of Henggeler Packing Company Inc.
The Henggeler's are third generation fruit packers and fourth generation growers here in the valley.
They grow fruit on roughly 500 acres across the valley from golden delicious and honey crisp, to what's now being harvested, Fuji.
"The harvest is a big part of it, it requires a lot of labor force and people that are trained to handle fruit. There’s virtually millions of apples that need to be harvested and it's all by hand, there's no mechanization involved when we're actually picking that fruit," said Henggeler.
The apples are handpicked and placed in large containers. It's then loaded up and shipped into cold storage at the Henggeler Plant.
From there, it’s a whirlwind of rollers and conveyor belts as each lot of apples are processed.
"We fork those out of there into the processing lines where they're washed, rinsed, they're dried, and then just a light coat of wax is put on there just to retain the moisture in the apple," Henggeler said.
Once cleaned and polished up workers look for any imperfections in the fruit, no apple is wasted, flawed fruit will eventually be made into apple sauce.
Those that make the cut are sent through automated conveyor systems and sorted by size and color.
Eventually, they're hand packed by employees, sealed up, and stacked on pallets for shipment.
Henggeler says, "It's a great business, days like today when you're outside and it's nice and warm and you see kind of the result of your efforts of growing, it makes you feel good about what you do and I think the product we're providing for consumers is a healthy product and one that's really should be part of everybody's diet."
Henggeler fruit is shipped all across the country, in some cases, even around the world.
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