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(Throughout the year, I report what’s going on with the Old Mission Peninsula farms owned and run by my family – my brother and his wife, Ward and Carol Johnson, my other brother and his wife, Dean and Laura Johnson, and my nephew and his wife, Nic and Mikayla Johnson. Read Nic’s notes about the farms’ integrated pest management here, and read on for this week’s update. -jb)
It may be cold and snowy out there (as I write this on March 20, 2026 – the first day of Spring), but work on the farm continues year round.
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Winter farm work includes trimming trees, fixing machinery, doing paperwork (lots and lots of paperwork and taxes for my brothers’ complicated farms), attending farm meetings and horticulture shows, and sometimes even building new machinery.
That’s the case when I stopped up to the shop last week and checked out the new weedsprayers they’re building. While some of the tree-spraying is being shifted to drones (read more about that here), they haven’t used drones for weedspraying at this juncture.
These new weedsprayers are built using old pickup trucks, so the farmers are actually inside a cab while they’re spraying, making it safer for them in terms of spray drift. They’re similar to “Weedzilla,” the truck/weedsprayer that makes its way from farm to farm around the Peninsula.
It would be tough to make these cherry and apple farms completely organic, but spraying these days is much safer than back in my dad’s day when he sprayed DDT through our yard in Old Mission to kill the mosquitoes. Yes, I feel like a moving target health-wise!
Read more about the integrated pest management practices on Johnson Farms here. If one bug or worm is found on any fruit sent to the processor, that entire orchard is automatically rejected.
Take a look at the new weedsprayers in progress…
Another thing they do during the winter months is repair things — machinery, tractors, cherry shakers, you name it. In one corner of the shop is a bunch of these tube-thingies (that’s my official name for them) that go into the cherry tanks on the cooling pad. Cold water is run through them to cool down the cherries. They get pretty beat up during cherry season.
Both of my brothers removed grapevines from their farms last year. Most of their farms entail cherries and apples, but they have planted a few grapes over the years.
Up until recently, they were able to sell their grapes to local wineries to make into wine. Last year, the wineries said they couldn’t take the grapes, citing an abundance already in storage. So out came the grapevines. My brothers will likely plant more apples in their place.
Here’s a photo from last year. This is the Johnson Farms vineyard near Mapleton that is no longer there…
Also, my brother Ward is in the process of getting certified to be a drone operator. The fact that he’s already a pilot is helping to streamline the process a little through the FAA, but there’s still a lot of testing and training involved in becoming a drone operator.
He’s already certified to spray pesticides, so that part’s done. Farmers are required to attend meetings and such every year to keep that certification.
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