HOLLANDALE (AP) -- While many Minnesota farmers were focused on the soybean and corn harvests this fall, a handful of farmers near this small Freeborn County city were digging up onions.
All onions in the field have been harvested, and the onion processing plant in Hollandale is working on sorting, packaging and shipping them off.
Plant manager Larry Forster said the 2007 onion harvest went well. At times it was a wet season, but "the onions are pretty resilient, so we leave them alone until they dry up," he said.
Packing started Sept. 10, and he said it should end close to Christmas Day. This part of the production is lasting longer, Forster said, because more onions were produced and shipments are slowing down.
The packing season usually ends around Thanksgiving Day, he said, but with cheaper onions in the marketplace from producers out west there is an oversupply of onions.
ADVERTISEMENT
Onion peels scatter the floor as more than a dozen people work various stations at the onion plant -- sorting out rotten onions, filling and sealing 50-pound, orange-mesh bags that say "farm fresh onions" and loading them onto crates.
Currently the plant assembles 350 50-pound sacks per hour. Production varies between 250 and 400 sacks an hour, he said, and better quality onions make the work go faster.
This year's harvest brought in 120 semitrailer loads, Forster said, from three farmers producing on 117 acres.
The production in Hollandale is "pretty old-fashioned," he said, with people manually sorting and manning the machines.
Onions come from the fields in semitrailers and are dumped into onion bins. From the bins, the onions travel on conveyor belts to two women sorting out rotten onions and rocks. Bad onions are dumped back into the field.
Next, the onions travel by conveyor belt to three or four more women to sort and size. The onions are then dumped into the orange-mesh bags, sewn shut and continue to move along the belt.
Once sealed, the bags are set on crates and moved into the onsite warehouse where they wait to be shipped.
Hollandale onions are shipped mostly to Chicago, St. Louis and the Twin Cities.
ADVERTISEMENT
There are only a few Minnesota onion operations, all of which are about the same size, Forster said.
"It's very difficult for small operations like this to compete in the marketplace," he said.
Onions also are produced in eastern Idaho, western Washington, northwest Oregon, Mexico and South America.
The mid-1980s saw the Hollandale onion production at its peak, Forster said, with about 700 acres and dozens of farmers.
"Like everything with agriculture, it's changed," he said.
In the past 20 years, the onion production and potato production in town have diminished, and the latter completely closed. The 2004 flooding played a hand in shutting down the local farmer co-op, Forster said.
"We're happy to carry on the tradition of onions in Hollandale," he said.
------
ADVERTISEMENT
Information from: Albert Lea Tribune, http://www.albertleatribune.com
