On our third day of travel adventures, we stopped at three different locations: Inland Deseret, Lamb Weston, and Douglas Fruit Company. These operations where all located around the tri cities area as well as in the Columbia River Basin.

              Inland Desert is a vineyard and organic cherry operation. They have motherboard (generation 1) vines that will grow to make into a generation 2 vine which are cut from the motherboard to then sold to other vineyards. This nursery/vineyard grafts their own malbec vines (pictured below). There was green wax that was on the grape vines located in one of their many greenhouses this was used to trap in moisture into the grafted vines. This wax is special because it is thin enough for the buds to push through in the start of the growing season.

              The second stop of our day was at Lamb Weston, a potato processing plant. They have many different locations including locations in other countries. The location we were at today processes the potatoes into fries for mainly McDonald’s and then Chick -fil - A is a close second and mashed potatoes for cheese factories and prisons. Some others that buy their fries are Raising Canes, Arby’s, Culver’s, and Burger King. The fries they process there are Cottage Fries, Wedge Cut, Twister, Steak House Fry, Starz, Regular Cut, Crinkle Cut, Tater Puffs, Roundabouts, and the CrissCut, as their technical terms. Some of their equipment is patented and they are the only ones that use it. We also got an amazing tour of the processing facility. When we ended the tour, we were able to try some of their fries and mashed potatoes.  

              On our third and final stop of the day, we went to Douglas Fruit Company where we got to tour their apple and cherry orchards and learn all about how they practice their planting techniques along with their use of pesticides, water control, and shade control.  They plant a wide variety of fruits at there orchard besides apples and cherries which includes peaches, pears, apricots, and nectarines. They also have a large selection of apples grown there which include Honey Crisp, Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, Granny Smith, and the new Washington apple called Cosmic Crisp. The Cosmic Crisp is interesting because they do not turn brown as fast as a Gala or Fuji apple and can only be found in Washington. We also had the pleasure of getting an in-depth tour of their fruit processing facility. Fun Fact: it only takes 12 minutes for one apple to go from the start to ready for delivery within their processing plant!

              Overall, it was a very busy and exciting day! We learned a lot about different types of produce production today and saw how each facility is becoming more and more green and less labor intensive. 

 

 The newly grafted grape vine 

Picture of the new graft.

 
 
Samples for the group at Lamb Weston

 
 
Group outside of Lamb Weston



 

The wide variety of potato products made at Lamb Weston


 
 
Apple processing... It was a down day for the plant.

Cherry trees, white ground cover helped to produce more photosynthesis... faster ripening of fruit.


Douglas Fruit Processing Plant

 

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