New labor camp for E. Wash. cherry pickers (Bravo for the company Reddout Orchards)

[Omaha Steve]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_cherry_camp.html

By PHIL FEROLITO
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

GRANGER, Wash. -- For the past 15 years, Augustine Ceballos and his family have spent the cherry harvest living beneath orchard trees.

Working for Reddout Orchards atop Cherry Hill, the California family of four would sleep in a small tent, cook on a portable stove and bathe in cold water.

"Yeah, it was hard for us," he said through his 14-year-old son, Yoan, who translated his Spanish. "We had a little stove and were cold at night."

But this season, a new labor camp erected by orchard owner Helen Reddout has changed everything for the family and the nearly 100 other seasonal workers who pick cherries here each year.

The camp, the only one of its kind in Yakima County, features tents equipped with electricity, secured to concrete slabs and large enough to accommodate a family.

Other similar tent labor camps exist in Wenatchee and Benton and Franklin counties.

FULL story at link.

[madrchsod]

1. around here there were "houses"

well small houses for the migrant workers. those days ended 40 some years ago when del monte went to planting corn and peas...