Hartly has been the best variety for quality and yield, but Franketts are also widely planted because they are latter by a week or 2 and avoid spring frost that will take out a Hartly crop. This is one of 2 or 3 orchards that have ever been machine harvested here. By the time dirt, rocks and sticks out no real saving over hand picking. Oh some hand raking or a 10% or more loss of crop.

Nobody has time to wait 10 years to get a crop anymore. Besides wine is a more glamorous crop right now. Grapes also set a second crop if the first freezes off in spring, the down side is you need to deal with wino's. And they all know how it wine about everything. But with organic certification mature trees competed well with grapes for a profits.

Ray54 wrote:

Hartly has been the best variety for quality and yield, but Franketts are also widely planted because they are latter by a week or 2 and avoid spring frost that will take out a Hartly crop. This is one of 2 or 3 orchards that have ever been machine harvested here. By the time dirt, rocks and sticks out no real saving over hand picking. Oh some hand raking or a 10% or more loss of crop.

Nobody has time to wait 10 years to get a crop anymore. Besides wine is a more glamorous crop right now. Grapes also set a second crop if the first freezes off in spring, the down side is you need to deal with wino's. And they all know how it wine about everything. But with organic certification mature trees competed well with grapes for a profits.

Ray: It scares me to keep seeing more walnuts, almonds and wine grapes being planted.All of my grape trailers ended up coming home this year due to smoke taint (no proof yet), added that the wineries refused to honor their contracts with my growers.One of our nut tenants used to grow conventionally and organic, but couldn't deal with the paperwork trail on the organic side for slightly more $. Now many have sights on industrial hemp...Hats off to you hardworking farmers on the coastal sides of the hills. You need to share your secrets with us on level ground.I like seeing pictures of what you guys deal with, makes us appreciate what we have here. JM

Neil wrote:

Interesting. Timbo's father made an apple tree shaker (or might have been a cherry tree shaker - I can't remember and Tim might see this and correct me) for use in Western NY orchards. If I recall correctly, it had a canvas underneath to catch the fruit shaken from the tree. I believe that was mounted on a wheel tractor.
Anyhoo, driveline parts (drive-lines.com) in Fresno likely has all the parts you need. I've bought all the universal joints, yokes, and shafts from them and the yokes in particular have a variety of shaft apertures to match your equipment

Neil: We used to use Adrian harvesters here for our tree crops. Mounted on an International Harvester 574 Hydrostatic drive tractor. The selling point was the owner could strip the harvester off and use the tractor if they had to (which was too much work btw). They then evolved to the 3 wheeled tricycle design which eventually was purchased by FMC Corporation. The memories of working 20 hour days and nights in the orchards still haunt me.

Back to Mfowler's original post, I am sure many of us would like to see how his project is coming along. I wonder how well the main springs can handle the leveraged weight of that OMC shaker head and boom. Curious as to his GPM for the pump and how much clamp pressure he uses. Is he going to add silicone injection for the pads and slings? Or use the old method of grease? Pillow pads? Keep us posted, it looks fun from here! JM

Neil wrote:

Interesting. Timbo's father made an apple tree shaker (or might have been a cherry tree shaker - I can't remember and Tim might see this and correct me) for use in Western NY orchards. If I recall correctly, it had a canvas underneath to catch the fruit shaken from the tree. I believe that was mounted on a wheel tractor.
Anyhoo, driveline parts (drive-lines.com) in Fresno likely has all the parts you need. I've bought all the universal joints, yokes, and shafts from them and the yokes in particular have a variety of shaft apertures to match your equipment

Good to know about a driveline parts specialist so close. Back some time ago the NAPA store local had a very good guy for finding such, but he used supplier out of Neb. I needed more pieces several years latter and nobody knew anything as the parts man got tired of Calif and retired. But the power of the computer looked up my account and found the supplier. Now if I only remember when I need things.

Neil wrote:

JM, there's a couple of references I'd totally forgotten about from my dim, dark youth - Inter 574 Hydro - did a ton of hay raking with one of those and some baling, and FMC, namely their fresh pea harvesters - man, takes me back!

Lol Neil, I think I have a dog year or two on you.
Amazing how FMC couldn’t make upgrades for us; said what we wanted was not remotely possible; well, it’s pretty bad when a 16 year old kid can solve the puzzle.
Guess who came armed with cameras in hand to copy our machine?
Too funny.

Don't know about the 984 but some David Browns ended up with green paint about 50 years ago!