Orchard owners and father and son David and Matthew Shearer from Colrain, MA, talk about what it’s been like working with each other for so long at the family-owned Pine Hill Orchards.
Explore the orchard – and its bounty of apples and freshly pressed cider – in our full story on Pine Hill Orchards.
Read the full transcription:
Matthew Shearer, Pine Hill Orchards: It’s the way I grew up, and I’ve always been right by my dad’s side for all these years. And, you know, he taught me how to drive a tractor, how to drive a forklift, and — and really do this whole business.
And right now, I’m just trying to get all the information I can.
David Shearer, Pine Hill Orchards: I kind of always wanted him to do it. I wasn’t sure he’d ever want to work that hard, ’cause he’s been he’s been working here at the orchard since he was…ever since I can remember.
I mean, we used to do a lot of wholesale work, or sell fruit through a wholesale people, and a trailer trucks would come in in the middle of the night and we’d have to load them and back then you had to pile them by hand. So, you put 1,000 bushel in a truck, and he used to come out when he was six, seven years old, in the middle of the night and run forklift for me.
