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“I had never seen anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since,” John Neilsen said of the first time he witnessed hundreds of volunteers working dawn to dusk picking pears at the Medford Pear Orchard. Neilsen arrived in the Rogue Valley in 2002 just before pear harvest at the orchard — a project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and he’s in awe now just as he was 16 years ago. This year, despite the stifling heat and the thick blanket of smoke that hung over the Rogue Valley for days on end, thousands of volunteers harvested more than 2.3 million pounds of Bartlett pears — the most ever in the farm’s 41 years of operation. Despite the poor air quality that required pickers to don protective masks, there was never a shortage of willing hands. “We had a great response this year,” said Neilsen, who serves as manager of the 60-plus-acre farm. Thousands of volunteers work the orchards over the course of the season, he said. Some come out multiple times — “whether it’s for one- to two- to three-hour shifts or for an eight-hour shift.” When it’s all said and done, Neilsen figures, more than 20,000 hours of volunteer labor filled 2,400 bins of pears destined for local food pantries, church canneries and humanitarian relief in communities across the United States. The Medford Pear Orchard has been in operation since 1977. It is one of 56 production projects of the LDS church. Farmhands are primarily volunteers from church stakes across the region. The pickers are “people from all walks of life in Medford and the surrounding communities,” said Frank Grant, who coordinates the volunteers. “We have doctors, lawyers, accountants and auto mechanics all working together from as far north as Roseburg and as far south as Yreka.” Most are members of the LDS church who have found pear picking “a fun way to do service.” For many it’s a family outing; for others it’s a way “to pay it forward.” After three weeks of picking Bartletts and a short respite, a crew returned to the farm in east Medford to harvest the much-smaller crop of Bosc and Anjou pears last weekend. Neilsen, who has a degree in horticulture, put a wrap on his 17th season Tuesday. “The pears seemed to do quite well in spite of the smoke,” he said. “Pears do not have a respiratory system like humans and animals, so the smoke does not have a direct effect.” High-quality pears are picked green and ripened off the tree. Timing, temperature and careful handling are vital to pear production. Each volunteer is coached in food handling and harvest techniques necessary to ensure optimal fruit quality, such as “a light, gentle touch” to prevent bruising, using gloves, and quickly “but softly lifting the pears off the trees” and placing them in the cold storage bins sideways so stems don’t rupture the skin. The volunteers are divided into teams and assigned chores either riding the picking platforms, climbing ladders or working at ground-level up and down the rows. Others drive the water wagons or the tractors that pull the wagon-load of volunteers at the beginning and end of each shift. Ninety-eight percent of the pears picked are Bartletts; the Bosc and Anjou account for only about 2 percent. “About 75 percent of the pears harvested in Medford are canned locally or in Boise and sent to LDS storehouses throughout the United States for distribution to the poor,” said Wade Sperry. “The other 25 percent is not canned, but distributed directly to community service organizations in the Medford area and also to Feed America, which in turn distributes to the poor in communities all across the United States.” Now that the 2018 pear season is over, Neilsen is looking to the future. This fall, peaches will be planted in a new section at the farm, and like the pears, they too will be harvested, canned and distributed to families in need. “We’re experimenting,” he said. “Peaches do well in other farms, they should well here, too.” Reach Grants Pass freelance writer Tammy Asnicar at [email protected].