Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2015 - 27

Top left: Peaches are boxed and ready
for shipment from the packing shed.
Lower left: Paul Saunders looks at family photos on a worker's cell phone.
Middle: These pretty peaches are
ready for harvest.
Above left: Workers prune young
boxwoods in the field.
Above: Peaches are basketed and
lining the shelf, ready for sale at the
Saunders Farm Market.
Left: This years' 100th anniversary
plaque has been added to the Saunders timeline.

EEN PLANTING AND HARVEST, THEN A FRANTIC RUSH WHEN THE CROP COMES DUE.
that the workers laid down.
A local teenager can simply quit
a job and go home. It's not that easy
for a Mexican employee brought to
the U.S. by an international farm labor agency.
"We make sure all the t's are
crossed and i's dotted" says Jim
Saunders. "An INS agent could
show up here at any time, and we'd
have nothing to worry about."
Finally, the presence of the
Mexican workers has allowed
Saunders Brothers to move into
ornamentals and flowering plants.
The problem with growing fruit is that
there is a significant lull between
planting and harvest, then a frantic rush when the crop comes due.
With ornamentals, there is something to do year-round, but very
few American workers able to meet
that schedule. Enter the Mexicans,
who are kept busy throughout their

nine-month stay. The ones who remain year-round often move seamlessly into positions of authority.
This "new" aspect of the operation began inauspiciously in 1947.
"My Mom gave me a few boxwoods to grow for a science project
in middle schools," Paul says, "and
I just kept building it up over time,
until I was selling them to some local nurseries."
Today, Saunders Brothers is the
lynchpin of a national boxwood
research organization, and Paul has
traveled around the world to find
new strains. Several of the brothers
are regulars at national ornamental
conventions and conferences, and
the Saunders menu has grown to include many of types of shrubs and
flowers.
"When I was playing football at
Virginia Tech," recalls Tom Saunders
with a chuckle, "I never dreamed
that part of my job one day would

be looking after pansies."
In many ways, Will, Massie,
Doc, Dick and Sam Saunders
would hardly recognize the business they birthed in 1914 and
nursed into young adulthood.
Apples are still important to the
mix, but the big trees that once
required a battalion of workers on
tall ladders have been bred down
to a manageable size. The original Elbertas have given way to a
dozen peach varieties that ripen
in a gradual hierarchy of succession. The former packing shed
has been converted into a retail
outlet, because the company no
longer trucks them to distant
markets, a task now reserved for
the ornamentals. Hundreds of
greenhouses have sprung up, and
the workers are more likely to say
"Hola" than "Y'all."
And Paul and Tatum have 32
grandchildren. Life is good. 
September/October 2015 27

Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2015

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