CONE-PICKING IN GERMANY

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27367, 4 June 1954, Page 6

CONE-PICKING IN GERMANY

Hazardous, But Well Paid Trade SEEDS USED TO PLANT NEW FORESTS FRANKFURT. About 150 Germans who spend most of their working lives up trees are getting ready to come down to earth again for two months’ holiday. They are the “Baumsteiger” (tree climbers), who swing through the treetops in West Germany’s forests from summer until late spring, picking cones containing the seeds of future plantations of fir, spruce, pine, larch and birch. Their season finished at the end of May. In August, they start again, switching to different forests as the various types of cones come to fruition.

Their trade is one of the least known, best paid and most hazardous in West Germany. Some of the younger and more daring of them can swing from tree to tree for a mile at a stretch. They are paid by the number of cones th >y pick—which encourages them to work fast. They wear spiked climbing irons similar to those used by post office linesmen when working on telegraph poles. They are also equipped with safety belts, but some disdain to use them, so confidant are they of their sureness and skill.

When they have stripped one tree of cones, the pickers pull over a limb from another tree with a long pole, grab hold of it and swing across. Many of the trees 80 feet high and taller, will sway to and fro for minutes, but the pickers, clinging tenaciously to the branches, carry on stripping the cones. The cones are taken to kiln-drying plants, where they are heated gradually to allow the seeds to finish ripening, and then tipped into a rotating drum which splits the cones, allowing the seeds to come out. Another machine clips off “wings’ ’on the seeds. Then they are cleaned, tested and stored. The entire process takes about 30 hours. One of the largest of these plants is at Hanau, near here. It belongs to the Hesse State Government and can produce about 50,0001 b of seeds a year. This plant supplies seeds to state forests in many parts of West Germany, and employs a total of 100 cone-pickers. It is estimated that there are about 1000 skilled cone-pickers in West Germany. Most of them come from two Bavarian villages, Kirchzell and Eichenbuehl, and Zellhausen, in Hesse. There are families who have been at the trade for generations. Boys start going out with their fathers to learn the business when they are about 14. Cone-pickers are at their best up to the age of 35. After that, they begin to lose a bit of their speed. But many have been at the job for 20 or more years and some are over 50. The better workers can pick from 1001 b to more than 1601 b of cones a day depending on the type of tree. Two pounds of seeds is enough to produce between 30,000 and 90,000 small trees.