With expanding staff and a promising crop coming in from its fields around Reidsville, GA, sweet onion giant Shuman Produce Inc. is making moves as it comes into the heart of its signature season, the Vidalia onion deal.

While Shuman is a 12-month grower-shipper of sweet onions from around the Western Hemisphere, the Vidalia onion is what started it all and that offering is still the crown jewel in the Shuman lineup.

Despite bitter debate carried out in courtrooms this spring about when the annual Vidalia harvest should start, the crop came off April 21 as scheduled and Shuman Produce is preparing to ramp up to full throttle.

At the end of the day, the mandatory start date issue proved to be moot, as a cool winter delayed the growth and readiness of the Vidalia crop. Shuman began harvest packing April 21, but even that week and the following were slowed by drenching rains — three to four inches the weekend of April 19 and another half-inch April 23 — that slowed the harvest industrywide.

Still, “Considering the atypical winter and the growing conditions we had the crop looks incredible, and I don’t say that lightly,” John Shuman said in late April. “Sizing’s been good, color’s been good, yields have been good. We’re very optimistic with what we’re seeing this first week. As an industry, we got off to a little slower start than we had hoped for two reasons.: One, the crop is still just not ready — we’re shipping limited volumes this week simply because we only have a few acres that are ready, but what we are shipping looks really good; two, weather slowed us down.”

The sweet onion market has been exceedingly tight for months as weather has slowed or diminished production in almost all growing areas. The beginning of the Vidalia crop will relieve some of that pressure and make selling onions a less stressful business, Shuman said.

“We’re very pleased with the early crop, we’re very optimistic, right now we feel good. This is going to bring some much needed relief to the sweet onion market. It’s been tight for the last several months,” Shuman said. “We’re not only glad to be shipping out of our home town and backyard, but we’re very thankful that supplies have opened up a little bit and some relief has come to the market. When you go through what we’ve all been through, whether you’re a buyer or shipper, the last three months were very stressful.”

As category demand for sweet onions — especially Vidalias — continues to grow, Shuman has added three new staff members to keep up with the pace.

Robert Franklin has come on board to handle logistics, Erin Waters has joined as a sales assistant and Kathy Griggs will help with accounting and bookkeeping.

“We’re very pleased to have them,” Shuman said. “We have a tendency to get as much blood out of the turnip as we can, everyone operates at maximum efficiency,” Shuman said. “As hot as this fire gets sometimes and stressful as the produce business can be, you’ve got to have a little help and we’re bringing in some folk to help manage our day to day operations and take a little stress off the rest of us and give us an opportunity to free up some of our time here so we can focus on growing the business and expanding operations and that’s what we’re hoping to do.”