With Migrant Workers in Short Supply, a Farmer Looks to Machines
By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN

Correction Appended

APPLETON, N.Y. — Scores of Jim Bittner’s cherry trees are now just heaps of roots and sticks, piled in his fields here along Route 18. Some of the branches lying on the ground are dotted with small blossoms, the season’s earliest evidence that sweet cherries were on their way. But for Mr. Bittner, having sweet cherries would have meant hiring someone to prune the trees and harvest the fruit, and he was not sure that he could do it this year. So he cut his trees down.

“We always assumed we could find the labor we would need,â€