YAKIMA -- The cold weather has turned this year's harvest into a race against time.

    Barret Orchard workers are scrambling to get the red wine grapes off the vine.

"They're perfect right now, we've got real good sugars in these reds right now," says owner Mark Barret.

    Since they don't have a machine, workers have to do it by hand as fast as they can.

    If the grapes stay on the vine for much longer, our recent cold weather may make them not so perfect.

"If it's gonna get down to 25 we can get some freeze damage in them and they won't have as good of a quality in the grape," says Barret.

    The cold weather has pushed up not only the grape harvest, but the apple harvest as well.

"Fujis are not picked yet, and normally wouldn't be picked until October 20th or 25th, we picked a few, we're going to be picking most of them next week because this cold weather will have accelerated them," says Barret.

Workers start picking apples at six a.m.

    If apples freeze overnight, industry experts say workers must wait until noon to harvest them.

    Apples and other fruits aren't the only things that don't like the cold temperatures.

"A lot of the field workers don't like to work when it's extremely cold, the ones that have come up from California might start heading back," says Barret.

Yakima Valley Growers and Shippers say most larger operations have enough workers.

    For those workers in the valley, the rush to get the fruit harvested will keep them busy for the remainder of the season.

    Growers and Shippers also say despite the cold weather, the local apple crop remains healthy.

    The organization expects the harvest to slightly top last year's collection of 100 million boxes.