Labor Market
Henry Bosma Orchards plans to shut down its farm in Granger, Washington, on Nov. 30, a closure the company says will affect 90 people. The notice is dated Tuesday, Oct. 27, and the Washington Employment Security Department (ESD) recorded it as received the same day.
In a one-page letter to the department, the company said it “will cease all operations” at its farm at 5281 E Zillah Drive in Granger, effective Nov. 30, 2026. The letter calls the shutdown “a permanent closure, due to the failure of negotiations with a lessor,” and opens by attributing it to “unforeseen circumstances.” It gives no further detail about the lease, the owner of the land, or what will happen to the orchard after the company leaves.
ESD’s public WARN layoff and closure database lists the filing as a permanent closure in Granger with 90 affected workers and a layoff start date of Nov. 30. The closure has not happened yet. It is the company’s planned end date, roughly five weeks after the notice went to the state.
Who is affected
The notice includes a list of job titles for the affected positions, with names and addresses left blank in the public copy. The list is dominated by field work. Sixty-five of the 90 entries are orchard labor. The rest are nine tractor drivers, five irrigators, three crew bosses, two mechanics, a payroll clerk, a human resources position, a farm manager, two managers and a general manager.
The letter does not say whether any of the 90 jobs are seasonal, whether workers will be offered positions at other company operations, or whether severance will be paid. It does not mention a union. The human resources manager who signed the letter is listed as the company contact.
Worksite versus mailing address
The farm being closed is in Granger, in the lower Yakima Valley. The company’s letterhead gives a different address, 4300 Beam Road in Zillah, a nearby town. The state database and the letter both place the affected worksite in Granger. The notice does not say whether the company runs anything else from the Zillah address or elsewhere, and it describes the closure only for the Granger farm.
How Washington's notice rule works
Washington has its own mass layoff and business closing law, which the Employment Security Department says “varies slightly from the federal WARN Act” and which generally covers closures affecting 50 or more full-time employees at a single worksite. The Bosma notice lists 90 affected positions but does not say how many are full-time, and nothing in the public record so far indicates any dispute over the notice.
A separate Pasco notice
Local coverage on Oct. 27 by NBC Right Now reported the Granger closure alongside a Pasco farm layoff. The two filings are unrelated. ESD’s database shows that Greenridge Farming Inc. filed its notice on Oct. 2, a permanent layoff of 193 seasonal agricultural workers in Pasco with a start date of Nov. 15. That notice involves a different employer, a different county and a different kind of action, so its workers are not part of the Granger count.
For the 90 Bosma workers, the timeline is short. The farm is scheduled to stop operating at the end of November, and the notice describes the closure as permanent, not a seasonal pause. Workers looking for help can contact ESD, which lists layoff assistance resources alongside the WARN database.
Sources
- Washington Employment Security Department, “WARN layoff and closure database,” accessed October 29, 2026. https://fortress.wa.gov/esd/file/WARN/Public/SearchWARN.aspx
- Henry Bosma Orchards, WARN notice letter to the Washington Employment Security Department, October 27, 2026. https://fortress.wa.gov/esd/file/WARN/Public/DownloadFile.aspx?file=a1561d68-54d8-44d2-9cba-3f1611de06b4.pdf&download=1
- Washington Employment Security Department, “WARN requirements,” accessed October 29, 2026. https://esd.wa.gov/employer-requirements/layoffs-and-employee-notifications/warn-requirements
- NBC Right Now, “Pasco and Granger layoffs to affect 283 farm workers,” October 27, 2026. https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/pasco-and-granger-layoffs-to-affect-283-farm-workers/article_c399a669-b03b-429b-adc1-b40bd21ae7a6.html
Featured photo: An apple orchard in the Yakima, Washington, area after snow, February 24, 2019. Representative image; not Henry Bosma Orchards' farm in Granger. Photo: Steve Groom, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped from the original.
