Harvest is crucial for a farmer. For fruit farmers, the year is spent working on getting the fruit to harvest. An alarming number of obstacles appear throughout the year – hail, rain, wind, freezing temperatures, scorching heat, insects, gophers, etc. Throughout all of the ongoing challenges, the focus of each day is getting the crop to harvest.
Hours upon hours are spent each day on frost control, animal patrol, fighting tree borers, discovering and striving to heal tree deficiencies, pruning, thinning, planning, and more.
Then harvest arrives! The fruit sizes and gets its beautiful color. This is the moment of thanking God that we did it because it was not easy.
But the work has just begun!
Now that the fruit is ready, it must be carefully picked, sorted, packed, and sold. Large orchards possess far too much fruit for a few individuals to pick by themselves, and farm owners must hire pickers, or the fruit will hit the ground and waste away. Once the fruit starts to color, birds will get to it before it is even ready for picking. "You Pick" events require additional licensing and liability insurance. Farmers must quickly make crucial, expensive decisions, or they will lose the crop. Waste is inevitable - limiting the amount of waste is key to success.
Fortunately, harvesting fruit becomes more manageable by carefully selecting each type and variety of fruit to ensure they are ripe at different times. For example, Bing Cherries tend to mature in mid-June, while Granny Smith Apples' harvest typically begins at the end of August. If timed correctly, fruit harvests can start in the early summer and continue through October (or even November!). However, this timing requires serious planning years in advance, and it does not always work out as intended.
The weather can make or break a harvest!
While timing is a critical component, it does not precisely guarantee when the harvest will happen. The weather can not only impact the success of a harvest, but it can also speed it up and/or slow it down. Two to three minutes of hail can destroy an entire peach crop. In addition, heavy monsoon rains, like we received this July, can wash out the unique flavors of various peach varieties. Paired with high heat, like we experienced this June and August, the weather creates a large peach crop with anticlimactic taste and high quantities that need to be sold immediately.
However, the weather not only impacts peaches - it alters the harvest times of all the fruit. For example, due to extremely high heat, our apricot and plum trees aborted their fruit before we could pick them. Meanwhile, our early apple varieties are hitting the ground before we have adequate time to pick and ample cold storage space to keep them.
We have found ourselves in the unique situation of working with overwatered peaches and ready-too-soon apples simultaneously.
As I mentioned earlier, harvest for one type of fruit is hard work, but each consecutive fruit type or variety doubles or even triples the amount of work.
Fortunately for me, Paul grew up with these challenges. He frequently reminds me that we must remember to respect nature instead of fearing or resenting it. The winds, rains, cold, and heat can cause tremendous damage, but we would never see the glorious fruit that our lives depend upon without them.
Last week was long and hard. We lost sleep over the fruit, and inevitably, we will do it again throughout the next few months. However, intense droughts, flash floods, 55 mph winds, and all the other challenges we face each day while trying to get the fruit to and through harvest are teaching me an appreciation for what I cannot control. I will lose sleep and work hard, and I will enjoy the miraculously adaptive trees surrounding me. I will learn to handle the difficulties and move forward, striving to overcome the long nights and brutal temperatures. I will be strong and come hell or high water, like the trees, I will still be standing next harvest, ready for the fruit.
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