The turning point

Well today we began picking in earnest and u-pickers are showing up. This is the turning point when we start taking in money on the crops which have been getting a lot of expensive care. Usually we have stretched all of our financial resources out to the max just as the sweet cherry harvest (and sales) begin. We always have lots of projects and ideas which we purchase and implement throughout the year (you already heard about the new plantings) so we can always think of ways to spend the money.
Betsy and I have been taking two tours a day through the home farm here trying to stay abreast of the ripening fruit so we can let our customers know as soon as we can possibly start the u-pick. Today you can find sweet and dark cherries but they are still in the minority with many cherries that are not ready yet. It is a struggle because we want to start and the customer wants to pick but if the customer is not patient and discriminating he or she will wind up with too many not-ripe cherries which are not as sweet. The good news is that by Sunday we should be really getting lots of ripe cherries and staying ahead of the pickers. U-pickers are frequently drawn to trees with a heavy load but the trees with a light load have larger sweeter fruit and they ripen more quickly.
This crop is quite beautiful right now. The trees are heavily laden and (remarkably) the fruit is getting to be really large. Also, the fruit seems to be sweet and firm.

Tarts are coming fast now and we will start them in a 5-6 days or so, u-pick. We have a heavy crop of tarts and we are getting the pitter going asap so that we can get them pitted for those who want their u-pick pitted. I am planning on taking down an old barn next week and putting up a tent over the cement floor so we can improve the area we pit cherries in. I also bought a new conveyor system and dump tank to facilitate tart cherry pitting, but they haven’t arrived yet so let’s hope this gets put together in time for most of the season. We went with stainless steel for the conveyors and tank and the rule of thumb is that stainless is 5 times more expensive than regular steel! Ouch.

Okay I want to blow my own horn here a little bit. One of my friends was selling raspberries and I decided to stick in a few rows here. Then I added another row and 5 rows down at the US31 market too. Jim, Rose, and Betsy had no comment other than “How much did that cost” (Jim). Now they are cranking out the berries and it is fun to see. We are still learning how to trim them so they are not so overgrown but they seem to like our soil and are growing like crazy. This year I planted some black raspberries but they won’t bear until next fall probably.

Did I tell you about our trip out West?  Betsy and I and Jim and Rose all flew out to California 2 weeks ago. Jim had located some cherry harvesters on Craig’s List and we are in the market for a new used one so we all flew out to Sacramento, and then stayed in Yuba City. Talk about tourists. We drove around all these huge beautiful farms and gawked. Almonds, olives, prunes, peaches, pistachios, kiwis, pomegranates, walnuts, and persimmons. We toured 3 fruit harvester manufacturer plants and we are now trying to buy one of the harvesters we saw. Then we went down to San Francisco for 1 1/2 days then home. Brief but fun.

The little Northern Spy apple trees that we grafted have not fared so well. We did 200 and about 35 are growing, about 50 are alive but not growing and I don’t know what to expect. They have not shriveled and don’t appear to be dying but they are not growing either so I don’t expect much from them. I think I will try again next year and I will get going earlier so they have mare time to knit together before I put them out in the row. I am still happy that I finally did some of my own grafting.

The army of young people that help with sorting cherries and waiting on our customers are getting going this week so we will be ready to assist our customers.

It is really nice to still have great potential for a full harvest of fruit.

I planted some high performance sweet corn that needs warm soils. I waited until the soil temp hit 65f and then planted a whole bunch. Then it turned cold and rainy and stayed in the 40s and 50s during May. The corn stand looks bad. I will disc in the worst of it and limp along with the rest. When I realized that I had been too hasty then I planted more corn hoping to fill the void. So hopefully the customer will be able to get our sweet corn all season long.

One new thing you might encounter is the Good Agricultural Program (GAP) which we are implementing. The response by the government to much publicized food bourne illnesses has been to require GAPs programs of all farms and processors who sell to the government. Big retailers are on board too. Much of it makes sense and is useful, such as; employee education about sanitation, bathroom and handwashing facilities within 5 minutes of any farm worker who is in place 3 hours or more, and guidelines for container sanitation and storage. The tough part for growers are the requirements for a log book on cleaning the bathrooms, a log of all visitors to the orchard, and no eating in the orchard except in designated areas.  No pets too.  They also want us to implement wildlife control, so we will claim the dog is here under that provision.  The traceability parts mean that every container will have to have a way of identifying the orchard, block, day, and the people working when it was picked.  We growers are mostly not interested in keeping a lot of log books and records. Big farms will have an easier time because they can have a person dedicated to it and they don’t have as many small operations going. Our objective is to have our Sweet cherries, Tart cherries, and Apples all GAP certified this summer. We will have to pay for a USDA inspector to come out and inspect us. The first time it is by appointment and then they will spot check to make sure that we are implementing the plan as agreed.  Rose has taken the point on this and she has made every employee watch a sanitation video, and then she kept a log of that. Now we are purchasing portapotties for the more remote locations. The sweet cherries that were picked today came into the fruitstand with a tag that had the information on what day and what orchard they came from.

This evening I had 4 deer eating the good block of sweet corn. After supper I went out to the sprayer and loaded it with 72 lbs of raw eggs. We buy them in milk cartons for the restaurant trade. I put 2 cases in with 200 gallons of water and spray nonbearing trees and corn plants. The eggs immediately begin to decay and smell bad and that will bother the deer for a week or so.

Good Night

John