Fall crop update

Yes we have apples!! We have started picking the Ginger Golds and they are really good. The super hot weather (plus irrigation) has made them very sweet and juicy.
Even though the apple crop is only about 30% of our potential, it is still a lot of apples. We have many new acres of HoneyCrisp, Mac, Cortland, and Gala that should be in full production but did not produce anything this year. However, the HoneyCrisp, Galas, Macs, Jonagolds, GingerGolds, and Spies in some of our blocks have come through with nice crops. The size is great and we are very excited that we are back in the fruit business full force!
It has been a drag. We ended up with no Montmorency cherries (150 acres), Pears (3 acres), Apricots (3 acres), or plums (2 acres). We were under 1% of our normal crop on sweet cherries (40 acres), Balatons (20 acres) and Peaches (6 acres). We did have a pleasant surprise in the Nectarines as they came through with 10% of a crop and they were so sweet and good.(2.5 acres).
There is one crop that loved the early spring and then summer heat, the raspberries! It has been a real blessing because many people who would ordinarily pick sweet cherries switched to raspberries for u-pick. The first wave of raspberries lasted several weeks and wound down in early August, but now we are starting the second wave and the plants are loaded with big easy picking berries. It should last until the first hard frost.

I am worried that the publicity associated with the loss of fruit crops this year will dampen apple sales even though we have a nice crop for sale. In a normal year we sell in our markets and at some farmers markets but the great majority of our apple crop gets loaded on trucks bound for the fresh apple packing house in Sparta, Mi where they pack them for grocery stores. This year we will supply our markets first and there will still be apples to go to Sparta. We are short in some varieties but we will have our own Galas, Macs, GingerGolds, JonaGolds, HoneyCrisp and Spies. We have arranged to buy some Ida Reds, Cortlands, and Empires from growers we work with in Antrim and Leelanaw Counties. We did not have pears but I was able to snag some very nice Bartletts that we will have for a couple weeks until they run out.