One of the obvious challenges in farming is the weather.

Apricot bloom from 2013.

As mentioned in previous posts, horticultural crops like tree and berry fruit, are very vulnerable to spring weather.  Warm weather in the late winter can trick the plants into an early growth pattern, which can setup the plants for disaster if the weather returns to a normal pattern later in the spring.

After a snowy and normal February, we have just experienced one of the warmest March’s on record.  Statewide in Pennsylvania, the average temperature was a blistering 6.3 degrees above normal for the entire month.  The average high temperature for the month was nearly 10 degrees above average.  Spring Peeper frogs started their chorus on March 6, nearly 4 weeks ahead of schedule, and apricots were blooming by March 22.  We are experiencing the second earliest season, next to only 2012.

In 2012, we were lucky enough to dodge a major freeze during bloom.  The Midwest (and Michigan in particular) was not so lucky, and they lost all of their fruit.  Prices surged that year as supplies were low.

This year, we may not be so lucky.  We have had several mornings near 30 this week, but worse, there are forecasts for 3 nights in the mid 20’s in the coming week.  Apples are not too far along yet, but peaches, cherries, plums, and apricots are vulnerable to anything below 28.

In most professions, a knowledge of future events would allow one to take evasive action, and perhaps even benefit from what is coming.  In this job, there is nothing that can be done.  There are a few natural products that can be sprayed on the trees to provide a degree or two of buffer, and some big growers in Michigan have invested in large wind machines that stir calm cold air on frosty nights.  But those techniques are not useful for the wind-driven blasts of cold air forecasted this week.  Neither is there a futures market where risk can be hedged.

There is only one backup plan: insurance.  Crop insurance is available for apples, peaches, and to a limited extent, cherries and strawberries.  It is very expensive, requiring an investment of a large portion of the profits, but it can help take the sting out of a total crop failure.

And these failures may become more frequent if scientists are right about the changing climate.  My data would seem to corroborate forecasted trends of increasing volatility.  The last several years have shown a consistent pattern of very wet, very warm, very cold, and at times very dry.  Rain events have been extreme with a very large proportion of last years’ precipitation falling in just 3 or 4 storms.  Or just consider that 80% of this winters’ snowfall occurred in just one storm that set the all-time record for snowfall.  In contrast, March had something like 30% of the normal precipitation for the month.

So here’s hoping for a little error in the forecast this week.  Because if the weather stays just a few degrees warmer, we might even benefit from the cold.  How?  Because peaches usually set many more fruit than we want on the trees, and require extensive thinning.  If nature does the thinning for us, we can save a little labor and improve the quality of the remaining fruit.   But…  I’d rather not have to worry about it so much.

Beautiful cherries from 2015

I was once asked by a customer why cherries are so expensive.

The answer is pretty simple: blame it on our East Coast weather.  The last three years are a perfect example.  In 2013 and 2014, tough winters and light freezes during bloom combined to shrink the crop to about 20-30% of what would be considered a full crop.  This year, the crop had a huge “set”; that is, there was a very large bloom and almost of all of the blossoms produced a fruit.  All of the cherry orchards were amazed by how many cherries they saw.  I considered it to be a double or even triple crop.

Then in May we saw no rain.  For about six weeks from bloom until very late May, we received about 1/10 of an inch of rain.  The trees were heavy with cherries that couldn’t size because the leaves weren’t powering the tree because the leaves couldn’t grow because there was just too much load on the tree for the amount of water they were receiving.  All the cherry growers were in a panic that their crops would be dime-sized.

The we had the wettest June in history.  Literally.  Baltimore broke a record, and Harrisburg recorded their 8th wettest June (and we had about 15% more rain than Harrisburg).  Moreover, the rain was continuous throughout the month with not a single observation of two dry consecutive days.  (I’m pretty sure about that – our weather station broke down with all the rain.)

If there is one thing cherries don’t like, besides hail, it is wet weather.  It was a huge challenge to keep them from splitting and rotting in the fields.  Like it or not, the only way to save a crop like this is to apply fungicides to prevent them from rotting in the trees.  Only the very best and safest fungicides can be used for this.  These are also some of the most expensive chemicals sold.  Retail price: $800/gallon.

Adding insult to injury, we’ve been trying to establish new cherry trees to replace our aging orchard.  Our biggest challenge has been trying to grow them in the presence of an ever-expanding deer herd.  We’ve tried scents, plastic bags, expensive repellants and nothing seems to work.  Deer love to browse on cherries and really nothing will stop them.  Many of my two-year-old trees look no larger than when they were planted and some have been killed by the damage.

For the most part, growers in the Northwest don’t have to worry about these problems.  They grow their cherries in a desert climate far from the woods, and irrigate them from the huge water projects and hydro-electric dams that were paid for with federal tax dollars.  Yes, they can produce quality cherries at a low cost.  But in the end, we were able to size our crop, keep most of them from splitting and rotting, and produced a great crop that was enjoyed by many of our neighbors and customers.

So I think it is worth the effort to grow cherries…  but don’t think for a minute that it is easy, or will be cheap.

One of the perks of an outside job is staying highly attuned to the changes of the seasons.  Anyone would have noticed that last Saturday was crazy cold, with snow squalls and biting winds.  And most may have been aware that we nearly broke a record low (22!) on Saturday night.

But tonight while wandering the orchards I heard an unmistakable sign of Spring.  Spring Peepers.  They are tiny little frogs that you might mistake for a cricket.  They congregate around water, and are really the first sign of new life each year.  Read more about them, and listen to them, here.

I’m trying to track their appearance each year so that I can get a better idea of when each of our different fruits will bloom, and ultimately bear their first fruit.  Last year, the Peepers also began their chorus on March 30.  Quite the coincidence!  So if we see the same general amount of heating days over the next two weeks, we can expect plums to bloom on April 15.

But for now, I’m just happy to know that Spring has Sprung!

Most fruit lovers know that of all the fruits out there, apples enjoy the distinction of having the greatest variety.  They are the nearly the only fruit or vegetable in the grocery aisle where variety is a major selling point.  Apples can taste sweet or tart, be snappy or mushy, hold their shape when cooked or just fall apart.  There are literally thousands of varieties of apples, with nearly 100 in common cultivation.

If you were to plant the seeds of an apple, you are very likely to end up with something that is not like the fruit it came from.  I recently saw a picture of the actual fruit produced from seedlings that all came from the same tree.  The fruit were incredibly diverse ranging in color from gold to red, and from small to large (I couldn’t taste them, but would be willing to bet that the taste was equally inconsistent).  So if apples don’t grow reliably from seed, how do apple growers produce a consistent product?

The answer was discovered over a hundred years ago as growers tried to “move” varieties from one place to another.  It turns out that apples are very tough plants and they can be grafted easily.  The graft is accomplished by taking tender bud wood (called the scion) from the desired plant, and inserting it into a freshly cut slit under the bark of the host apple tree.  When done correctly, the cells of the host and scion merge nicely at the graft, and allow the scion to continue growing into an exact replica of its original parent.  This is a kind of clonal reproduction that guarantees that there is no change to the variety over time.  A variation of this on small nursery trees is called budding, and it is pretty much the only way that apples are propagated today.

If we look back at the apples in common usage 200 years ago, they are typically soft, have thick skins, have rough patches on their skin called russetting, have a very short window for harvest, don’t store well, and generally wouldn’t compete well with today’s varieties in the grocery aisle.  But once there was a good solution in place to maintain and exactly propagate a variety, there was a lot of effort put into breeding.

Apple breeding is a very long term process taking anywhere between 15-30 years for results of a cross to be well understood.  New varieties usually come about in 3 ways: sexual crossing between existing varieties; volunteer seedlings that are “found”; and genetic mutations of existing apple wood.

Sexual crossing is a slow process because even with parent seeds from the same apple, the “child” trees may yield apples that are very different from each other.  Each seed must be grown to a mature tree before only the best trees are kept for future crosses or commercial propagation.  For example, the popular variety Honeycrisp was actually bred in the 60’s, so long ago that records of its exact parentage have been lost.  Nonetheless, this is the process whereby almost all brand new varieties are grown.  It is a slow, expensive process that is leading the industry to some major changes.  More about that in my next post.

The second method mentioned is where seedlings trees are identified as being somehow worthy of saving.  An example of this is the variety “York” which is still considered an excellent baking and processing apple.  It was found growing near York PA nearly 100 years ago, and saved.

The third method is very often used to improve an existing variety.  It is pretty common in an orchard to come upon a limb that acts a little differently than the rest of the tree.  Its apples may ripen earlier, or they may be redder, or they may taste a little different.  These “sports” are often identified by alert growers, and cuttings shipped to nurseries to serve as a cultivar of the parent variety.  This can cause a variety to change fairly quickly due to human-selected preferences in a variety.

For example, throughout the second half of the 20^th century, Red Delicious was continuously selected for improvements to color and shape, such that the most modern strains are almost always 100% dark red with a pointy shape;  unfortunately the selection process also diminished the flavor of America’s favorite apple variety.  Gala has also changed: what started as a red blush over a yellow base has now been selected to be another red apple.  Fortunately, the taste has remained unchanged.

Future posts will examine the future of apple breeding.

OK, so even the casual reader will note that I didn’t do a very good job of updating my blog this season. That’s putting it mildly.

There are lots of good reasons for this, but they all come down to the simple fact that I don’t have much time.  See previous posts for an idea of why.  The 2014 growing season included many of the same challenges presented in 2013, most notably, maintenance issues.  Pretty much every piece of equipment had something go wrong with it at some point.  From collapsed buildings, to repairs on 70 year old refrigeration equipment, to rewiring of complicated irrigation systems, to tractor fires and more, I was never bored.

But now that the season is over and most of the money is in the bank (a later article on that perhaps?), since I didn’t make any other distracting posts during the growing season, let’s just do a quick analysis of my last post and see how well I did with my crop predictions.

Apricots – yep, they all froze.  Moreover, we actually lost a few trees when they never awoke from the long winter.  I’d like to plant more apricots, but it is difficult to find a variety that grows well here.  Our biggest problem is a disease called “bacterial spot”, which sounds dangerous, but simply causes ugly blotches on the fruit.  It doesn’t occur in dry climates, like California or Persia, but around here it thrives.

Strawberries – right again!  It was the best crop in a long time – maybe ever.  The plants went nuts and the moist soil pushed some really nice berries.  It will be a hard act to follow this year.

Peaches – right.  It was a good crop.  Most of the peaches did really well though we did have a block of peaches fail at the end of the season.  The trees are getting old and they seemed to just give up on their heavy crop.  Next time, I’ll throw some fertilizer at them at the first sign of trouble; maybe it would have helped.

Blueberries – right.  It was a great crop.  We had some freeze damage from the winter, but not enough to knock back the plants.  In fact, it is probably time for some serious pruning to help the plants produce bigger berries.

Cherries – my concerns were warranted.  It was another poor year for cherries, but at least we had a few.  Orchards to the north and west had almost no cherries at all.  I was once challenged by a customer who told me that cherries are too expensive.  The challenging crops of the last few years show why they are so costly.

Apples – I projected a good crop, heavy on Reds, light on Golds, and otherwise average.  I was happily wrong.  It was a huge crop.  We broke records on our Golds and hit benchmarks not seen for many years.  The quality was very good on our fresh eating apples, with a cool summer providing optimal coloring conditions.  Apple scab continued to be a problem, exacerbated by heavy rains in the spring; but the disease was largely limited to the processing apples so the economic damage was minimal.  The only downside to the crop was that everyone else in the country had a good crop too – in fact, a record crop – which lowered the wholesale price of apples yet again.  This is the classic problem with farming: if you have a good year, chances are good others did too, and the prices fall.

Raspberries – they didn’t grow as quickly as I would have liked, but after a shot of mid-summer fertilizer they perked up and provided some good snacking.  They should be well-positioned for a harvestable crop this year.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

We raise a few other crops that deserve mention.

The pumpkin crop this year was pretty good.  I devoted even larger fields to it this year, but yields didn’t seem to be quite as good as the last few years.  We grew a record variety of “curbits” (the technical word for squash/gourds/pumpkins) including some really tasty new squashes.  I really enjoy watching these form in the field because you always see a few interesting hybrids.  This year we found a unique orange and green “camouflage” squatty pumpkin that Jana quickly claimed as her own.  It was rock hard up to January when we finally decided to eat it, and were pleasantly surprised by how good it was.  I saved the seeds, but don’t really expect the sons and daughters to look like their parent.

Corn and soybeans were good for most farmers this year, but just average in my fields.  The wide variety of food and water on our farm makes an ideal habitat for deer, and deer love soybeans.  So between the deer, the groundhogs, and the hired spray applicator that missed two acres of beans, we had a highly average year of grain.  (And yes, the record harvest elsewhere pushed the price down to about half of what the price was just two years ago.)

All in all, it was a very good year.  But I’m happy for a little time off!

Now we’ve seen it all this winter.  Sub-zero temperatures, a big snow storm (over 18 inches here), and an ice storm that brought this end of the county enough tree damage to keep us out of power for 4 days.  It was fun for the first 2 days, bearable for day 3, and by day 4 we piled in with Mom and Dad!  We haven’t seen a winter like this in a long, long time!

So what’s it all mean to the fruit trees?  In my last post, I described the risks to the strawberries and peaches.  It is still too early to tell what kind of damage we may have seen there.

But one problem we probably don’t have is broken limbs due to ice damage.  Fruit trees are pruned annually, and are maintained so that they can support huge loads of fruit.  I strapped on the snowshoes and did some scouting this week, and as expected, there was very little damage to the trees.  Especially since almost all of the apples have been freshly pruned.

The other good thing about the snow is that it helps keep the roots of the trees cold.  When the roots are cool, the trees are less likely to get tricked into “waking” during the several-day warm spell this week.

Of course, the bad thing about the snow is that the local school districts here are up to something over a week of extra time into the summer vacation.  Which means that a lot of our pick-your-own strawberry customers may not be ready by the time our crop is ready (assuming the crop made it through the winter)…  So there is still plenty to worry about!

About August last year – that is the stressful part of peach season – I started dreaming about snow days.  The idea of a forced day off at home with my family seemed a nice change from the sweat of summer and the stress of harvesting peaches.  Our new home is high on a hill, far back a quiet road, nestled against a deep forest.  It is the kind of place you want to get snowed in.

So here it is!  The snow is falling, the roads are impassable, the kids are out of school, and we are stuck.  I love it.  The children are playing nicely together.  There is a slow fire in the fireplace, the dog is curled at my feet, and there are plans for an afternoon of baking with all those wonderful fruits we saved from the growing season.

The only sign of discord is in my head, as an ancient Protestant work ethic reminds me of the predicted accomplishments in those summer dreams.  Our home is wonderful – pretty much exactly what we were looking for – but it still has a few loose ends.  The deck is mostly finished now… but mostly isn’t completely, and completion isn’t really possible today.  I tried to work on a paver walkway in December, but only got the excavation done before the weather got too bad to continue.  I’m working on an office, but I badly injured a finger yesterday and I don’t really want to go back to the table saw today.

The other thing to worry about is the weather.  Believe it or not, fruit growers need to worry about weather even in the winter.  To be sure, we worry a little less.  But this isn’t a normal winter.  You have probably noticed that we have seen the coldest temperatures since the early 90’s.  When temperatures get below 10, we start worrying about strawberries.  The cold snap during the first week of January took us down to 0, and because there was no snow on the ground, there is a good chance the strawberry buds were damaged. Only time will tell, and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it now – though in retrospect perhaps I should have mulched them with straw in December.  (On the other hand, is it worth that expense to save 1 crop in 20?)

The other crop that is at risk in cold weather is peaches.  We are pretty near the northern limit of commercial peach production and these extreme temperatures are the reason for that.  I remember as a kid watching the thermometer head south of 0 and wondering whether the peaches would pull through.  Some years they wouldn’t – and with nearly 25 years since a big winter-kill, we are overdue for a loss.  Especially concerning is the huge temperature swings we’ve seen this month.  Just before Christmas, we saw a day up to nearly 70 – it melted all the early season snow and exposed those strawberry buds.  It was still 50 at New Year’s, but then that “Arctic Vortex” dropped us 50 degrees in just a day. Trees don’t like those kinds of extremes.

But todays’ snow should help insulate against the forecasted bitter temperatures this week.  And I know I really can’t work on these house construction projects.  So maybe today I’ll just dedicate myself to my family “project.”

After all, that is our most important and rewarding priority.

It’s just a memory now.  Or at least almost.  I still have a couple dozen bins of apples in the storage, and I still need to find a little time to dump the few pumpkins on the back porch that didn’t find a home.  But for the most part, the 2013 season – my first season managing the orchard – is history.  And yes, I’m happy about it!

My last post alluded to the sheer exhaustion we were all feeling, but that’s a memory now too.  After two nice big holidays with my family, and a five day family trip to the in-law’s in Indiana wherein I was forced to do pretty much nothing but sit, eat, rest, and shop…  I’m feeling pretty good!   Here in the extreme west of the time zone, I’ve even remembered how to sleep late!

This is just the kind of break we all need to reflect on the year behind, and think about what will be done differently in the coming year.  So here are some reflections and resolutions:

1. Do something about the things that drive me nuts.  Some of those factors are outside of my control (weather), some are expensive to change (aging infrastructure), some take time and effort (planting new crops), and some are really pretty simple but somehow just keep getting ignored.  But one thing’s for sure, if something bothers me now, I’m pretty sure it is going to bother me in 10 years.  So it is better to fix it than ignore it.  (Kind of like the homeowner who installs new carpet just as they sell their home.)
2. Organization is more important than ever.  We are growing a dozen different crops, sold through many channels and customers, with a score of employees, with more and more government “help” than ever.  A large business would have dedicated employees for all of those different things, but my business has me (and my wife).  We don’t have time to waste on inefficiency.  
3. Stay ahead of the game.  Crop seasons wait for no man.  Pruning, fertilizing, planting, spraying, thinning, and harvesting all need to be done at exactly the right time.  This year, I’m going to sketch out all of the important things I know are going to need to be done.  Really, it is just project management.  I’ve got some experience in that; all we need to do is apply it to the big project of bringing the 2014 harvest home (and then selling it at a profit).  A project plan will make me feel more confident that all of the tasks are getting done at the right time.
4. Identify those employees who can handle less supervision and turn them loose.  Some employees need to be told how to do everything; but some have the capability and motivation to see what needs to be done and find the right way to do it.  When I see those traits, I need to leverage it.  It frees me up to do more important stuff.
5. Remember why I’m doing this.  It isn’t all about the money – though to quote George Bailey “it come in pretty handy down here bub!”  As we thought about designing our Christmas cards this year, we realized that we hadn’t taken a single picture of the family on the farm.  Nor had we spent more than a few minutes on the fun little paddleboat that Mom and Dad bought for the kids.  Heck, I didn’t even go fishing in the pond this year.  Yep.  We can do better.

So we move forward to 2014.  May the coming year be fruitful for all!

You may notice that my devotion to the Blog has waned a little.  It isn’t because I care any less about it; it has to do more with fatigue.

Fifty years ago, we pretty much raised apples and only apples.  But as the apple business in the East has waned, we’ve diversified the crops we grow.  Today, we find ourselves with a significant amount of fruit coming into season from May until late October.  Moreover, instead of selling all our fruit through pretty much one channel (wholesale), we now have an active retail market, sell through Farmers’ Markets, support local grocery stores, and sell to big packing houses.  We have to do this to make a profit.

Long story short, the days are longer than they’ve ever been in this business.  I’ve averaged 12 hours a day, six days a week, for six months straight without a single day off.  And the work is hard.  I’ve dropped two waist sizes despite enjoying desert with every meal.

I don’t think this problem is unique to my family.  In talking with another grower a few weeks ago, he too confessed to being worn out.  He offered me a friendly warning about the treadmill that this job can become.  He especially warned me about what would happen if we tried to expand the retail operation to 7 days a week.

So when people start to wax romantic about the farming lifestyle, I’m quick to correct them.  At least in my industry, the job is not slow-paced, quiet, or peaceful – at least for the professionals who want to make a living at it.  There are many benefits, but a forty hour work week is not one.

The good news is that there is an end in sight.  We are about 3 weeks away from the end of the harvest, and about 5 weeks away from Thanksgiving, at which point we can really give Thanks and maybe take a nap on a Thursday!