I like the part of my job where I interact with customers.  I enjoy listening to their “likes” and I sometimes press them to understand what we can do better.  Many times during these conversations I get the question “what kind of fruit tree can I plant in my own property?”  Or sometimes, it is the more direct person who seeks me out to understand why a tree isn’t producing.

I had a conversation like this with a customer earlier in the week.  The family was enjoying some (very) late season blueberry picking, and wanted to know what kind of fruit trees they should plant on their half acre.

My response was “anything but apples.”  Most people have no idea how much work it takes to bring a high quality apple to market.  Other blog posts have described the pruning, thinning, and most of all, constant fight against diseases and insects.  The kind of apple trees that we grow today are not found anywhere in nature: they have been bred by people over hundreds of years for their ability to produce large tasty fruit, and not to survive untended in nature.  It is like comparing a friendly beagle to a wild wolf.  One of those can survive in nature, and the other won’t.

The cynic will think that my advice here is self-serving.  And it is, but not for the reasons you’d think.  Honestly, I wouldn’t miss the business from any single customer who decides to plant his own trees.  But untended fruit trees are huge vectors for disease and pests.

Consider the case of the plum pox virus several years ago in Adams County.  Out of nowhere, this virus arrived from Europe and threatened to completely destroy the peach industry in the mid-Atlantic.  There is no defence against the virus.  The Department of Agriculture worked quickly with local extension and growers to quarantine the area and destroy any trees that MAY have been infected.  Many acres of trees were simply pushed out and burned.  The good news is that this quick action actually worked and we are now free of the virus.

But what if every other house had a peach tree?  Would each of those homeowners be so quick to comply with destruction requests?  California teaches us that the answer is no.  They recently failed to stop a new pest (the citrus psyllid) that was initially found in backyard trees and moved quickly between backyard hosts.  The bug now is a major threat to California citrus.

So my advice is simple: unless you are willing to sign up for the great amount of care that fruit trees need, you shouldn’t raise them.  At best you’ll get mediocre fruit (probably good applesauce material), and at worst, you’ll put commercial growers at risk.

There are some great natural alternatives.  One of these I suggested to my new friend this week: the American Persimmon.  OK, a persimmon doesn’t taste like peach, but God put it here in this part of the world, and it will grow without a lot of fuss.  Our colonial ancestors thought very highly of this native plant and frequently planted them near their homes.  They are now rather hard to find, and could use a little help from people.  Picked late enough in the season, they are sweet and juicy, and very good for you.  And if you don’t get to them first, the deer will thank you too!

Dad and I had a chance to slip away this week to go to a grower meeting in Adams  County.   Events like this are a good opportunity to see what other growers are doing, and learn from the Extension and Agriculture staff at Penn State.

One of the entomologists observed that it is much harder for growers today than it was 30-40 years ago.  Back then, there were a few standard sprays that could be applied on a fixed period, and as long as the period was maintained, they did a pretty good job of killing most of the pests.  But they were “broad spectrum” insecticides that killed most of the insects in the field.  Regulations enacted in the 90’s forced us to consider not only human health, but “environmental” considerations as part of the pesticide approval process.  Long story short, most of those insecticides are gone and were replaced with the idea of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

We subscribed to IPM early on, because it decreases the total cost of pest management while maintaining good quality.  The basic idea is that you monitor the bugs in your field, only treat when projected damage reaches an economic threshold, and then try to treat only the pests that are causing problems while maintaining as many predator insects as possible.  This requires a lot of vigilance by scouting for problems, and laying traps for the bad insects so that we can determine their populations.  It also requires a great deal of care in selecting sprays that target exactly the right pest at the right time, in order to do the least damage to the beneficial insects.  So where we used to have a half-dozen go-to sprays, we now have many more.

Which brings me back to the problem of progress.  In the “green revolution” of the 50’s and 60’s, the average extension agent may have projected that science would make fruit growing a lot easier by the next century.  But I don’t think it has turned out that way:

Where we used to have a few sprays, we now have many.  And we need to rotate their use so that they continue to maintain their effect on bugs that are always trying to evolve resistance.  And not only the bugs evolve, but so do people’s tolerance for anything synthetic.  Where there used to be a belief that science was advancing humankind, many people now are skeptical of anything man-made used to improve the quality of their food.

Our sprays are definitely safer (for the environment and for people).  But despite that, the regulations to use them are far more stringent, and some would say, inane.  It takes a good deal of work to figure out exactly how to comply with the constraints of re-entry period, pre-harvest interval, and maximum seasonal application quantities, all of which may differ by type of fruit even for the same chemical (don’t ask me why).  In other words, we have federal rules that say that a particular fruit with a particular spray is so safe, it can be eaten immediately after treatment, but it is unlawful for a worker to enter the field within 24 hours after treatment.  Say what?

And all of those regulations make the development cycle of new treatments very expensive.  It takes millions of dollars and many years to prove a new chemical is safe (for people and the environment) and effective.  And it needs to be proven on every crop that will be treated, which means lots of replication.  So many companies just skip the odd fruits because the cost is more than the benefit – which can lead to situations where there is no (legal) way to treat unusual fruits or vegetables against pests, which leads to continued monoculture.  (The Farm Bill provides some funds to help with this problem, which is another good reason to support that legislation.)

Future posts will examine the new complexities brought about by invasive species and pathogens.

The temperatures were back up this week, with highs in the low 90’s and big time humidity.  It was like Mother Nature was reminding us that peach season is right around the corner.

Peaches love warm sunny weather, and our peaches are ripening nicely.  I’ve been visiting our early peaches every other day, and I ate my first peach of the season on Thursday.  As much as I enjoyed it, I knew that it meant that peach season is nearly upon us, and with the season comes its own pressures and stresses.

Peaches are one of those fruits that tastes best when it is best picked soft.  There, I said it.  Secret is out.  As one of our employees said years ago – the best peaches are eaten right in the field!

The fact is, no grower can afford to let his peaches get soft on the trees, because they are impossible to ship or pack that way. There is no more certain way to grow broke than to ship soft peaches, because no matter how great they taste, the buyer will send them back because they have insufficient shelf life.  So we all do what we must, and pick them while they are still firm.

And here’s the difference between your local grower, and the big orchards in Georgia or California.  We tend to let our peaches ripen an extra few days on the trees to pick up more flavor; whereas the big commercial growers pick their peaches as soon as they’ve attained sufficient size and color to make the grade.  It doesn’t matter to them what the peaches taste like because believe it or not, the big grocery chains never really ask that question.  Their inspectors never eat the stuff.

This can set up a race to the bottom in the fruit industry.  Fruit breeders continually look for varieties that have pretty red color and consistent size, and ripen uniformly.  Those peaches often get picked before they should, and they ship into supermarkets before the good local fruit.  Consumers eat this stuff, and no surprise, they find it to be disappointing – and they get turned off from peaches for the season.

We sell our peaches through several different channels, so we always need to assume that every consumer who eats our fruit knows that it came from Shaw Orchards.  So we are very picky about the way our fruit is harvested.  Our peaches are picked as close as reasonably possible to that time when it starts to develop a soft shoulder around the stem.

Which also means that we place a lot of stress on ourselves to make sure that we have buyers lined up for those peaches, because even at 35 degrees in our cold storage, those peaches continue to ripen and will start to become soft in about a week.  The clock is ticking.

… and the season is coming at us fast!  Enjoy your peaches this year!

There aren’t many people around who have really been in my shoes.

If you had a very secure career, making very good money with benefits, retirement, and health insurance, what would it take for you to give it up?

I’m not ready to over-analyze my own decision process, but I did have a few conversations with customers this week in the cherry orchards that made me smile and feel more comfortable with my own path.

When someone says, “we’re so glad you are here!”, it has to give you a warm feeling.  Our customer has been visiting our farm for years with her family and she just wanted to tell me that she loved visiting our farm and was happy to know that it would still be here in the future.

Or another old friend who stopped me and reintroduced herself and was excited to know I was back in the area.  …And that I had brought my beautiful family with me

Or the perfect stranger I met at a Wegman’s grower event a couple years ago who was motivated to send me a very heartfelt letter thanking us for what we do and encouraging us to maintain the farm for years to come.

I can’t put a price on these things.  I just know it feels good to be appreciated.

Thank you.

Most people probably realize that seasonal variations can make a big difference in the yield for a farm.  For example, if there is a season-long drought, there will be smaller fruit and potentially lower quality.  But the fact is that even the difference of a few hours or days can make a big difference to the bottom line.

In an earlier post, I mentioned the impacts of weather and timing on both thinning and frost damage.  It is only now that we’re really able to see the impacts of those weather events on the apple yield for the season.  As it turns out, the weather didn’t do us many favors this spring as the apple crop seems to be pretty light, especially for Red Delicious which constitutes a high percentage of our plantings.  It looks like the cold weather that occured right before thinning combined with the hot weather just after thinning to really knock back the final “set” of apples on the tree.  A couple days variance in either direction for either of those weather events probably would have made a difference.

Timing also impacts us on a longer horizon.  This past weekend was Father’s Day, and that is always our signal to plant the pumpkins.  Big jack-o-lantern pumpkins have a 110 day horizon to maturity, so if you want nice pumpkins on October 1, you better get them in the ground by mid June (and have them ordered the weeks before that).  So we’ve been working really hard to get them in now.  But the timing doesn’t end there…  because once the pumpkins are planted the weeds over them need to be killed before the pumpkin sprouts, because after the pumpkin is above ground, there are no chemical methods that will kill the weeds without killing the pumpkins.  But the timing doesn’t end there…  because once the pumpkins are safely “up”, it is a good idea to apply a pre-merge control so that no new weeds come up.  All with the goal of raising beautiful pumpkins instead of beautiful weeds.

We also see the impact of timing in markets.  We work very hard raising as much as we can ourselves, but the fact is that we don’t have the time or equipment to raise all the vegetables we sell in our market by ourselves, so we buy it locally.  It is interesting to see at our local auction how variable the bids can be for similar items across different days.  The variance can be huge, and for no seemingly good reason except who happens to show up and what they need (or have) that day.

Which all goes to show that it isn’t enough to just do the right thing in this business…  you have to do the right thing at exactly the right time.

I ended my last post with a wish that it would rain.  And for good reason.  We were getting dry here, with a spring that was several inches shy of normal rainfall.  Those berries that weren’t irrigated were starting to show signs of stress, and the ponds were starting to get low already from the berries that were irrigated.

And then it rained.  And rained some more.  And as I’m writing it is still pouring.  Over 3″ of rain here in the last 4 days.  Which normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that we’re heading into the one and only crop that really hates rain:  cherries.

Cherry trees grow well in our climate; you can find wild versions in most of the woods around here.  Commerial cherries have been bred for beautiful size and taste, but they don’t have much tolerance for rain.  As a cherry begins to ripen, it becomes highly vulnerable to splitting if exposed to too much moisture.  It literally rips apart with a gash down the middle of the fruit.

This is one reason that the Pacific Northwest is such a good place to grow cherries, because several hundred miles from the Pacific, there is very little rainfall, and they have access to huge reserves of publically funded waterworks from which to draw irrigation water in just the quantities needed to keep the trees growing.  Around here, we rely a little more on mother nature, and she isn’t always very reliable.

One option is to erect “high tunnels” which are essentially inexpensive greenhouses over the cherries.  This keeps excess rain off the trees and helps control against birds.  Inexpensive is a relative term here.  It involves many thousands of dollars and makes some chores that involve tractor work more difficult.  Still, some growers in Adams County are trying it.  This might be the year those tunnels pay off for them.

We’ll see.  Most of our cherries are still just beginning to turn color, so maybe the rain is early enough for them.  If they don’t split, don’t rot, and the crows don’t get them, it will be a very nice crop.  Stay tuned!

Jana and I made our first dollar as fruit growers this past Monday.  It was rather unexpected actually.  Two weeks ago, we didn’t think it would be possible that the berries would be ready by our traditional opening on Memorial Day.  It was still very cool, with highs struggling to get out of the 60’s, and the plants just wouldn’t stop blooming to grow.  Two warm days changed that, and by last Friday I was thinking that maybe we needed to pick the field soon.  By Sunday it was clear that we’d need to have a “soft” opening on Memorial day with just ready-pick berries.

Then just as we were finally ready to open the patch for pick-your-own on Tuesday, the heat wave hit.  We went from cool cloudy weather to sunny and hot, and not just one day of sunny and hot, but five days of summer-like, humid, 90-degree Berumuda high pressure.  It felt like peach season.  I was amazed that people were tough enough to come out and pick in the hot sun.

Strawberries, at least the kind we grow around here, are a cool weather crop.  When hit with this kind of heat, they don’t size properly and they go on defence – just trying NOT to turn to mush in the sun.  Fortunately, we had a new field with irrigation.  This helped, but it wasn’t the opening week I would have wanted.  By Saturday afternoon, picking was getting hard and we were waiving our usual minimum charge.

I think most of you were happy with the berries we did have (and to be sure, there were lots of nice ones)  but after all the work we’ve done out there, I was hoping for better.

Maybe it’s appropriate to have some missed expectations right off the bat.  Even when we do everything to the best of our ability, things will go wrong in this business, and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – we can do about it.  Rather than focus on those missed expectations, it is more constructive to look ahead.

Next week will be cooler, and thanks to the irrigation, our later variety plants look very healthy and should give us a good second wave of berries.  At least, that’s my hope!

…Now if it would just rain…

When I was telling my friends back at Hershey that I was going to go run an orchard, I could tell most of them really had no idea what that involved.  Some of them would make references to “going to pick apples”, and pretty much everybody understood that it was hard work, and a few correctly surmised that I wasn’t doing it for the money.  But I’m pretty sure nobody knows what an apple grower does all day.  And that was the genesis of this blog.

Most of my weekly posts so far highlight something important that is going on in the orchard.  This one will give you a better understanding of where I spend my time.

The quick answer is simply this: fixing stuff that breaks.  I hate it, but it’s true.  It takes an incredible amount of equipment to run this place, and we can’t afford to replace it, so we spend a lot of time fixing things.  And we develop an impressive array of skills to manage this.  Here’s a listing of things my Dad and/or I (mostly Dad) have fixed in the last two or three weeks:

1. Irrigation system “1”:  Found that mice had completely destroyed the control panel by gnawing through the wires.  I was able to apply a little knowledge from engineering school and identify the low voltage wire that triggered the main pump relay, and long story short, I hot-wired the system so that our berries could get water.  At which point we found two different major pipe breaks below ground that required excavation, and then some plumbing skills with PVC.  Still pending is the electronics work to get the wires spliced back together and repair the solenoid valves.
2. Irrigation system “2”:  A crack in a pipe was causing a leak.  More plumbing.
3. Sprayer fill station:  The suction line cracked and needed to be rebuilt.  More plumbing.
4. The internet in the office kept failing: This is more complicated than it would appear because I’ve had to build a wireless bridge using high power antennas to get the signal where it needs to go.  I think the problem has been fixed by a new firmware on the router.
5. Cold storage main blower:  Turned out to be a seized bearing that thankfully started working again with some powerful lubricant and a few prayers.  But since the system is nearly 90 years old (not kidding) I’m still worried about the long term stability.  Next week, we’ll start working on the backup system that seems to have a faulty compressor.
6. Forklift 1:  Sticky contact terminal causing it not to move.  Fixed with a little TLC.
7. Forklift 2:  Bad idle setting caused it to stall, and it needed brake fluid.
8. Bulldozer:  (You really don’t want problems with a bulldozer.)  Bad starter turned out to be pretty easy to fix but still took hours to take off and reassemble.  Fixed.
9. I’m pretty sure there was a flat tire or two.  There’s always a flat somewhere.
10. Sprayer 1:  Major surgery to the agitator shaft.  Fixed.
11. Sprayer 2:  Broken timing belt.  Fixed.
12. Mower 1:  Pulled out of the mud.  Hammered out a shield that had been deflected into the blade.  Replaced drive guard and fixed PTO shaft.
13. Mower 2:  Bled the fuel system after someone ran it out of diesel.  (Note: do NOT let a diesel run out of fuel.)
14. Weed sprayer 1:  Repair to broken fitting involved fun with fiberglass and resin.
15. ….  by now, if you are still reading, you’ve got the picture.  Fact is, I could go on.  There are actually more things we had to fix.

I’ve asked myself what we could do to minimize the time we need to put into this kind of thing.  I think the causes are pretty simple: 1) stuff is generally old; but really the bigger contributor is 2) it takes an incredible array of complex machines to make an orchard work, and they get a lot of use.  When you have so many old things working all the time, there are going to be problems.

So for now, we keep trying to fix the problems and find enough time to actually grow food.  On the bright side, we are scheduled to open our market and start picking strawberries.

It will be nice to actually see some fruits of our labor.

The bloom is almost over.  We have a few late apples (Rome Beauty) planted in the low spots that are still blooming, but for the most part, bloom is over and the bees have done their work.  We were worried about the number of native bees in the orchard this year, but once again, we see a pretty good “set.”  Now we turn our attention to thinning.

Thinning is the process of selectively removing all but a few of the tiny fruits so that the remaining fruit will achieve good size and color.  The earlier we complete the thinning process, the more time that the tree can focus its growth on the remaining fruit, resulting in higher quality.

Apples that need to be thinned.

For example, in the picture, taken today in our Gala block, you can see the results of that beautiful bloom.  Each ‘spur’ on the tree usually results in 4-6 blooms.  The center bloom is the “king” bloom and will have the largest fruit.  With even a 50% pollination rate, there are so many apples on the tree that if left untreated, the fruit would be small, and likely not develop uniform color because it would be shaded by its neighbors touching it.  In extreme cases, the growing process could even knock the apples off the tree as neighboring fruit jockeys for space.

In peaches, we start the thinning process even before the blossoms are pollinated.  The process is called blossom thinning and has only recently become mainstream.  Basically, the process involves knocking off about half of the blooms before they ever have a chance to develop.  Growers have developed some creative ways to blossom thin: from cordless drill-mounted wirlygigs, to tractor mounted whips that knock off blossoms, to the more manual hand-work.  No matter which method is used, the timing is critical as the blossoms only last a short while.  If the job is not done well, hand thinning will be necessary later in the season, with decreased quality and increased cost.  If thinning is not done at all, the grower is almost guaranteed an unsaleable crop.

In apples, the thinning process is more automated, but nearly an art form.  Almost all apples are thinned using sprays that are applied at exactly the right time at exactly the right quantity.  The calculus used in the decision process includes a lot of notes as to how those trees have reacted in the past to thinning, and also includes careful consideration of not only the current weather, but the weather forecasted over the next several days.  It turns out that more apples will drop if the weather will be cloudy and warm, and fewer will drop if the weather will be sunny and cool.  Scientists at Cornell have developed a model to codify these observations, but there is still a lot of room for error.

All these variables make apple thinning a pretty stressful time around the orchard.  This week’s forecast seems to have a lot of uncertainty with a forecasted easterly flow off the ocean that could lead to nearly constant cloudy weather with showers, or perhaps partly sunny skies with warm temperatures.  The difference could be significant for thinning.  Only time will tell.