Most people probably\u00a0realize that seasonal variations can make a big difference in the yield for a farm.\u00a0 For example, if there is a season-long drought, there will be smaller fruit and potentially lower quality.\u00a0 But the fact is that even the difference of a few hours or days can make a big difference to the bottom line.<\/p>\n
In an earlier post, I mentioned the impacts of weather and timing on both thinning<\/a> and frost damage<\/a>.\u00a0 It is only now that we’re really able to see the impacts of those weather events on the apple yield for the season.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A couple days variance in either direction for either of those weather events probably would have made a difference.<\/p>\n Timing also impacts us on a longer horizon.\u00a0 This past weekend was Father’s Day, and that is always our signal to plant the pumpkins.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 So we’ve been working really hard to get them in now.\u00a0 But the timing doesn’t end there…\u00a0 because once the pumpkins are planted the weeds over them need to be killed before<\/em> the pumpkin sprouts, because after the pumpkin is above ground, there are no chemical methods that will kill the weeds without killing the pumpkins.\u00a0 But the timing doesn’t end there…\u00a0 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.\u00a0 All with the goal of raising beautiful pumpkins instead of beautiful weeds.<\/p>\n We also see the impact of timing in markets.\u00a0 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\u00a0all the vegetables\u00a0we sell in our market by ourselves, so we buy it locally.\u00a0 It is interesting to see at our local auction how variable the bids can be for similar items across different days.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Which all goes to show that it isn’t enough to just do the right thing in this business…\u00a0 you have to do the right thing at exactly the right time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most people probably\u00a0realize that seasonal variations can make a big difference in the yield for a farm.\u00a0 For example, if there is a season-long drought, there will be smaller fruit and potentially lower quality.\u00a0 But the fact is that even the difference of a few hours or days can make a big difference to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shaworchards.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}