Harvest

Harvest

Continued from page 1

“The peach crop is almost nonexistent,” Flint Hill orchard keeper Louis Moore Jr. said, explaining the last few late frosts in the early spring nipped the tender blooms, then three weeks ahead of their normal growing season due to warm weather in Feburary and early March.

“Anything above the frost line,” he said was undamaged, adding or: chards on higher ground may produce better crops than those on lower grounds. “I don’t want to paint a bad picture but it’s not good,” he said of the expected crop production.

“The peaches this year are not as pretty,” Bryant Lee, operator of one of Rappahannock County’s largest orchards, said, explaining the cold weather creates smaller fruit and the hail which struck the area several times in the early spring pelted the young fruit, marring its appearance. “It’s like the fruit has measles,” he said adding the rough skin does not affect the taste, just the appeal and the selling price of the fruit.

Besides being faced with small marked furit, Mr. Lee said orchardists like himself are dealing with fruit rotting on the trees, due to damage from the weather. “It’s difficult to pick this year,” he said of his crops of peaches and apples, adding pickers are busy trying to salvage the nicest and largest fruit instead of picking each one.

The harvest of early apples is in “full swing,” he added, saying the harvest is nearly two weeks ahead of schedule and with a lesser crop total the harvest should tally up two weeks ahead of schedule.

“It’s sorta’ funny,” Mr. Moore said, explaining that several times orchard keepers had a scare due to frost warnings but “we were in great shape until the last frost” which occured in early April.

Trees on higher ground were struck too, and now orchard keepers are looking at a reduction of total fruit crop by 20 to 30 percent.

Mr. Lee reports higher figures