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By LISA G. CURRIE
Rappahannock New* Staff Writer
The peaches are ripe and ready but going fast all around Rappahannock County.
“This is the first time in two years there have been any peaches,” local orchard keeper Ed Streapy said, adding his peaches are selling with rapid speed.
Mr. Streapy, a captain in the Rappahannock Sheriffs Office, said the several bushels picked just days ago were all sold in two days.
“I don’t have anymore until the first of the month,” he said, adding the white and yellow free stone peaches should be available every two weeks from Aug. 1 until mid-September.
“People should call if they want peaches,” he said, adding due to his work he sells only on weekends and evenings at his Huntly home.
Peaches at the Streapy farm are $8 per bushel of pick-your-own, with container furnished, and $9.50 picked.
Contact Capt. Streapy at 703-635-5537 evenings and weekends for more information.
Like other local growers, Capt. Streapy is leaving the young peaches on the tree in hopes rain will produce a larger peach.
“We need a shower or two,” local grower of Virginia’s Finest crops Leon Hutcheson said.
“With a bit of rain and some sunshine the next crop will rippen,” he said, adding if the dry period continues “the peaches are going to be smaller.”
“We are leaving them on the trees until we have a need,” he said. *
Those wanting peaches from Hutcheson’s should contact him at 987-8804 before arriving at his Sperryville farm.
“People are a little peach hungry,” local grower Barbara Call at Muskrat Haven Farms in Amissville said, adding their pick-your-own peaches at $8 per bushel or picked at $12 a bushel are moving “at a moderate rate on weekdays but pretty steady on the weekends.”
Louis Moore has a “waiting list” for peaches.
“We have peaches but they are not as big as we would like them to be,” he said, adding the demand is good with many bushels “gone before we can get them off the trees.”
With a vast variety ranging from early white giants to later Georgia Bells, Moore’s, located on Fodderstack Road, has picked peaches for $10 a bushel.
“We could use some rain to size them up,” he said of his crop, adding while farmers await the day of rain, the threat of hail remains constant.
“This is prime weather for a hail storm,” he said.
“I remember one year the hail was so bad it stripped all the leaves off the corn stalks,” he said, adding an early August storm left hail the one-third the size of chicken eggs, broken windows and stripped fruit trees.
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