Hey Farm Friends,
We are happy to report another successful U-Pick season has wrapped up for the year! Due to a few frost incidents in the spring, we had a slightly smaller cherry and apricot crop this year. The upside of this was the fruit that did develop was especially delicous and large in size.
There was shortage of cherries in the valley this year due to many of the orchards being affected by the spring frost. However, this may have helped our farm because we experienced an uptick in attendance of folks coming out to pick. We originally prepared to be open through the end of June, but with the amount of support of people coming out to support us the trees were picked clean by June 25th. We couldn’t have been luckier because the horredous storm that hit the Treasure Valley on June 26th would have certainly damaged any cherries would have been left on the trees.
While we are looking at the brightside of farm life, we were relieved that “Hurricane June” didn’t seem to cause any severe damage. The storm that hit on June 26th brought high winds, heavy rain and small pockets of light hail. While we noticed a few sections of peaches that had small amounts of bruising, the hail was small enough that it didn’t break the skin on the fruit nor was it large enough to cause damage to the foliage on the trees or vines. The rain was helpful, considering we are dealing with a water shortage this year, and we were able to shift our watering schedule to take advantage of the free water
In order to keep a farm operating for multiple generations you have to develop the skill of finding the rainbows amongst the clouds. As a family we consider ourselves very lucky to have a rainbow of folks who year after year come out to support us. We can’t say it enough, thank you to our community for following us and sharing in our passion.
Sincerely,
Mike, Patrick, and Bev Williamson