Around this time of year, Okanagan producers would be selling this year’s peach harvest. However, with the colder weather this spring, some producers have lost the majority, if not all, of their crops.
“The trees grew but no fruit grew on the trees this year,” said Hoffman Orchards owner Jacki Hoffman-Zehner.
When Hoffman Orchards went to check on the progress of their peaches in early spring, they noticed there weren’t any buds on the trees. A cold snap during the last week of December froze their crop.
“In the 20-plus years that we’ve grown peaches here at Hoffman Orchards, we’ve never had a year where we’ve had absolutely no peaches,” said Hoffman-Zehner. “There have been lighter years where we haven’t had a robust crop.
“This is the first year in our history we literally have, I think on hundreds of trees, four peaches.”
Due to the success they’ve had over the past two decades, the orchard didn’t think it was necessary to buy crop insurance. The owners are heartbroken to let down their regular clients.
“It was so sad; our family runs this orchard and we sell our fruit roadside in part because we love it and we love our customers. It’s really quite devastating. I mean financially, obviously it’s really devastating, but also just to see so many people disappointed,” Hoffman-Zehner said.
Crosby Organics has eight varieties of peaches on around 900 trees. This year, they lost nearly 90 per cent of their crop to the cold. They could only salvage around 100 trees of a single variety that tends to ripen later in the summer.
“They weren’t affected for whatever reason. It’s either just the timing of the blossoms; they weren’t hit during that little period. I think it’s just a few degrees that we kind of were affected so drastically,” said Lindsey Crosby, owner of Crosby Organics.
With the loss of thousands of pounds worth of peaches, Crosby has been trying to make it up in other ways and is hoping their other fruits will do the trick.
“It’s our main source of income. We still have apples and plums coming, so that’ll be okay. In terms of this year, it will just be a little tougher of a year.”
Both farms are hoping for more success next season but say it is entirely out of their control. Hoffman-Zehner is optimistic that since the trees got a year off, they will produce a strong crop.
“Hopefully, next year the peaches will be back bigger than ever. They got a bit of a rest this year, let’s just keep our fingers crossed that we don’t have the bad weather again next year.”