2024 Harvest Report
As most of you know, we lost our entire crop last year (2023) due to an exceptionally late and cold May freeze. For us people, business owners with bills to pay, this felt like a loss. For the apple trees, I suspect it felt more like an extended vacation. An entire growing season of photosynthsizing and storing up energy- as carbohydrates in sap, roots and shoots and fruit buds for the following year. This spring we also sustained significant damage from a May freeze (this one was a bit earlier though) but by early June we saw that while most (75-90%) of the blossoms had been killed, the bloom was heavy enough that 10% of a crop was still a crop. The pears took a real hit, and the earlier blooming varieties lost significantly more than our later blooming bittersweets. It seemed that we had a medium to light crop.
Then came a particularly stunning growing season. Lots of sun, lots of heat, just enough rain. Although disease pressure was significant, our certified organic spray program worked well and the leaves were healthy and functional all season. These near perfect conditions combined with the stored energy from last year resulted in fruit that just kept growing and growing. Fast forward to harvest- in many if not most varieties, the fruit size has more than compensated for the loss of total fruits and we are looking at a large crop. Except in a few varieties that were overcropped, the brix (sugar levels) are excellent as is the overall quality.
2024 has turned into a real stand out harvest and we are super excited to be making cider out of this incredible fruit. And a reminder that the lows of farming are darn low but the highs are pretty high.
-Reported by Autumn, mid-harvest 2024
