Rain brings bumper crop of peaches

For nearly a century at Saunders Brothers Orchard in Piney River, the end of June has meant the beginning of peach season.

And this season, Bennett Saunders, the peach expert among the four brothers who run the orchard, said the trees will yield a bumper crop and that it has been an ideal spring for peaches.

“This is the first year in about seven or eight that we’ve got a full crop,” Saunders said. “There are peaches on every tree.”

Saunders said there were no late frosts, and the rain was so frequent that they didn’t have to use two irrigation ponds.

The mild spring is a welcome relief to the Saunders, who saw about 40 percent of their 2008 peach crop destroyed in what they call last year’s Easter freeze.

Peaches from the orchard have been sold at the Saunders Brothers farm market since the 1930s, and, in many ways, the Saunders brothers have kept alive the traditions created by their ancestors, even down to the way the fruit is measured.

“We still measure in pecks and bushels,” Saunders said. “A lot of people might not know what that means, but for our customers, that’s how you measure peaches.”

Saunders said that besides the fact that he and his brothers try to keep the market traditional, they have grown new types of peaches.

“When I was a kid, we grew about three varieties of peaches,” Saunders said. “The season lasted about six weeks. Now, with the different varieties, we can extend the season to almost 3 months.”

Saunders Brothers has expanded from three varieties of peaches to nearly 20, including a new variety called “Mr. Carson,” named for Hubert Carson, 80, of Concord. He is the orchard’s “greeter,” whom customers have looked forward to seeing on their visits to the orchard for 22 years.

“He comes to work because he likes to work,” Saunders says of Carson. “We probably wouldn’t even have to pay him.”

Customers have been able to visit Carson and to get peaches earlier than usual this year, thanks to one of the new peach varieties, the Spring Snow, an early growing variety planted five years ago that has just begun producing peaches.

This has been a good spring for peaches all around the area. In Amherst County, at Morris Orchard in Monroe, this summer also promises the best peach crop in recent years. Morris is a so-called century farm — it has been in the family since before 1850, and current owners Scott and Judy Barnes’ son will be the seventh generation to work at the orchard.

Thanks to the rainy spring, this year’s peaches will be bigger and higher quality than they have been for the past five years, Scott said.

“Peaches love water,” said his wife Judy. “They produce the best fruit with a lot of rain.” The past 10 years have been drier than average, often to the point of drought.

“Most years we’ve had to take all of the water out of the lake,” she said. This year, so far, Morris’s irrigation lake is full. “We’re looking for a perfect crop this year,” she said.

Bill Seay, Amherst County’s agriculture and natural resources extension agent, also said that this year’s peach crop was one of the best recently, because of the warm weather.

“What really hurts the crop is a late frost, and we haven’t had any of those in the past few years,” he said. “What has hurt us in the past few years is the dry weather, because of which the peaches were generally smaller.”

Now that the peaches are ready to be picked, however, Seay said, too much rain could damage the crop. “We’re very thankful for all the rain,” Seay said, “But now we need a little sun.”

Michael LaChance, the Nelson County extension agent, said that while other crops had actually been somewhat challenged by the unusually rainy weather this year, the weather has been perfect for peaches. “Peaches are a tree crop, the size and juiciness of which directly relates to the amount of rain,” he said. “We’re looking at a good crop this year.”

It is not only the perfect crop of peaches that will lead to bigger sales at orchards this year.

Renewed attention to where and how food is produced is also helping the sales.

Since both Morris and Saunders offer a variety of fruits and vegetables other than peaches, many customers travel to them weekly to buy produce.

“We’re getting a younger group again,” notes Judy Barnes. “There are a lot more people wanting to buy local and fresh, to know where their food comes from.”

A trip to the orchard, said Barnes, can also be an escape for people from more urban areas. “Coming to the orchard is like a day of vacation to the country,” she said.