Hope everyone enjoyed the five days of summer we had a few weeks ago. Beautiful 70 degrees and sunshine to turn everything green and get the trees waking up from their long winters nap. Then boom… winter arrives again. Literally… it was snowing yesterday.
About this time every year we get texts message and phone calls “are you worried about the frost coming?” Answer always depends on how far the trees have moved. Different stages of development can handle different temperatures. We are still in the late bud stage, right before these flowers are about to pop and become a sea of white beauty (which you c an enjoy on our tour of the blossoms coming in a couple of weeks.) This stage can still handle 28 degrees, but that depends on the amount of time that it stays there as well. 28 degrees at two hours is completely different than 28 degrees for eight hours. If it gets to 26 degrees at this stage, about 50% of a loss, at 24, Greg and I will be peacing out for the summer. Tonight is looking at 30 degrees, so we will sleep just fine at this point and time.
But frost isn’t our only concern to get the cherries to harvest. One of the most important factors that a lot of people don’t know are the importance of bees when it comes to pollination. Bees need to touch every blossom on the tree in order to pollinate that flower, while after touching a different variety (cross pollination.) We typically plant our orchards with dark sweets in a couple rows, light sweets in couple rows next to it and so forth so bees don’t really have an issue cross pollinating. That would be for sweet cherries, tarts are considered self-pollinating, and they do this by the wind, nope, not kidding.
What slightly concerns us this year, is will we get the temperatures needed for the bees to fly? Those blossoms are still moving, but drastically slower than what they originally were. If the bees decide they do not want to work in this cold weather, which I do not blame them, we won’t get any fruit. But they are moving slow… So hopefully this won’t be the issue.
Yeah… You’re thinking, typical farmer, always complaining about the weather. And yes… you are correct. Grandpa Shooks used to say, “if we could control the weather, we’d be millionaires.” Shit… now it’s if we could control, fertilizer, fuel prices, tractor costs… Maybe we could break even. I’ve already ranted about that. $5.39 diesel is mind boggling and a tough pill to swallow. But we can’t do anything about that. I was reading an article the other day about some farmers not planting this year due to all the high inputs costs and low returns on it. Crazy to think that, but it’s understandable.
Back to the weather… It is what it is. Sure, you can invest and insane amount of $$$$ in windmills and frost fans and even have helicopters fly over to push down warmer air! That degree or two may make a difference in the long run. We choose not to have those extra costs and just let mother nature run its course. If we decided on windmills, those could help raise the temperature for around 10 acres. 300 acres of cherries… math… 30 wind machines. New? $50k-ish. math… $1.5… million… .15 cent tart cherries… input cost… yeah… no thanks. Mother nature, please be nice to us.
So for now… Let’s hope tonight, is overcast with a breeze as that will help keep temperatures higher. If it’s clear skies, calm and a full moon. She’s gonna get a little cold out there.
Till next time…
Cheers