Paltry peach crop hits sellers hard

RALEIGH -- Peaches are a delicate, demanding crop, and growers always have their ups and downs. But the weather has made this year the pits for Sugar Loaf Orchard and Farms.

For the first time in 17 years, Sugar Loaf won't have a booth at the N.C. State Farmers Market in Raleigh when it's time for peaches to roll in next month. They won't be there in July, as they ought to be, with nectarines for sale. They may not even be back for apple season.

"It's devastating. This is our livelihood," Kenneth Clayton said this week as he finished cleaning out booths 18 and 20 on farmer's row at the market, where the Taylorsville-based company has been a year-round fixture.

The Easter-weekend freeze that wiped out his family's peaches and nectarines and damaged its apples was so severe and so widespread that Farmers Market managers are considering bending the rules on out-of-state produce so shoppers can find fresh peaches under the market shed this season. If the apple crop doesn't rebound, they might have to make exceptions for apple sales as well.

"We're all a little depressed by it," said Ronnie Best, manager of the market, which had 3.2 million visitors last year.

Normally, only North Carolina-grown produce is allowed on farmer's row, sold by the farmers themselves or by neighbors who can testify that the goods came from a fellow grower. Produce imported from out of state or out of the country is available only through the wholesale and retail sections of the market.

Most years, five or six North Carolina peach growers set up on farmer's row, starting about the first week of June and staying some years into mid-October. They display their fuzzy fruit in baskets and bags on folding tables, and tempt passers-by with samples of the juicy flesh offered at the end of a fork.

"Peaches, that's our income," said Garrett Johnson, who was in his Montgomery County orchard Thursday watering his trees, trying to save what's left of his crop.

The Easter cold snap was especially punishing, growers say, because unusually warm weather that preceded it had prompted fruit trees to flower prematurely. When the temperature dropped, it fell unusually low for the time of year and stayed down long enough to do extensive damage.

In some places, such as the Brushy Mountains east of Boone, where Sugar Loaf's orchards are, the freeze is being described as the worst since the 1950s. In the Sandhills, home to more peach farms, there were three years in the 1980s and one in the 1990s when cold killed the crop.

A sensitive crop

Sensitivity to cold and susceptibility to bugs and fungi make peaches a relatively difficult crop to grow. Michael Parker, a tree-fruit extension specialist at N.C. State University, says that in 1924 the state had 36,700 acres of peaches. Now, there are about 4,000 acres, producing crops worth $12 million to $15 million a year.

Farmers are waiting to hear whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture will declare the crop losses a disaster, and what aid might be made available if it does.

Johnson had some defense against the Easter freeze: a half-dozen overhead wind machines that can pull warm air back down into the orchard, raising temperatures as much as 4 degrees. He also burned big bales of hay, generating a little more warmth.

In places, the blooms fell off anyway, and along with them the match-tip-size peaches that a tree produces only once a year. In a good season, Johnson picks 20,000 bushels. He grows more than 40 varieties to guarantee a continuous supply of ripe fruit for his roadside stand on U.S. 220 near Candor, and the Raleigh and Greensboro farmers markets.

This year, he says, he'll be lucky if he gets 8,000 bushels, which he hopes will be enough to send some to the farmers markets. Those won't start coming in until mid-July, he says, and when they do, they'll be high priced. So will any fruit that vendors import to sell on farmer's row, if the market allows it.

"There's going to be less of 'em," Johnson said. "If anybody wants one, they'll have to expect to pay a little more for them."