Peaches are going, going, gone!

  Tuesday afternoon,  August 10, 2010:  This morning we cleaned the last remaining peaches (large and small, pretty and ugly!) off of the trees ourselves.  Most of this was sold today, with just a very few left in our cooler.  We are now closed for the season, except by appointment.  We will be closed until next spring, when strawberries are ready for picking.

If you want to find other places to buy peaches, I recommend that you check with one the other members of our Hill Country Fruit Council, through the link at the bottom of this page, but it is my understanding that some of these have already finished their season, and others are very near to finishing.

We just harvested about 250 pounds of Shinseiki Asian Pears.  They are the best looking and largest fruit we have ever had from this variety.  Asian Pears are sometimes referred to as "apple-pears", since they are crisp, like an apple, instead of hard, like most European pears.  We will have them in our cooler, available for sale at $2.00 per pound, or $40.00 per half bushel box (apx. 25 lbs.).  Since the orchard is no longer open on a regular basis, call (830-997-9433) to arrange a time to come by, if you would like to have some of the pears.

We are also continuing to harvest some cantaloupe and okra.

It does not look like we will have any Red Delicious or Fuji apples for sale this year.  We just have a very few apple trees, and almost all the fruit appears to be ruined by decays, for which we did not apply protective sprays this spring.

Thank you to all of our wonderful customers!!!

Since we rely almost entirely on our pick-your-own customers to harvest our fruit when it is ready, we would not be able to continue to operate as we do if you did not come out faithfully, and repeatedly, throughout the season, in good weather and bad, sharing in experiencing the "great" fruit, as well as the sometimes "challenging" fruit.  Thank you for the many words of appreciation for our efforts to provide you with the best possible produce and service.  It gives us great pleasure to see our customers enjoying their fruit and their experience here at the orchard.

Peaches

Peaches are our primary crop!  This has been a fantastic peach season, with the best crop, and the healthiest looking trees that we have seen in quite a few years!

  We have 13 varieties, ripening between late-May and early August.  Each variety lasts approximately two weeks, with the peak of production being in the middle of that two weeks.

     "Estimated" Peach Ripening Schedule

         Variety                Approximate Dates

  Regal                                         finished  

   Gold Prince                                    finished         

Gala / Sentinel                                  finished        

     Harvester                                      finished         

            Cary Mac                                       finished                

             Bounty                                        finished              

                    Redglobe                                     finished                      

                     Majestic                                      finished                      

              Dixiland                                      finished               

             Jersey Queen                                 finished                   

          Ouachita Gold/Fayette                         finished                      

  Due to the excessive fruit set in the peach trees this spring, we had an extraordinary task of "thinning".  This is the task of removing as much as 90% of the developing peaches, so that the remaining fruit can grow larger.  I hired a mechanical shaker in late April to assist us in this huge job, but our three field workers still had to follow up, spending an average of an additional 30 minutes on each of 2500 trees!  Those "big" peaches wouldn't have happened without their hundreds of hours of labor!

  We survived several "close calls" with freezes this spring that could have destroyed our crop.  The biggest threat during May was the possibility of hail, associated with spring thunderstorms.  While the north side of Fredericksburg got pounded by a 30 minute hailstorm in mid-May, our orchard, as well as all the other major orchards in the county did not.  The incessant rain June 28th to July 3rd, associated with Hurricane Alex, did cause significant spoilage and loss of fruit during a brief period, but the vast majority of the peach crop before and after that time was outstanding!

Blackberries

  Blackberry season is May and June.

Vegetables

  Due to the overwhelming work associated with a tremendous peach crop, we could not afford the time required to plant, maintain, and harvest a large vegetable garden this year, in addition to all the other work.  Most of the vegetables that we had earlier in the summer have now "played out", some (like tomatoes) due to the excessive rains that we had in early July.  We do still have okra, and a few occasional cantaloupe.

Strawberries

Strawberry season is primarily in March and April.  We will be planting new plants in October, and they should begin having fruit ready for picking by about the second week in March.  See you then!

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Fredericksburg Farmers Market

Thursdays, 4:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Marktplatz (downtown Fredericksburg)

Although we expect to be too busy at the orchard to be a regular vendor at this market most of this year, we encourage you to check it out for all the wonderful vegetables, meats, breads,  and other products which we don't produce.

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