“It’s Mother Nature. There’s nothing we could do,” said Theresa High, who with her husband, Scott High, owns High Country Orchards in Palisade.
High said two different peach problems are happening: split pit and worse, soft suture.
  
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“Instead of one piece, you’ll have two halves,” Mattics said. “If it’s bad, it opens the skin of the peach.”
He said it usually splits at the top of the peach opening an inviting area for bugs and mold. He said a split pit doesn’t affect the flavor and is sellable to some degree.
Soft suture, High said, occurs when the pit opens up and releases a gas that causes the peach to ripen, but only on one side.
“You don’t know until you pick the peaches and there is this bruise on one side of the peach,” she said.
The two problems have left the High couple to make the decision not to send most of their crop to market. Only 3 percent of their peach crop produced on their 96 acres will be boxed up for sale.
Last year, they sold 40,000 boxes of peaches. This year’s 3 percent won’t come close to paying for the full harvest, which included hours of labor.
But High said she doesn’t want to ruin the reputation of Palisade peaches by giving the consumer a “bad experience.”
“It’s a very difficult season for all of us, but it’s the risk we take as farmers,” High said. “The main thing is that we are aware that this is part of farming ... you financially and mentally prepare.”
Mattics harvests around four to five acres of peach trees and said he’s seen a few split pits. The problems have resulted in 20 to 30 percent of a normal harvest.
“In general, peaches in the area are less then what they’ve been in the past,” he said. Because of this, people may see increase in prices, but Mattics said his prices haven’t changed much.
Mattics and High said the cause was Mother Nature and nobody’s really sure why these problems happen.
The area saw a cold winter with temperatures dropping into the negative teens. Mattics said this “winter kill” got many of his stone fruit (fruits with a large seed in the middle) and then spring frost thinned the crop even more.
High said the late, partial freeze happened sometime in May when the peaches were already developed. She said if the freeze occurs in February, buds fall off and there is no harvest. But this spring, the frozen rain and cold temperatures were more than the developing peaches could handle.
“Had it just froze ... then we wouldn’t have to continue to keep guys here until July. But I didn’t know until we started to pick.”
Mattics said he doesn’t think the situation is as bad near Montrose and Olathe, but the frost was sporadic, so some farmers are doing better.
High said she thinks they got hit the worse.
The problems in the orchards will influence how long local peaches are available, Mattics said. Last year, local peaches were being sold up to Labor Day weekend, but he’s not sure this year’s harvest will make it.
He said there won’t be as many peaches from the North Fork area, which usually ripen after peaches in the valley and are available later in the season.
But cooler temperatures could slow down things — it’s up to Mother Nature, he said.
Palisade had its annual peach festival over the weekend, and High said it went well despite the problems.
“As soon as I found out the situation, I started taking care of my orchards for next year,” High said. “It’s hard to guess what really happened. We have to grin and bear it.”
Contact Kati O’Hare via e-mail at katio@montrosepress.com
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