Cherry Harvest Off to a Late Start, Bumper Crop May Undercut the Bottom Line
Rainier Cherries at Evan’s Fruit Stand in The Dalles, OR. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
By Cole Goodwin
The Dalles, OR June 29, 2023– This year’s cherry harvest is off to a slow start due to an unusually cool spring and summer weather. Orchardists report that high yields across the region are causing significant market impacts.
“Harvest is slow with many stops and starts this year. This is frustrating for the orchardists and the pickers,” said Ashely Thompson, Oregon State University Fruit Tree Horticulturist. “Our harvest is a few weeks behind the five year average, but things are starting to pick up in The Dalles.”
Graph from Northwest Cherry Growers shows a daily shipment comparison. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
Early fruiting varieties like Chelan and Black Pearl seemed to be the most impacted by the cooler weather. Meanwhile, mid-season and late-season varieties like Bings and Ebony Pearls seem to have benefited.
A cooler wetter year also means more risk of fruit tree diseases however. Thompson reported that she’d received more reports of powdery mildew and canker than usual.
Despite challenges, many orchardists reported a high yielding crop this year and smaller cherry sizes. However, this could be bad news for orchardists as the market gets flooded.
High yields and good crops in the California, Oregon and Washington markets have already driven down market prices and driven up expectations for the fruit. That means the fruit that makes it to market this year has to be the best of the best.
Cherries for sale at Evan’s Fruit Stand in The Dalles, OR. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
“California had such a good year this year. And everyone did well this year so that impacts the price,” said Phil Evans, of Mount Adams Fruit.
“It’s a heavy crop, that means cherries are small. So a lot of fruit will get left on the tree,” said Ragan Evans, who owns Evans Fruit Stand in The Dalles.
Davinia Craig of Mount dams Fruit explained the situation facing many orchardists this summer.
Evans Fruit Stand in The Dalles. Photo Credit: Cole Goodwin
“It’s not ‘is there gorgeous fruit in the orchard?’…it’s ‘if you pick it will you make a profit?’ It’s kind of a bumper crop year without the ability to sell it. So it’s kind of financially and emotionally a struggle,”” said Criag.
Evans said it was likely that some people wouldn’t even pick this year unless they could sell the cherries to frozen and maraschino cherry producers. While the fresh market is where the money typically is, growers can also sell cherries for processing (typically for a lower price.)
“You don’t get paid very much for freezer fruit, maybe 20 cents a lb,” said Craig.
“I think it’s going to be a little bit of a rough year for a lot of orchards out here. Our packing orchard has cut off a lot of smaller sized fruit,” said Craig.
A cherry sizer. Photo Credit: Robin Denning
She also explained why not accepting fruit of a certain size was an important service to provided to orchards by packing companies, saying that in the past, packing houses would often continue to accept fruit that could not be sold for a profit, leading to orchardists owing money to packing house and even resulting in some families losing their farms.
“The success of the orchards is dependent on the packing house telling orchards whether it is profitable to pick, so it’s actually a service to the orchardists to tell them that we will stop accepting cherries of certain sizes,” said Craig.
However as usual, overall profits orchardists this year will depend on a range of factors.
Orchard operation costs include paying labor for farm workers, delivery to the packing house, payment to the packing house for process, pack, market, and sell the fruit.
However orchards with more niche markets may still see a highly successful year.
“We’ve got a small orchard of a hundred acres so we’re small. We’ve created a lot of niche markets for ourselves. We do u-pick and we sell to beer companies, who use our cherries in their fermenting process and we’ll sell to whoever, we’ll sell two hundred pounds there a thousand pounds there,” said Craig.
Many direct to market, and U-Pick cherry orchards have taken to social media in the last week to declare that they are open for business.
Currently ripe and ready to pick varieties in the Columbia River Gorge include: dark varieties, pie cherries, sweet Bing and Rainers (or as some locals call them “Rain-dogs”.) Some orchardists said they expected to be open for u-pick well into July, making it one of their latest seasons in recent memory.
“Momentum seems to be picking up! Harvest will probably run a few weeks later, especially in late regions (Parkdale) with late varieties,” said Thompson.
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