Wrapping Up Cherries
Wrapping Up Cherries. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.
This has been one for the record books according to NW Cherries, BJ Thurlby.
THURLBY: Because of this compressed bloom we saw this year and the warm weather that we’ve had really right through the middle of the season probably more than anything else it made it a challenge for growers, the extra heat we had right through the mid part of July to the end of July. We’ve still been pulling cherries off the trees that are in great shape and we’ve had a lot of export on the backend of this year’s cherry season that has delivered very well.
This year’s export market has remained very strong and as they wrap up the picking everything continues to look good.
THURLBY: We’re very pleased about the quality and how the back end of the cherry deal has gone. Obviously once we got through mid season which was really the most cherries we’re tried to harvest at one time and got to a little bit later on in the season then eventually demand began to exceed supply again. The back end has been a little bit more positive than the front end.
The incredible size has been headline news all season.
THURLBY: Our sizing is outstanding. Once we got past the first part of the season it has been all year. Mostly because there was enough cherries out there that the smaller sizes just weren’t getting packed. But the real story of the year continues to be the fact that we got off to a late start. We didn’t really pick our first cherry until around the 14th or 15th of June so we missed two weeks on the front end and we’ve picked in 58 days of shipping so far this season about 18.5 million boxes or 185 thousand tons.
That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
