Cherry Harvest

Cherry Harvest. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Slow. In one word that sums up the cherry harvest. BJ Thurlby, president of the NW Cherry Growers says the fruit is good but it has been slow. THURLBY: Well you know the last 8 or 9 days of nice weather have done nothing but helped out position and helped our growers out to get the sugars in the fruit that we're all shooting for. You know the early fruit is down the road, demand has been good. It has been exceeding supply through the first 3.2 million boxes and overall the fruit is looking good. Thurlby says that the hope is that the fruit will only get better as the season progresses. THURLBY: The challenge we have for this year if there is one is the fact that we just haven't got the fruit out before the 4th of July that we all hoped that we would but this crop is shorter and with the fact that there is less cherries out there and it's kind of interesting, the later areas are extremely late so there's going to be from a marketing standpoint I think the less pressure to try to move all this crop I a 2 to 3 week period like we had to do last year. The upside to this slow season will be availability of cherries. THURLBY: Well what it's going to do is give consumers an opportunity for fruit longer. You know I think we're going to have cherries until the 25th of August this year and I think we'll have volume really almost through the second week of August so that's going to give people a chance to find cherries and great cherries for a longer period of time. Be sure and look for fresh Washington cherries at your local grocer. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.