Cherry Harvest Update

Cherry Harvest Update. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

There is a song in one of the Winnie the Pooh movies that says the rain, rain, rain came down, down, down and in deed it has, has, has with cherry farmers here in the northwest scrambling. BJ Thurlby with Northwest Cherries says it has kept producers busy.

THURLBY: I have never seen anything like what we saw not this Sunday but the Sunday before last in terms of lightening and those types of weather patterns. And we still have a crop left. We still think we have another 7.5 million boxes to ship but you know it feels like that number seems to be incrementally dropping with every rainstorm.

There of course has been some loss due to the weather.

THURLBY: Oh I think we’re down 20% and from a growers standpoint that’s sad because I think when we all started out in May we really thought we had a tiger by the tail. And then we went through the very, very cool weather about the last week of May, the first 2 weeks of June and got some rain interspersed from day to day and it always rains somewhere during the cherry season.

With a growing district that is 700 miles wide that’s not unusual.

THURLBY: This year it just feels like the rain has almost followed the harvest and I think most of the growers would say that to you.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.