Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 13, 1991 TAG: 9104130235
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY/ STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: STUART LENGTH: Long
The ball is green inside. Via grins.
If that pea-sized ball can survive another couple of weeks, it will grow to be a peach.
And that feat could be considered something of a minor miracle.
There have been virtually no peaches harvested in Patrick County, or anywhere nearby, since 1988.
Cold snaps during the critical - for peaches - first weeks of April wiped out the crops in 1989 and again in 1990.
Via remembers how it hit his orchard near Critz.
"It was April 8, 1990," he says. "It stayed 28-31 degrees for a long time, and we lost everything. When I say no peaches, I mean no peaches."
"You would have had to look long and hard in this orchard to find a single peach," adds Michael Jones, the cooperative extension agent for Patrick County.
The fickle weather, which destroyed blossoms on the peach trees, cost farmers tens of thousands of dollars.
John Wood estimates losses from his 4 1/2 acres of peach trees at $10,000.
"I had three peaches last year. Three," rues Wood, who has an orchard near Woolwine. He should have had nearly 2,000 bushels.
Brothers Darrell and Don Worley, like Wood, grow peaches in Woolwine, on the eastern face of the Blue Ridge. They figure they lost $50,000 last year, though that figure could be as high as $70,000. It's hard to estimate because peach prices fluctuate.
The Worleys haven't had a peach since 1987. Their 1988 crop survived the cold only to be obliterated by hail.
And Via, the county's largest grower, estimates conservatively that he lost $160,000 on his peaches last season.
The losses forced none of them out of business. Via raises everything from cabbage to catfish, in addition to peaches. Wood runs Wood's Cold Storage, a general store in Buffalo Ridge. Darrell Worley operates W&W Produce outside Stuart, and Don Worley runs a business in Woolwine. All hedge their peach bets with apples.
Even here, in Patrick and Carroll counties, a major peach-growing area in Virginia, growers know they would be foolish to bet the farm on peaches. A little bit farther south and peaches would be a good investment. A little bit farther north and they might not even try to grow them.
But here, somewhere in the middle, it's a hit-or-miss crop.
Ultimately, it is consumers who pay the price for the wild failures and booming successes.
For the past two years, peaches have been shipped in from South Carolina, Georgia, New Jersey and California to supplement the measly local pickings.
Peaches that sell in a good year for $8 per bushel were fetching $28 last year.
The early spring cold weather tugs at consumers' purses and at growers' hearts.
A couple of weeks ago, they got the scare of the season, so far.
Temperatures dipped into the upper 20s at night.
"I figured I was gonna get it," Darrell Worley said. "It was 28 degrees at 11 o'clock Saturday night. I told my wife, `We've had it.' "
But clouds pushed in and kept the temperatures up.
"I get up three, four times a night when it gets that cold," Via says. "I want to check the thermometer."
"If I'm home in bed," Wood says, "I'm sure not sleeping."
So two weeks ago, he was in the orchard. He tried burning brush between the rows of trees to warm the orchard.
It's a common ploy. Growers have burned automobile tires and fuel oil, too.
Darrell Worley is not a believer, though he's tried.
"You can't heat the world," he says. "I found that out."
Some spray water on their trees when the temperature drops to about 34 degrees. Believe it or not, the very act of freezing generates energy. Energy creates heat. That heat, marginal though it may be, can save a peach crop.
"I've cussed and I've cried. Nothing works," Darrell Worley says.
This year could be working. Nature's dice may be rolling in peaches' favor.
Overnight temperatures, with the exception of that scare a few weeks ago, have been mild enough to spare the blossoms.
So far, a bumper crop seems to be on the trees.
"I haven't seen a dead peach - not a single one - this year," says Via, glancing over his shoulder superstitiously. "Right now, it looks so good it scares me."
In fact, it'll probably mean more work. Peach trees generate far more peach blossoms than their limbs can hope to support as the fruits mature.
In good years, farmers have to thin them, spraying chemicals or whipping rubber hoses through the branches to manually knock off some of the tiny peaches.
That reminds Via of the 1970s. He lost two consecutive crops in 1976 and '77.
Then came 1978: "It was unbelievable. Even the fence posts were blooming, it was so good."
While most farmers agree that May 1 is a magic date - surviving until that day with peaches on the trees dramatically increases the chances of a good crop - few are willing to offer predictions.
"I'd like to say we're through the worst, but I've said it before and woke up in the morning with nothing," Darrell Worley says.
The Patrick County Chamber of Commerce is among those rooting for a merciful Mother Nature.
Three years ago, the chamber inaugurated the Virginia Peach Festival at Via's farm.
In 1988, the first year, there were local peaches.
Hasn't been a one since then.
This could be the year.
by CNB