THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230196
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
When Gladys Brumback went out to inspect the peach trees this spring on her family's farm outside Winchester, she had a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Brumback's fears that frigid January weather would wipe out the family peach crop had come true. There wasn't a salvageable bud on the northwest Virginia orchard's entire 50 acres.
``We just don't have a season,'' said Brumback, one of about 25 growers in Frederick County who have reported 100 percent losses of their peach crops. ``There are no peaches. I mean none.''
About 600 acres of peach orchards in Frederick County are fruitless this year, said Russell Marsh, chief of farmer programs for the Farmers Home Administration in Virginia. That amounts to about a $900,000 loss for county growers, he said. Peaches are typically about a $4 million industry each year in Virginia and would be coming to market about now.
Marsh's office has asked the federal Farmers Home Administration and Gov. George F. Allen to request an emergency designation for Frederick County from Secretary of Agriculture Michael Espy . That would allow growers in Frederick and adjoining counties to obtain loans.
Temperatures that dipped to 18 below zero at one point in mid-January are responsible for destroying the buds, said Ross Byers, a horticulturist with Virginia Tech's Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Frederick County.
Peach buds only can withstand temperatures of about 8 degrees below zero, he said.
Byers said the state's northwest orchards are essentially wiped out this year, particularly areas west of the Blue Ridge Mountains from Winchester to Staunton.
But Virginia fared better than some other states, Byers said. Few of the northwest Virginia trees were killed, he said, and growers in Roanoke and Charlottesville got through the winter mostly unscathed.
``The farther north you go the worse it is,'' Byers said. ``You get up into Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana - there essentially are no peaches.''
Growers say their crop yield always depends on the weather, but that fairly mild temperatures in recent winters have led to bumper harvests.
``In '92 and '93 we had wonderful crops of peaches,'' Brumback said wistfully.
She said her family is concentrating on corn and cattle this year, but they have been forced to cut back on employees this summer because there is no work in the orchards.
Last year, Virginia growers produced about 28 million pounds of peaches, said Robert Bass of the Virginia Agricultural Statistics Service. That compares with about 25 million pounds in 1992 and 26 million in 1991.
Bass' office predicts this year's harvest will be about 10 million pounds. The worst recent year was 1990 with just 2.5 million pounds. There was a severe freeze that winter too, Bass said.
Grocery store shoppers around the state probably won't notice much of a difference in price because they get most of their peaches from bigger production states, state agriculture officials said.
In a normal year, Virginia is the ninth largest peach producer in the country, Bass said. California is first with about 650 million pounds, followed by South Carolina and then Georgia, Bass said. by CNB