From the Fields

Both Bosc and Bartlett bloomed simultaneously this year. We didn't have a lot of blight pressure and insect pressure. With the early bloom, Bartlett sized well in June. We started fresh-market Bartletts on July 12, which was two weeks earlier than last year. We're completely finished with harvest. We finished Bartletts on July 29. We finished Bosc on Aug. 14.

Timing of irrigation was essential this year to get fruit to size, so we spent a lot of time measuring soil moisture. We irrigated probably more this year than we had in previous years because of the drought. This ranch has been farmed since the 1880s, so we have senior water rights, and we kept the water going as the fruit was sizing. The Bosc responded well to irrigating. Both varieties sized pretty well in June. The yields on Bartletts were pretty good. We had a record crop on the Bosc this year.

As usual, the market during the first part of harvest is always the best and deteriorates very quickly once we get into harvest. We're all trying to get fruit to size and hit the market early, and oftentimes it's difficult. You want to wait for more size and for the fruit to mature, so you get a bigger crop. But if the market drops in half, it didn't do you any good.

One of the reasons a lot of stuff didn't get picked this year is if you didn't get water on it, there were some sizing issues. We didn't see that on this orchard, but there's quite a bit of stuff that didn't get picked around here because they just didn't size. If you're late and you've got smaller fruit, there's no market for it anymore.

Labor was way better than last year. Many days last year we didn't have any pickers come. This year was pretty stable. We had some inexperienced pickers that were not doing very well, and we had to make some changes, but the labor contractors had decent crews.