I went to the farm this weekend and walked the mandarin orchard with my father, pulling small oranges off trees and tasting them, trying to see which were still good and which had been ruined by last week’s sub-freezing temperatures. It was heartbreaking. At the Rumsey farm, more than 75% of the fruit has spoiled on the tree. With numbers like that, it doesn’t make sense to harvest the remaining mandarins. The workers would be forced to sort good from bad, and the yields wouldn’t warrant the labor expenses. As a consequence, we’ve decided to abandon Rumsey’s mandarins.
Fortunately, the damage is less severe at the Dunbar orchard. It looks like we’ve lost maybe 25% of the mandarins to the freeze. This may seem awful, but that means at least three-quarters of the fruit are still marketable. The only problem is that there isn’t a big market right now. It’s been a bumper crop for organic satsuma mandarins this year, and even a freeze hasn’t been able to correct an oversupply of marketable mandarins.
Which points out the always changing fortunes of the farmer. If it isn’t Mother Nature–wind, freezing temperatures or drought–it’s market conditions. I’ve always thought a farmer needed a stomach of steel to weather such uncertainties; there is so much beyond his or her control. By contrast, my job as a physician, with all the certainties afforded by modern medical technology, seems like a relative walk in the park.
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Re. the freezing temperatures, I can remember as a youngster, when the weather got that cold, all of the orchards (mostly pear) would have smudge pots to keep the trees warm. I think the pots were full of some kind of oil thatt would burn slowly, releasing the heat and also creating the most awful smoke throughout the valley. It was pretty awful. Many of the boys from high school were hired to keep the pots burning through the night, then would come to school half asleep with smudge smoke still on their faces and hands.
Very enjoyable blog, keep it up!
Very well done description of the vagaries of farming! I’ve always said that farmers have to be gamblers.
Oh no!! That is horrible… and heartbreaking….