Notes from the orchard
A record apple harvest at Robinette’s
2009 has been an interesting season. All our fruit trees had extra energy reserves due to the small crop of 2008. All that energy went into a super-abundant bloom this spring. Good pollination weather allowed that bloom to set an enormous crop on all our fruit trees. We were blessed with the largest cherry crop in many years, followed by a seemingly endless peach and apple crops. The cool weather this summer was great for us to work in, but peaches and apples were delayed in maturity by several days. October weather produced the second most rainfall on record, and temperatures were sometimes 20 degrees below normal. We had our first hard frost in September, followed by a second hard freeze 2 weeks later. Pumpkins suffered and many spoiled. Apple trees began to lose their leaves, even though the fruit was far from ripe on some varieties.
The apple harvest, though plagued by weather, was one of the largest in our history, and the most abundant I have seen in many years. We were short of bins to hold the apples all season, waiting for our cider mill to empty them out every weekend so harvest could continue the next week. Our cold storage space was also tested, as every variety produced more bushels than we had planned.
All in all, a challenging and great growing year. It is always better to have a big crop than none at all!