Growing premium fresh sweet cherries since 1918
Photo Gallery
JUNE
Harvest/Irrigation/Spraying
Eight hour days are very rare this month, but only because we are usually working 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week! But this is what all our hard work is for - cherry harvest. Our whole family, as well as many friends and loyal employees, work so hard to bring beautiful cherries to cherry lovers all over the world. This year our cherries are being sold directly to consumers, to a fruit-stand in western Washington, to IGA stores, to Japanese and Taiwanese markets, and through several other warehouses. All of that takes a lot of effort and coordination.
The cherries were exceptionally large, firm, and tasty this year but the tonnage of the crop was not as large as last year. The harvest will only last a little more than two week in 2007, considerably less than recent years.
APRIL
Frost Protection/Irrigation/Pollination/Spraying
Wow! This is our busiest time of year, besides harvest, and we are short on sleep and long on work these days. This is a very critical part of our year where we must take great care of our orchards to ensure we have cherries. While some of the days have begun to warm up, the early morning hours before sunrise can be very cold. These below-freezing temperatures freeze the new buds that will eventually be cherries, and can ruin a crop. Read more on frost protection
Pollination is also very crucial yet there is not very much we can do to help this occur, other than place bee hives in our orchards to increase the odds of the blooms being pollinated.
The trees are now in bloom, so we are finished with our pre-bloom dormant spray. The spraying we do now is leaf feed to help keep our trees strong and healthy as the are stressed while growing the cherries. Read more on spraying
The water is running in the canals and now being pumped to our orchards. The trees don't require much irrigation at this stage of growth, but we have to make sure the systems are working and repair any damage that occurred during the fall and winter. In addition, we use the irrigation water as frost protection. Read more on irrigation
NOVEMBER
Winterization and cleanup
This time of year is fairly "slow" for Olmstead Orchards, but there is still lots of work to be done. Freezing temperatures have arrived and that means we have to winterize all of our irrigation systems and our equipment. We are also pushing out many of our apple and plum trees. It is no longer cost effective for us to continue to farm these crops. The larger stumps have to be burned and then the land has to be leveled. Pruning is the next important step in our farming practices!
JUNE/JULY
Cherry Harvest 2006
The 2006 cherry harvest got
under way slowly on Friday, June 16 and finished on July 15. The
cherries ripened late this year, but there appeared to be lots of big,
beautiful, and sweet cherries.
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We
had a wet, cool spring which delayed the maturation, but also kept us from
losing the crop to spring frost. We did have a couple days of rain right
before we started that caused some splitting. The further we got into
harvest, the more we realized how much damage the crop had from late
maturation, rain, and wind. The good news is we had enough fabulous
cherries to share with our customers!
This has been an exciting year with many new addition. We added a new cold room and receiving area to help us handle our cherries during harvest. In addition, it was our first year with more involvement in the sales of our fruit, as we broke away from our long-time wholesale co-op.
What has not changed is the quality of our fruit and our customer service. Harvest is over for this year, but you can preorder for personal deliveries in 2007 and we will let you know when the cherries are ready!
ACTIVITY
TIMELINE
January
Pruning
February
Pruning
March
April
May
June
July
August
Pruning
September
October
Winterization
Pruning
November
Winterization
Pruning
December
Pruning
© 2003-2007 Olmstead Orchards, Inc. 360 Frazer Road Grandview, Washington 98930
Last updated Thursday June 28, 2007 Website problems: webmaster@olmsteadorchards.com
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