Next we’ll be picking Rainer cherries. Our harvest this year, sadly like those of the past two years is very meager. But we’re feeling blessed to have as much as we do. Cherry orchards all over the state of CA are experiencing a diminished crop. Some farm’s cherry crops are so light that the farmers are choosing to leave them on the tree because they’re not sufficient to make up the cost of picking them.
The plague on California’s cherries is ultimately the result of higher winter temperatures. Cherries require a significant number of chill hours, which our rising winter temperatures are making harder and harder to come by. Cherry trees regulate the growth and development of their leaves, buds and flowers by the number of chill hours. Insufficient chill hours leads to diminished and more irregular flower development, which in turn reduces pollination and fruit production. Faced with the unmovable fact of climate change, many farmers and eaters alike have begun to wonder, “is this the end of CA cherries?”
Frog Hollow Farm has been growing cherries since the very beginning. Farmer Al planted an acre of rainier cherries in his second year on this land. Today we grow 4 varieties Brooks, Rainer, Bing and Stella; all of which have meager fruit. In these changing times, we’re looking to move to new, more resilient varieties. Already this year we replaced our lost trees with 320 Royal Tioga cherry trees. They are a low chill and self pollinating variety. Making them a much more reliable fruit producer in our hotter, less reliable climate.
Just last week, Al spent the day at Zaiger Genetics in Modesto. Zaiger develops new fruit varieties without genetic modification, relying instead on more traditional methods of crossbreeding and selection to create varieties that meet the needs of organic farmers. Right now, they are working on low chill cherries that don’t depend on bees for pollination and are also more drought resistant. Al was curious to see if any of their varieties would work here at Frog Hollow and was very happy with what he found. Their cherries not only offered the resiliency he was looking for but were delicious, even by his standards.
Here on the farm, we’re doing a little of our own breeding and selection. This week, Antonio and his team went on a mission to find our most prolific cherry tree. The tree they found had 3 times as many cherries at any of the other trees. It’s branches were unbroken, thick and hardy – truly a beautiful and robust tree. After harvesting the tree’s plentiful cherries, the crew tagged the tree and created an orchard map, so we can find it again. In future planting seasons, we’ll graft budding branches from this great tree to other less successful trees, in effect reproducing this fecund and resilient tree throughout our orchard.
Witnessing such a delicious example of the miraculous genetic diversity inherent in all living things, leaves us at Frog Hollow Farm with hope for the future of cherries and more broadly California farms. Just like everything else in nature, we farmers just have to evolve.
