Henley’s Orchard – C-VILLE Weekly

Crops are tops: Have your pick of summer’s bounty

We’re halfway through June, which means fruit harvest season has begun, and that means now is the time to do our best impression of the very hungry caterpillar. You know the story: A tiny caterpillar eats through fruit after fruit (and a piece of cake, an ice cream cone, a pickle, etc.) on his journey to becoming a big, beautiful butterfly. But rather than nibble tiny holes in a series of tissue-paper fruit illustrations, we suggest you select your own very real, delicious fruits and berries from one of the many pick-your-own spots in the area. And savor every juicy bite.

Pick-your-own hours often change day to day, depending on the weather and the crop, so always call ahead before you make the drive.

Carter Mountain Orchard

Peachy keen…on yellow-fleshed, white-fleshed and donut peaches (and nectarines, too). 1435 Carters Mountain Trail. 977-1833.

Chiles Peach Orchard

Go for strawberries and peaches in June. Later in the summer, they’ll have apricots, plums and veggies picked and ready for buying. 1351 Greenwood Rd., Crozet. 823-1583.

Critzer Family Farm

Strawberries and cherries are ripe now; blackberries and raspberries will be ready mid-July. They also sell ice cream made with fruit from the farm. 9388 Critzers Shop Rd., Afton. (540) 465-4772.

Henley’s Orchard

Pluck nectarines and more than a dozen varieties of peaches. 2192 Holly Hill Farm, Crozet. 823-7848.

Hill Top Berry Farm and Winery

Blackberries galore—picking starts in July. 2800 Berry Hill Rd., Nellysford. 361-1266.

Market at Grelen

Pick your own blueberries, or buy pre-picked strawberries, cherries and peaches from other local farmers. 15091 Yager Rd., Somerset. (540) 672-7268.

Middle Fork Farm

Strawberry fields forever. 3840 Branch Rd., Scottsville. 589-0810.

Seamans’ Orchard

Strawberries, cherries and blueberries…perfect for pie-making! 415 Dark Hollow Rd., Roseland. 277-8130.

Spring Valley Orchard

Act fast to pick sweet cherries—picking season ends in early July. 3526 Spring Valley Rd., Afton. 960-9443.

We’ll cheers to that

On Monday, June 5, the 2017 Virginia Craft Brewers Guild announced the winners of this year’s Virginia Craft Beer Cup: Among the 356 beers entered for judging in 24 categories, five local breweries earned accolades for their brews. South Street Brewery’s Virginia Lager took first place in the International Lager and Strong European Beer category; its Astrognomer brew took third in the IPA category. Three Notch’d Brewing Company’s Blackwall Porter placed second in the Scottish and Irish Ale category; its No Veto Brown placed third in the Brown British Ale category. Pro Re Nata Brewing Company took third place in the Historical, Alternative and American Wild Ale category with its Go Johnny Gose. Wild Wolf Brewing Company placed third in the Fruit Beer category with its Area 151. And Stable Craft Brewing’s Britchin Brown Ale took second in the Amber and Brown American Beer category.

Bummer crop: Warm temperatures worry farmers

Last month was the warmest February on record with an average temperature of 47.7 degrees, based on numbers from the McCormick Observatory dating back to the 19th century. While many are happy to ditch their winter coats early, a nice day this early in the season is a nightmare for some farmers.

“It’s really going to affect us badly,” Tim Henley, owner of Henley’s Orchard in Crozet, said last week. “I’m expecting this next cold blast is pretty much going to wipe out all of our peaches.”

On Henley’s 1,000 acres of farmland, 25 acres are reserved for growing 35 varieties of apples (including fan favorites such as Albemarle Pippin and Black Twig), and 18 acres are reserved for more than a dozen types of white and yellow peaches. With recent warm temperatures pushing 80 degrees, a majority of the buds in the peach reserve at Henley’s have already bloomed, or at least swollen to a fragile state. Cool temperatures, even just at night, could kill them for the whole season.

And it’s happened before. During a good year, Henley says he and his team produce between 4,000 and 5,000 bushels of the pitted fruit. Last year, due to similar conditions, they had none.

“It’s fairly depressing,” he says. “We just try to be optimistic. We’ll probably get a lot more apple trees pruned this year than usual,” he adds, because they likely won’t have to spend time thinning peach crops.

Over at Bellair Farm, an 850-acre plot 11 miles south of downtown Charlottesville, the warm weather isn’t all bad news.

Farm manager Jamie Barrett says he usually starts selling community supported agriculture shares in mid-May, but if temperatures continue to stay up, he may be able to start earlier. Because he grows mostly annual vegetables, (think: eggplant planted seasonally, not apples yielding from the same trees each year), warmer weather means an opportunity to get out into the fields earlier to prep for the growing season.

“We can get things in the ground a little earlier,” he says. “For us, there are certain crops like strawberries we worry about. And our garlic is taller than usual this time of year. A hard frost might knock that back.”

Barrett planted his strawberries last spring because they take a year to bear fruit.

“We should expect that to start in May or June and we’ll begin picking at that time,” he says. “If they start blooming now, and it gets real cold at night, we’re going to lose those blossoms and lose our strawberry crop. It’s always something we worry about. It’s just getting harder and harder to manage things with the weather being so volatile.”

And though most of the Bellair crops will be okay, he sympathizes with the orchards that are getting hit.

“The peaches and the apples are not coming in like they’re used to. It all comes back to the weather now,” Barrett says. “It’s great if people can have that in mind and really support those local businesses when they need it.”

Jerry Stenger, the director of the climatology office at the University of Virginia, doesn’t have good news for the farmers hoping to ward off a frost. In fact, he says the worst is yet to come.

Through the end of February, the area had seen only 2.9 inches of snowfall, when an average for that time period is more than a foot—about 14 inches. The snow that started March 13 added less than an inch to the season’s accumulation.

“We’re not anywhere near free of the snowfall season,” he says. “This time of year, chances of getting more measurable snow are about 50-50. This is not too bizarre and it’s not unexpected that we’ll have some more snow coming along.”

Stenger points to early March 2013, when 15.5 inches of snow were dumped on the city.

But it won’t be too much longer before we’re in the clear, he says. “Now by the time we get to April, the chances of any decent snowfall are really diminished.”

Feverish February

Is it time to break out the shorts and tank tops? Information gathered from UVA’s McCormick Observatory ranks last month as the hottest February on record.

February 2017: 47.7 degrees on average
Average February temperature: 39.1 degrees
Winter snowfall through end of February: 2.9 inches
Average winter snowfall through end of February: 14 inches
February 2017 seventh driest on record: .78 inches of precipitation
Average February precipitation: 3.07 inches of precipitation