Hillary doesn't listen anyway
Worry Assignment: Idaho’s Fruit Crop
By Jill Kuraitis, 4-21-08
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I’m much too worried about the Idaho fruit crop to fret over Tuesday’s presidential primary in Pennsylvania.
It’s my next-door neighbor’s fault. She’s related to a Very Important Idaho Political-and-Fruit-Growing Family with operations at Sunny Slope in Canyon County, just west of Boise. I’m fond of my neighbor. We met yesterday on a dog walk, and while her nice small dog stood still and my let’s-get-going retriever tried to yoink my brain out my ears, she told me that the peaches on the family ranch had bloomed a week or so ago, and the whole crop was threatened. Sure enough, freezing weather came along last night and there’s more predicted for tonight.
Except for a few years living on an almond ranch when I was a kid and an annual tomato plant in my garden, growing food hasn’t been on my radar screen. But suddenly, I am next-door neighbor to an entire fruit ranch. I’ve eaten those yummy peaches. I am invested. I am part of the chain.
A situation such as this requires intense worry, which is my specialty. Worrying about the presidential race hasn’t helped so far, and no matter how much I yell at the network news, Hillary just will not listen to me. Peach Crop Worry is a great new cause. What a relief.
I called out to the fruit ranch in Caldwell just now. Dar Symms, their packing operations guy, told me the coldest spot on their property last night was 22 degrees, but “it wasn’t cold for that long, just a few hours, which helps.”
Symms thought it was too early to tell how much was lost Sunday night because “it takes a little warmer weather for us to judge the blossoms” but that there was some obvious dead loss. “Sunny Slope is warmer than the middle of the valley,” he said, noting that the sugar beet crop would have been harder hit because of location.
Symms Fruit Ranch operations included running 25 wind machines, which can’t cover their 3,000 acres, but “it helps.” They’ll be stirring up the air again tonight.
So many things take a personal experience to hit home, don’t they? You might think people with lower back pain are just whiners until you have lower back pain. Or that people who are afraid of dogs are ridiculous until you’re terrorized by something yourself.
Or that freezing weather in late April is plain annoying, until you have personal peaches to worry about.
Hillary and Obama will have to persevere without me. I think I have some arm-flapping to do tonight in Caldwell.
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Comments
The upside, of course, is the fruit that does make it will be big and expensive. In ag, that means someone somewhere else who grows what you grow will have a great crop AND a great price.
Last year it was the Central Valley of California that was cold. This year it is the PNW. Next year it will be Arizona or Florida, maybe Texas. Meanwhile, our orchard fans are using propane in large quantities, as we no longer smudge (like who could today with $4 diesel?) and foul the air. The objective is to move the inversion air and get some warmer air to ground. Tax credits and incentives drove that process. Fifteen year low interest loans from government plus an energy tax credit. Green taxpayers buy the orchard fans, the wind machines. Subsidized ag. Ya gotta love it.