They were decent enough looking peaches at a local farm stand. Good heft in the palm of your hand, so they must be nice and juicy. And a rich russet-orange colour, so they had to be ripe.
Right now is too early in the season to buy good local peaches any year, but the tiny handwritten sign saying they were from Georgia prodded us to conduct an experiment and try one. Given the radical weather Okanagan fruit growers faced this winter, we knew we wouldn’t be seeing any delicious peaches from there any time soon. Besides, we assumed they were some of those “sweet Georgia peaches” you hear about in literature and pop culture.
Silly us.
If you don’t remember our disastrous weather last winter, here’s a refresher—my February “Confusion reigns” column in Pique. In the Okanagan Valley, and across southwestern B.C., climate change delivered an unusually warm start to winter, followed by a nasty January cold snap when the polar vortex zoomed out of the Arctic all the way south to Texas.
Temperatures plummeted from well above freezing to -30 C in mere days in the Okanagan. Orchardists there who grow our favourite stone fruits—cherries, apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines—saw 90 per cent, or more, of their crops destroyed.
Apple trees are hardier and we might even see bigger fruits this year because of the deep freeze. But normally plants can’t adjust to such extreme temperature changes in such a short period of time. Plant cells simply up and die.
Then this year B.C.’s snowpack was 30 to 40 per cent below normal across the province, with the Interior seeing what snow there was melting way sooner than normal due to a much warmer-than-usual early May after a cooler-than-usual early spring. The result? Drought conditions and more tough times for farmers everywhere.
Yes, it’s complicated, with temperatures and rain and snowfall levels zig-zagging up and down like a yo-yo. It’s also why wine expert Anthony Gismondi was seeing “brown” on his visit to the Okanagan a month and a half ago. In some cases, there were even sawn-off grapevine trunks sticking out of the ground.
Gismondi, who shared this space in Pique with me for years, noted in his Vancouver Sun column that the problems aren’t confined to tree fruits or the Okanagan. The talented grape growers there and in the Similkameen Valley who supply us with all those fabulous B.C. wines are contending with a kill rate in the area of 90 per cent or more in their vineyards.
Who knows where they’re going to finally land with their crops? According to Gismondi, dotted around those sawn-off trunks, some vine root systems are pushing up new shoots, which is hopeful. Plus vintners are looking at importing grapes or, maybe, going back to planting cherries and apples, which that land supported long before anyone even dreamt of growing grapes this far north. (My ancient rellies were orchardists in the Okanagan literally 100 years ago, so we’ve seen it all over the years.)
As for our precious B.C. stone fruits, with those crop losses in the 90-per-cent range and some orchards suffering catastrophic damage, they’re looking at mighty tough decisions, too.
Do you rip the old trees out—trees maybe your family has grown for decades? Do you plant new crops? And if so, what? Some are already moving into things like corn or grapes, but then what? With we humans warming the climate like nobody’s business, ahem, are we going to see banana or tobacco plantations
one day?
Who knows? But for now, let’s get back to those so-called “sweet” Georgia peaches. Suffice to say, I sure am glad we bought only one.
I don’t know what I was thinking, or I guess I wasn’t, because I didn’t grab a photo of our little experiment once we sliced it open, so I’ll just say it was beyond words. And not in a good way.
The inside was so dark and funky it smelled. The stone even split open revealing the bitter-tasting seed inside that looks like an almond but isn’t. (I ate one as a kid thinking it was an almond. Never did that again.)
It was juicy. I’ll give it that, but the flavour? Meh. Nothing peachy about that sour peach. But what can you expect? It was grown 3,000 miles, or a 43-hour drive away.
I know, I know—a lot of fresh fruit comes from much further afield than that, but I was considering all this after reading an article in the Kelowna Capital News last summer about growers in California and Washington dumping (old) cherries below the cost of production in our B.C. markets after their prime cherry seasons ended.
The BC Tree Fruit Growers Association was all over it, asking the Canada Border Services Agency to monitor the situation. But I wonder what’s up this year, with the few B.C. cherry growers who are still trying to squeeze some income from the maybe 10 per cent of their harvestable crop. It’s all a good reminder to
we, the mighty consumers, to stick to our local guns anytime.
Do your best to wait until B.C. crops are ripe, and watch for B.C. tree fruit branding. At the very least, buy fresh produce from as close to home as possible. In the case of cherries, here’s the best tip they’re fresh and tasty: Their stems will be green, not shrivelled and brown like they are on old cherries. Given our peach experiment, I haven’t any similar tips for buying fresh apricots or peaches, other than read your signs and labels and choose wisely (remember that 100-mile diet?).
As for those Georgia peaches so far from home and way past their best-before date, I can’t help but wonder, were they dumped, too? Our little experiment of buying one proved useful. A disappointing eye-opener—but the perfect reminder of why we treasure our local B.C. fruit and the people who grow it.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who loved picking cherries in her great-aunts’ and -uncles’ orchards near Kelowna.
