Growing season was kind to Nelson County this year

By Erin McGrath

Published: July 30, 2008

As soon as a worker at Drumheller Orchards in Lovingston drops a box of yellow peaches onto the sales counter, customers are pulling up to the barn to buy them.

It’s late July and peach season is in full swing in Nelson and Amherst Counties, home to six peach and seven apple orchards.

Apple harvest
in Nelson
(in pounds)

-- 1997: 20,901,000
-- 1998: 19,245,000
-- 1999: 22,446,000
-- 2000: 22,680,000
-- 2001: 20,743,000
-- 2002: 18,776,000
-- 2003: 16,400,000
-- 2004: 20,610,000
-- 2005: 18,304,000
-- 2006: 13,313,000

Doris Drumheller, who manages Drumheller Orchards along with her son, Kevin, said their peach and apple crops for this year are looking good.

“It’s looking a lot better than what it did last year because we had a freeze last year that affected some of the apples and that affected the peaches totally,” Drumheller said.

Drumheller Orchards has 80 acres dedicated to 10 different varieties of apples and 10 acres dedicated to nine different varieties of peaches, which they started picking on July 15.

The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced last week the USDA Agricultural Statistics Service said the 2008 Virginia peach crop will total 4,200 tons, which is an increase of 2,600 tons over the 2007 crop and 200 tons over the 2006 crop.

Bennett Saunders, of Saunder’s Brothers Orchard in Piney River, said the freezing temperatures during Easter weekend last year contributed to the loss of more than 40 percent of the orchard’s 50-acre crop of peaches.

This year’s looks to be better, Saunders said.

“We had a good spring with no freezing temperatures,” Saunders said. “We had good rain early and we had sufficient rain since.”

Saunders’ sentiments are echoed throughout the other orchards in the counties.

Fran May, of Rock Hill Orchard in Monroe, said each crop is different, but this years’ is looking good.

“You never know until you get the crop off the trees,” May said. “Every year is different, but for the most part it’s not bad. This year has been really good.”

Scott Barns, of Morris Orchards in Monroe, said they anticipated everyone having a good crop of peaches this year.

“Last year’s crop was small. There was a lot of frost and we just about had enough peaches to serve our retail customers,” Barns said. “This year, we’ve kind of anticipated a big crop with everybody so in the spring we thinned out the crop, to get big-sized peaches.”