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Park Hill Orchard co-owner Alane Hartley grabs peaches from a fridge to wash, pit and slice for pies. -
Peaches grow on trees at Park Hill Orchard on Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Erin Morse, owner of Outlook Farm in Westhampton, stands with recently picked peaches. -
Jussara Moanteiro, left, and co-owner Alane Hartley pit and slice peaches for pies at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Juddy Nam, left, co-owner Alane Hartley, right, and Jussara Moanteiro, back, pit and slice peaches for pies at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Peaches grow on trees at Park Hill Orchard Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Peaches on the tree at Apex Orchards in Shelburne. -
Juddy Nam slices peaches for pies at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Juddy Nam tosses sliced peaches into a tub at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
A peach grows on a tree at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Washed peaches wait to be pitted and sliced for pies at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday in Easthampton. -
Washed peaches are selected to be pitted and sliced for pies at Park Hill Orchard, Wednesday, in Easthampton. -
Cat Pentoney, left, sells peaches and other fruits at Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield on Tuesday. -
Peaches and other fruits for sale at Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield. -
At Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton on Wednesday, Jussara Moanteiro, left, co-owner Alane Hartley and Juddy Nam pit and slice peaches for pies. -
Jen Gates of Naples, Florida, purchases fresh peaches from Apex Orchards in Shelburne on Tuesday. -
Seasonal workers Wellesley Stephens and Bobby Sawyers pick peaches at Apex Orchards in Shelburne. -
Courtney Basil, co-owner of Apex Orchards in Shelburne, with some fresh peaches for sale. “You never really know until you get it picked and in the barn, but looking on the trees, the peaches look very clean,” Basil said of this year’s crop. “They look beautiful.”
After extreme weather events brought about a particularly challenging growing season for Pioneer Valley peach farmers in 2023, crops bounced back in 2024 and appear to be doing the same this year, though some in lower elevations have suffered significant losses.
Clarkdale Fruit Farms owner Ben Clark, who lost the entirety of his peach crop and 70% of his apples and pears in 2023 due to subzero temperatures that February, said this year’s crop has been comparatively bountiful. He credited his crop’s success in Deerfield to planting at a higher altitude — a farming technique that he said makes peach trees more resilient to the cold.
“Peaches are much more susceptible to cold damage than apples are, so in any of the lower areas, the cold can really settle in and will just get affected more adversely,” Clark said. “Fortunately, up in Franklin County, most of our orchards are up on a hill. Because peaches are sensitive, growers generally plant them in their best location, the highest elevation, so they get good air drainage and good sun exposure. … Franklin County had a good crop because we didn’t have the same negative impacts. We did get some cold, but nothing that really affected the crop.”
Clark also noted that while Franklin County farms are seeing a healthy harvest, some orchards in Hampshire and Hampden counties, which are typically on lower-elevation flatlands, saw a more devastating peach season.
Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton saw a 40% loss in its peach crops, according to co-owner Russell Braen. Two years ago, Braen said the farm’s peach yields took a hit because of unusually high heat, whereas this year he lost the portion of the crops that were planted at the bottom of a hill, rather than the top, due to the cold.
“Peaches are, you know, probably the most endangered crop from climate change down south, where they don’t get cold enough, since they need a certain number of hours of cold in the winter to reset their system clocks, basically. Up here, it’s different reasons,” Braen explained. “This year, it was winter damage from those really cold days we had in January. My peaches are on a hill, and the bottom of the hill doesn’t have any peaches on it — the top of the hill does, so it probably got super cold at the bottom at some point.”
Brad Morse, co-owner of Outlook Farm in Westhampton, had a lucky break, as his crops did not see any frost issues. Morse said his crops “came through with no problems whatsoever,” as they did not face subzero temperatures this season.
Aside from the altitude-related frosts damaging portions of the Easthampton orchard’s peach trees, Braen noted that the summer is bringing, all in all, a “pretty good fruit year,” and that he has already harvested roughly 4,000 pounds of fruit total.
“When peaches are good, they’re good. We probably get eight good crops out of a decade,” he said. “We had one total loss and one semi-loss, so there’s enough peaches that we have them at the markets, and we have them at our farm stand. I wholesale on some years, but I’m not wholesaling any this year.”
Further north, Apex Orchards in Shelburne also experienced success with this year’s peach crop.
“It’s definitely been all peachy,” said co-owner Courtney Basil. “You never really know until you get it picked and in the barn, but looking on the trees, the peaches look very clean. They look beautiful.”
Basil said success depends in part on where trees are planted, noting that “sometimes frost settles just perfectly in those low-lying spots in your orchard.” She notes that a frost event can happen very quickly. “We can have an orchard that’s not far from us, just a few miles, and they could have frost damage, and we might not,” she said.
Pine Hill Orchards in Colrain is also headed toward a good harvest this year, according to co-owner Brady Shearer. While Shearer said the farm has seen particularly difficult growing seasons amid extreme heat in years past, the farm has worked hard to ensure its peaches are “big, juicy and beautiful.”
Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.