From the Fields - Mike Vereschagin

By Mike Vereschagin, Glenn County prune and almond grower 

It’s a busy time of the year here. We’re in the middle of our prune and almond harvest. The prune crop is very big. Our prune dehydrator is running at full capacity between our fruit and the custom work we do for other growers. We started shaking on Aug. 30. In the 40 years I’ve been tracking it, that’s the latest we’ve ever started. With the cool, wet spring we had, everything is pushed back. The earliest we’ve ever done is Aug. 5.

Quality looks very good on the prunes. The sugar is good, with nice sizes. All in all, we’re looking at a very nice crop. So far, what showers we had up here was not significant enough to affect the prunes. There was no brown rot, so things are looking very clean.

On almonds, we’re done shaking our nonpareils. We started shaking the first week of August. It was about a week to 10 days later than normal. Quality-wise, it looks very clean, although you hear stories up and down the state, including in this area, about some very high navel orangeworm problem. Knock on wood, everything we have so far is very clean. It pretty much came down to orchard sanitation in the wintertime and destroying the mummies. I’ve got a lot of fields that are going to come in at under 1% reject level, but I’ve heard stories down south and from neighbors with a couple of blocks up here running 30% where they didn’t control the navel orangeworm. Yields are strong with what we’ve done so far. It’s in the upper-middle range of historical production on our ranch. The hulls have split open quite well this year. It makes it easier to run through the huller.

We’re concerned about the price on almonds, with the big carryover from last year’s crop. We know the price is going to be depressed again this year. That affects the bottom line.