Imagine a pile of peaches, a big pile, 55 million strong.
Enough peaches to sate every Coloradan several times over. Plus a few thousand peach pies on the side.
That’s the rough estimate for this year’s Colorado peach harvest.
It’s a peachy crop, one of the biggest in more than 30 years for western Colorado growers.
An absence of late spring frost and just a brief peppering of May hail have produced a bountiful crop of peaches running juicy and sweet, farmers say.
“We have picked more peaches this year than we’ve ever picked at this time of year,” said Brant Harrison of Kokopelli Farm and Produce, an organic grower in Palisade, Colorado’s peach capital.
The statewide projection is for a harvest of 12,000 tons, according to the Colorado Agricultural Statistics Service, a branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
While not all farmers are reporting above-average crops, the USDA projection would make it this year’s crop the third largest since 1973’s modern-day record of 14,000 tons and last year’s 13,000 tons.
The 2004 peach harvest produced $11.3 million for growers. Peaches produced nearly twice as much farm income as apples, which are Colorado’s second-most-valuable fruit crop.
Grocers report the usual enthusiastic response from consumers since Colorado peaches began arriving on store shelves late last month.
“The peaches are good quality, and retailers are heavily promoting them,” said Trail Daugherty, director of consumer affairs for King Soopers and City Market. “Customers have been waiting for them.”
Consumers will benefit from a trend over the past few years in which growers have planted multiple peach varieties that ripen at different times, extending the Colorado harvest from late June to early October.
So what’s the Colorado cachet? Mere local pride, or does the Western Slope crop really outperform its non-Colorado competitors?
“There’s a reason Colorado peaches are good,” said Harold Larsen, research fruit pathologist for Colorado State University. “With our desert climate, we get lots of solar input into our crop. The very warm, sunny days and cool nights tend to provide a better sugar and acid balance than you see anywhere else.”
The crop this year at Talbott Farms, one of Colorado’s largest growers, is good but not prolific, said marketing director Charlie Talbott.
“I’d say we’ll get 90 percent of a full crop this year,” Talbott said. “It’s a less-than-average crop, but it should be very good quality.”
Staff writer Steve Raabe can be reached at 303-820-1948 or sraabe@denverpost.com.
