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The Okanagan tree fruit harvest is in full swing, with peach season at its tail end and apples, pears and other fruits arriving.
With a hot summer mixed with wildfires throughout the valley, Castanet checked in with a couple local fruit growers to get a gauge on the season.
“Everything is coming off the trees really nicely and out of the garden perfectly, and it’s been an amazing harvest,” said Jennay Oliver, owner of Paynter’s Fruit Market in West Kelowna.
“Our last variety of peaches are just starting to harvest right now and they’re called cresthavens — they’re amazing — and we have lots of stuff coming out of the garden. We’ve got pick-your-own tomatoes … cherry tomatoes, melons, all sorts of things.”
Jas Sanghera, owner of Don-O-Ray Farms, spoke with Castanet at a pear orchard he works with.
“We are picking Bartlett pears today. It’s a beautiful day, a nice cool day to pick all these pears off the trees. We pick them in one shot and then we keep them in our coolers to sell them over the coming months,” he said.
The extremely hot and dry summer made for an earlier than usual harvest.
“This year it was kind of like jumping on a freight train, so we had nothing but tons of hot weather, and that just sped everything up and everything just ripened at once,” said Oliver.
“We’re seeing a lot of crops that are coming into the market right now that we wouldn’t see for maybe two weeks from now. Tomatoes are peaking right now and normally that would be after the first weekend of September that they would all be ripening up, but because we had all of that hot weather throughout the summer, definitely everything is coming in a little early.”
The wildfires did not impact the crop, but they did scare away tourists, which are big buyers of the fruit.
“We rely on our local customer base so much, and we’re really turning to them right now and just thanking them for their support,” said Oliver.
“They’re the ones that are really helping us out. It’s so important right now to look toward your local farmer, find the Westside farm loop or look at all the farms in Kelowna and find someone to support right now because they have so much coming off their trees and out of their gardens.”
With the tourism season impacting sales, you can expect to find some good deals on fresh fruit throughout the Okanagan this fall.
