DRYDEN – In one of the nation’s prime pear-growing regions, growers are still reeling from a July hailstorm that could end up costing them millions of dollars.
Between the small towns of Cashmere and Peshastin on the east slope of the Cascade Range, growers estimated losses at 1.1 million boxes of pears, worth between $10 million to $17.7 million. Overall, growers in Chelan and Douglas counties say they lost 20 percent of their pear crops.
Fred Smith, a 66-year-old grower, said the hail damage is the worst he or his 88-year-old father have ever seen, farming in Dryden all their lives.
Smith and his son, Brad, ended up paying seven workers $15 an hour each for 12 hours to shake pears off trees on 12 acres. They were concerned that limbs might break and trees could be drained of carbohydrates needed for next year’s crop by fruit hanging too long.
“It’s a terrible sound,” Fred Smith said of pears falling. “It’s your livelihood that you’ve worked for all year long. To hear and see it hitting the ground – for me it gets emotional.”
Very little of the Bartlett pear harvest in the damaged area was salvageable.
“Now guys are telling me they’re walking away from the d’Anjous,” said Bruce Grim, manager of the Washington apple and pear marketing associations in Wenatchee. D’Anjou is the dominant pear variety in the valley.
Dryden grower Lyle Hoefner estimated the storm knocked 11 percent of his crops the ground, while another 80 percent was damaged. He then thinned 50 percent of the damaged crop. In his worst areas, as much as 97 percent of the fruit will be too damaged to be used for anything, he said, up from 7 percent in a normal year.
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated 12 Washington counties agricultural disaster areas following the severe thunderstorms and hail that damaged crops July 4-6.
The decision makes farmers in Adams, Benton, Chelan, Douglas, Franklin, Grant, Lincoln, Okanogan, Spokane, Walla Walla, Whitman and Yakima counties eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the federal government.
Farmers in 15 additional counties in Washington state, as well as two counties in Oregon and five counties in Idaho, also are eligible for assistance because they are next to the affected counties.
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