peach – hmcfarms

HMC News – May 2023

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Liz Piña

The wait is over. Harvest has begun for tree fruit in peaches, white peaches, nectarines, white nectarines, and organic peaches this month. The fruit looks good and is brixing well with great color and flavor for the first of the season. This will only continue to improve with time. With temperatures in the 90’s, the fruit will continue to mature in a timely fashion. Peak season fruit in both flavor and volume is right around the corner. By the week of June 5th, we will have promotable volumes available on all commodities except plums and plumcots. We are also training the juvenile trees and will complete trellis installation soon.

Shoot thinning in the table grapes is complete and grape bloom is finished. It was one of the most accelerated blooms in recent memory. We are currently waiting for bunches to fully shatter out, which will give us a better idea of the shape of the bunch in the fall. The berries on the lead bunches have already begun to size up. Leafing is wrapping up this month, and we have begun hanging bunches. This is the process of untangling bunches from canes, leaves, or other bunches to ensure they are hanging freely and that the berries have adequate room to grow.

Today HMC Farms is welcoming back Tevel. This will be the second consecutive year in our orchards for the Israeli ag tech company. While here, Tevel will continue to fine tune their flying autonomous robots for mechanical harvesting. Being immersed in harvest and our fields throughout the summer is a key component to fine tuning the software for farm and commodity specific tasks such as detaching the fruit correctly from the limb, variety by variety variations in color and density, specific release protocols, and more. These robots will eventually allow us to optimize our harvest by giving us the ability to pick fruit on afternoons with high heat, at night, or other windows of time that are currently unavailable. Our high-density planting system makes HMC Farms an ideal partner in this endeavor.

HMC News – May 2022

Posted on June 1, 2022June 1, 2022 by Liz Piña

Harvest season is finally here! Peach and nectarine harvest is underway as stone fruit continues to mature and grow in our orchards. Pictured below is our Sangria plum, which will begin harvest at the end of May. Thinning has now wrapped up in our stone fruit orchards. The warm and sunny spring we’re having is perfect for growing great tasting fruit with high sugar content. We have seen excellent eating quality right out of the gate.

So far fruit looks and tastes as good or better than last year’s vintage crop, and we hope that will continue for the whole season. HMC is expecting similar total volume as last year, with a bit more acreage making up for yields that are expected to be slightly less than last summer. We also expect the industry’s total volume to be down about 10% or so, due to acreage reduction, hail, and frost. Overall sizing seems to be running a bit smaller than last year, and 30 degree swings in this month’s weather created a bit of harvest inconsistency. The eating experience remains excellent with brix higher than the previous season’s average.

We are installing trellis structures in the new planting blocks, and beginning to train juvenile trees into the 2D wall structure. Grape bloom is done in our vineyards, and bunches are shattering out and entering the “berry set” stage. During shattering, unwanted berries fall off the bunch. The remaining berries are then set, and will begin the maturation process as we inch toward the 2022 grape harvest.

Take a look at the before and after of a grape cluster going through bloom shatter. During bloom, excessive flowers fall off of the stem, leaving more space for the berries to grow and develop. During this stage and up to berry softening, the berries are more susceptible to sunburn. With some hotter temperatures in the weeks ahead, we will continue to monitor the crop.

Peach Crisp Recipe – gluten and dairy free!

Posted on September 1, 2021September 10, 2021 by Liz Piña

Something you may not know about HMC Farms is that one of our family members has severe food allergies. Because of this, we are constantly inspecting ingredients on packaging, adjusting recipes, and toting allergy-friendly food along to events. We recently had a visitor who was gluten intolerant and allergic to dairy, so we quickly got to work in our farm kitchen to ensure that the guest would have a dessert just as good as the pies we ordered from a local baker. What we came up with was a tasty peach crisp, which happens to be vegan and gluten free. Most importantly, it doesn’t taste vegan and gluten free. This recipe can also be adjusted to be free of added sugar by swapping the sugar in our recipe for monkfruit or stevia.

The peaches coming out of our orchards are delicious right now, so we may start eating this peach crisp for breakfast every day until the end of the season. For a fun twist, try using nectarines or plums in place of the peaches, or mix them all together! If you’ve tried this recipe, let us know what you think and if you made any adjustments.

What you’ll need to serve 6-8 people:

6 HMC Farms peaches (if you use plums, bump this up to 7-8 pieces) Tip: it’s better to use fruit that’s slightly soft, so you may want to leave it out on the counter for a day or two before baking.

1 Tbsp sugar (raw, granulated, or coconut palm would all work here or sub for monkfruit or stevia to remove the added sugar)

1 Tbsp cornstarch (add a pinch more if you like a thicker base)

1 ½ tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 ½ tsp vanilla extract

¾ cup rolled gluten free oats

¾ cup almond flour

½ cup brown sugar (sub coconut palm if desired, or swap for monkfruit/stevia to remove added sugar)

1/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2/3 tsp cinnamon

1/3 tsp salt (we like to use sea salt)

1/3 cup solid coconut oil, plus 1 tbsp for the pan (if your coconut oil has liquified and turned clear, try putting it in the fridge or freezer for a few minutes to solidify)

Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees F. Grease the inside of your pan or oven-safe skillet with 1 Tbsp of coconut oil.

Slice the peaches – for clingstone varieties, place the fruit with the stem down and the seam facing you. Slice carefully straight down on wither side of the pit, and then rotate and repeat. You can then slice these chunks into smaller pieces.

Mix the peach slices, lemon juice, vanilla extract, cornstarch and sugar (or sugar replacement) in a large bowl until ingredients are combined. Set to the side for at least 10 minutes.

In another bowl, mix almond flour, oats, cinnamon, nuts, brown sugar, and salt. Once ingredients are mixed well, work in the remaining coconut oil. Work together with a spoon or your hands until evenly coated.

Pour the peach mixture into the bottom of your pan, then top with the oat mixture.

Bake for approximately 25-30 minutes, depending on your oven and how browned you like the topping.

Let sit for 10 minutes before serving – use caution when tasting

HMC News – May 2021

Posted on May 27, 2021December 9, 2021 by chelsea

The stone fruit season is now upon us! At the beginning of the month, we saw considerable volume available with fruit exhibiting mid-season flavor. This year the fruit size is better than last year, and the drought has created weather that is perfect for high sugar development. We have a full stone fruit crop, and it already looks like this could be be a vintage year for great tasting fruit.

Rootstock is a term we use when covering the grafting process. Rootstock is the portion of the tree or vine that establishes the root system underground, hence the name. Because of the makeup of our soil, we often use rootstock combined with scion wood (the upper part of the tree or vine which determines the fruit variety). We carefully select our rootstock based on characteristics such as drought resistance or increased vigor to pair with both the scion wood and the soil type. Because we grow permanent crops, the rootstock we choose is incredibly important. We basically have one chance to get it right, so we carefully research the pairings before planting and grafting. Learn more through this video on our YouTube channel.

Harvest is now underway for yellow and white nectarines. When compared to last year, nectarines were delayed 3-7 days, and peaches were delayed 1-4 days for early season varieties. Peach sizing is on par, but nectarines are a size to a size and a half smaller than last year’s crop thus far. All of the fruit is exhibiting great flavor and quality. Towards the middle to end of May, we started full volume peach and nectarine harvest.

We recently installed a new grading machine at our packing facility in Traver. Last year, we installed the same machine at our plum facility and saw great results, so we’ve added another machine for peaches and nectarines. It performs vision-based defect sorting and removes any fruit not meeting our programmed visual specifications. After going through defect sorting, the fruit is checked by graders before going to packers, so that the packers no longer need to re-grade the fruit. This helps us ensure that only the very best fruit is packed into HMC boxes, and helps deal with the ongoing labor shortage we’ve experienced in more recent years.

Caramelized Peaches Recipe

Posted on August 29, 2019September 27, 2019 by chelsea

We love homemade ice cream! We actually love it so much that we occasionally make it at the HMC Farms office. Something about homemade vanilla ice cream on a hot day just makes everything better, but we like to elevate our ice cream just a bit with the topping we can’t live without: caramelized peaches.

This recipe is enough for about 14-16 bowls of ice cream.

What you’ll need:

8 large HMC Farms peaches
1 stick of unsalted butter
2/3 cup of packed light brown sugar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

Start by slicing or chopping your HMC Farms peaches, discarding the pits. Place the peaches in a bowl and mix in the fresh lemon juice, sea salt, and cinnamon.

Melt the butter and brown sugar in a skillet on medium heat. Once the butter has melted and combined with the sugar, add the peaches and increase to medium-high heat. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching.

When the juice from the peaches, butter, and sugar have reduced into a thicker consistency, remove the pan from heat and let it stand a little before serving.

Tips:

Depending on the size of your pan, you may need to split this into 2 different batches, the peaches should not be more than 2 pieces deep when putting them in the pan to cook.

Warm peaches are delicious, but if they are too hot they will melt the ice cream rapidly. Let the peaches stand a bit to cool before using them as topping for your ice cream.

Peaches straight from the pan are hot! When taste testing, let the peaches cool slightly to avoid burning your mouth.

If ice cream isn’t your thing, caramelized peaches can also be added to yogurt.