HMC News – September 2023

It was an August we won‘t soon forget. Our hope is for things to settle this month and to have more answers than questions in the near future. We are still evaluating fields and changing plans on a daily basis to do what is best for our tree fruit and table grapes. For now, we will focus on the good. The plum crop faired very well through the storm, and we will have red and black plums available late into the fall.

While the table grape situation continues to shift on a daily basis, we do have some positive news to report from the field. This month we were able to distribute farm worker aid payments provided by the USDA for all farm workers who worked in the field in 2020 and beyond. We are currently providing glucose testing in our orchards, making it easier for individuals to check in on a health issue that may be of concern.

In honor of National Farm Safety this month, we would like to highlight what we do to keep workers as safe as possible in the field. We have field specific safety trainers who regularly train employees on correct harvest and pruning techniques, heat illness prevention, and poisonous insect and animal awareness, to name a few. Each of these topics are broken into specifics, for example, we hold training for ladder safety in orchards that are harvested traditionally and another for platform harvesting. Throughout the summer we organize tailgate topics in the field, where we emphasize specific areas that may be of concern that day. These tailgate topics are increasingly helpful during the hotter days in the summer when heat illness is one of our highest priorities.

We are managing the crop and quality of table grapes out in the field to the best of our abilities. While the cleanup can be tedious, we are encouraged by the end result we see from the vineyard. If everything continues on the current path, we should have grapes into December. Harvest is wrapping up on Krissy, Scarlet Royal, and Timco red seedless and harvest is just getting started on Great Green and Autumn King green seedless. Our early Allison vineyards have been picked and we will get into the bulk of that variety over the coming month. We will continue to watch the weather and do our best to prepare for any future storms.

 

 

 

HMC News – August 14, 2019

HMC Farms has a strong relationship with the California Association of Food Banks and the Farm to Family program. Each year, we donate hundreds of thousands of pounds of fruit to help feed hungry families in our state. In 2018, HMC Farms donated more than 500,000 pounds of fruit to the Farm to Family program.

Crop Update:

Harvest remains ongoing for HMC Farms peaches, plums, nectarines, Flame red seedless table grapes and Ivory green seedless table grapes. Krissy red seedless table grapes are now in harvest as well. Our peach and nectarine harvest season is about 2/3 complete at this point. The forecast shows highs of 105° or higher for the next few days before dropping into the mid to high 90s.