A Good Year for Peaches
By Jessica Kitchin
Daily Progress staff writer
© 2005 Media General

Sitting under the shade of a roadside stand, surrounded by wooden crates overflowing with freshly picked fruit, Ruth and Cynthia Chiles reflect on the peach-friendly weather they say has made this year one of the best.

“We had a hot dry July, and that’s exactly what peaches like,” said Ruth, whose family has been growing peaches in Albemarle County since 1912.

With rows of peach trees covering acres of land behind them, Ruth and her daughter Cynthia talked about this year’s successful peach crop while helping customers who drove to Chiles Peach Orchard in Crozet for peaches, blackberries and other summer fruits.

“The cool spring weather also helped,” Cynthia said. “This season’s peaches have great flavor, color and size.”

Virginia Farm Bureau officials said that unlike past years that suffered from a spring freeze, this year is particularly good for peach growers.

Although farmers usually cry foul about lack of rain, Cynthia said that this summer’s relatively low rainfall has been a blessing for peach farmers. The absence of hailstorms also helped – but growers aren’t out of the woods yet.

“We could have a great crop right up until now and then a hailstorm could cause us to lose lots of peaches,” Cynthia said. “It’s one of those things you can’t control, so you have to focus your energy on things here that you can.”

Fortunately, she has four generations of knowledge before her to draw from. Over the years, the Chiles family has accumulated several hundred acres of peaches in various orchards in the area, including Carter Mountain Orchard near Monticello. The sprawling nature of the operation makes it difficult to nail down specific numbers, though.

“I don’t know exactly how many acres we have,” Cynthia said, guessing between 300 and 400.

Ruth said that they ship peaches to grocery stores all over the country and into Canada. “We only sell them for fresh eating, we don’t sell anything for processing,” she said.

The Chiles said they like it best when people come to the orchards to pick peaches.

“You save a little money by picking them yourself, plus you get the experience of wandering through the orchard with your family,” Ruth said.

Down the road in Crozet, Henley’s Orchard is another family farm, and Joe Henley said his peaches have thrived this year as well. “The weather’s been really good to us this year,” he said.

Henley ’s 14-year-old grandson, Matthew Jensen, has helped at the orchard for three summers now. “We’ve definitely got good [peaches] this year, and a lot of them,” he said.

Virginia ranks 18th in the country in peach sales, far behind more productive states such as California or Georgia, the Peach State. And even within Virginia, apples far surpass peaches in harvests and sales.

But Ruth and Cynthia say that nothing compares to a Virginia peach, especially with the number of varieties available in the area, such as donut and white peaches.

“We think Virginia peaches are the best,” Ruth said. “There’s no comparison."