As promised last week, I will tell you what I found in my research as to the mealy peaches.

The name of the grower was on the peach box as well as his phone number. I gave him a shout. He said that peaches have a shelf life of 20 days before they turn mealy. He went on to say that the peaches destined for the store where we bought ours, sat in his orchard in their bins for 5 days before they were taken away to be packed for shipping.

Between the time they were packed and the time they were picked up for transport, another 10 days went by. That left only a maximum of 5 days for the product to be sitting in the grocer’s warehouse before being shipped to the store for the consumers’ to buy them. The 21st day meant a substandard quality of peach which is what we bought.

Wally Smith belonged to the Oliver Co-operative Growers Association because he knew that he was unable to do all the growing, all the transporting, all the marketing and all the selling himself. Wally did the growing and picking and the co-operative did all the rest.

In October of 1971, Wally wrote a column where he wrote about grower’s incomes and how fruit growing had to become more efficient in order for incomes to grow.

He mentioned that ” there are growers who believe that their salvation lies in bulk shipments and direct sales to truckers who will peddle the fruit to customers in the cities and towns. This is a reversion to the hit and miss system we abandoned thirty years ago.”

The system he was talking about is what we largely have today. The product that consumers get is largely poor quality because it is what is known as “orchard run”. Orchard run includes everything, small ones, deformed ones, and insect damaged, in other words culls. Of course there is good quality fruit too mixed in with the orchard run.

The organized grower owned packing house would refuse orchard run product and that product would either be canned or thrown out.

The fruit, upon arriving at the packing house, was stored in cold storage until it was ready to be washed, sorted, and packaged and then it was returned to cold storage or controlled atmosphere storage until ready to sell.

Something else too, worthy of mention, is that in Wally’s orchard the fruit was picked up by the packing house the day he picked it, it only sat once over night. I remember when Wally kicked up a huge fuss because his fruit was missed by the truck. First thing in the morning the load was picked up by the truck and being missed never happened again.

Let us be clear, I’m not painting every grower with the same brush. There are good ones and bad ones, but I am saying from my latest experience I am getting gun shy when it comes to Okanagan grown fruit.

email:  ruralreportwithlairdsmith@gmail.com