The only harvest of commercially available peaches this year in Quebec has unfortunately been plundered, partly by animals, but also by humans.
Posted at 4:53 p.m.
The co-owners of Domaine de Dunham, in the Eastern Townships, had quite a bad surprise last Friday when it came time to reap their precious fruits.
“Our employee who was sent to pick came back with a single peach, telling us: that’s all there is,” sighs co-owner Gisèle Larocque. Months of work evaporated in the space of a few nights.
Gisèle Larocque identifies three reasons to explain this sad news. First, the animals, especially raccoons, would have plundered 10 to 15% of the crops, more than usual, despite several precautions taken to protect the peach trees.
“Two-legged” thieves would be responsible for 15 to 20% of the losses, estimates the farmer. The fact that her peach trees are close to the road will certainly have contributed to this looting, she adds.
And all this without taking into account the losses due to last year’s periods of drought which damaged the buds of several trees, resulting in a lower production of peaches this year.
2200 kilos of fishing
Gisèle Larocque does not currently plan to file a complaint with the police since it is not, according to her, a “violent crime”. “It’s a shame because we work so hard, all the farmers, to reach the end, and our prices are already very good,” sighs the farmer.
According to the other co-owner of Domaine de Dunham, Claude Girard, more than 2,200 kilos of peaches were harvested last year. To meet ever-increasing customer demand, some 226 new peach and nectarine trees were also planted.
Dig ditches
The co-owners are considering several solutions to protect their future peach harvests. This year would have been their fourth in normal times, after many years of hard work to grow these peach trees.
While it is impossible to completely fence off the Estate due to its large area, Gisèle Larocque believes that digging deeper ditches all around the area could deter thieves.
As for raccoons, the co-owners of Domaine de Dunham are thinking of installing traps in order to save their precious fruits next season.
It should be noted that the peaches from the Domaine de Dunham would be the only ones commercially available in Quebec, because many Quebecers still have personal peach trees on their land. However, the climate of the province is not conducive to the cultivation of this fruit, which is very widespread in southern Ontario.
“We have a microclimate in Dunham that makes our winters less harsh and our summers longer, so we managed to grow peach trees there,” explains Gisèle Larocque.
An anecdotal phenomenon
According to the Director General of the Association of Vegetable Producers of Quebec, Patrice Léger-Bourgouin, the theft of vegetables and fruits remains an anecdotal phenomenon across the province.
Some crops, such as peaches, are still more likely to be robbed due to their rarity.
“If you put yourself in the shoes of someone who wants to steal broccoli, it’s not easy. It’s manual harvesting, which has to be done broccoli by broccoli,” he explains. Besides, the harvest time is so tight, that the growers will be working 18-19 hours a day at harvest time, so that doesn’t leave much time for thieves. »
Year after year, some market gardeners are still victims of vandalism on their land. But the vagaries of the weather remain the main factor that explains the loss of production, a phenomenon that will increase over the years.