It’s still peachy: A tasty, but reduced, peach crop heads to northern Colorado farmers markets thanks to last October’s polar vortex

Colorado sweet and juicy peaches from Saims’s Fruit are available at the Greeley Farmers Market. Photo courtesy of Saims’s Fruit.

By Emily Kemme
Peaches might just be the most popular fruit in the world. Ambrosially sweet with a hint of acid and plump with juice, the fuzzy peach heads the list of metaphors describing all that is right with the world. Colorado peaches, grown on the sun-drenched Western Slope, have a reputation for being extra sweet thanks to nighttime temperature drops and a soil full of minerals.

But when a blizzard on October 13, 2020 saw the mercury plummet overnight from a mild 60 degrees down to ten in Palisade and Paonia, the early freeze wiped out thousands of fruit trees. 

Kacey Kropp of First Fruits Organic Farms, located on the Western Slope and selling peaches in Boulder and Longmont, said that spring is a challenging season because the fruit trees are in bloom and are vulnerable to freezing. It’s the sort of weather that’s expected in Colorado, which is known for erratic temperature swings.

“That’s the normal challenge, but in 2020 we had an unusual historic weather event with a long fall and no frost, followed by a big Arctic air mass that dipped onto the continent,” Kropp said.

Easing into fall, fruit trees will experience a few light frosts, a signal from Mother Nature that the growing season is done, that it’s time to hunker down and acclimate to cold weather. 

Except the 2020 cold snap didn’t allow that. Because of the incident’s quick onset, there was widespread tissue damage on trees, either killing entire trees or fruiting wood. As a third generation fruit farmer, Kropp said the Paonia area where his family’s farm is located has never had it so severe.

Sandwiched between the West Elk Mountains and a stretch of desert towards Grand Junction, Paonia has its own microclimates, Kropp noted. The location makes the area especially susceptible to weather changes.

Colorado’s sun-drenched Western Slope region has a reputation for growing extra sweet peaches thanks to nighttime temperature drops and a soil full of minerals. Photo courtesy of First Fruits Organic Farms.

Brian Coppom, Executive Director of Boulder County Farmers Markets, said damage to orchards occurred because of the rapid temperature swing, not giving trees time to prepare for cold temperatures.

“As temperatures fall, the leaf disconnects from the branch and its attachment point starts to harden. Once it does this, [the leaf] starts to die and has chlorophyll loss, that’s when you get the color change. The leaf has cut itself off from its nutrient source and then it falls off. With the rapid temperature swing, a tree doesn’t have time to prepare for the cold temperature so the leaf won’t detach from the branch, leaving the tree vulnerable to freezing.”

Kropp said they had to take a chainsaw to between 500 to 1,000 trees to take off the branch ends, or anything that died. 

“The frost destroyed tissue and the ability to transfer nutrients around the tree. The woody tissue took it hard.”

Even so, First Fruits Organic Farms has a decent peach crop this year. “It was miraculous, it was the buds that mostly survived the October frost.”

Ripe peaches on Saims’s Fruit in Palisade. Photo courtesy of Saims’s Fruit.

Tom Saims, of Saims’s Fruit, is based in Palisade and sells peaches at the Greeley Farmers Market. He points to current drought conditions, which he believes, based on tree growth rate analysis, could be a 100-year drought. His crop this year will be average. Trees that didn’t bear fruit because of the frost needed to be thinned and had to take the year off. He recognizes that when they don’t have to expend a lot of energy, the trees will bear a lot of fruit the next season. 

Saims watches the snow pack. Since 1999, he’s had a few good years — water-wise — water-wise — but nothing like the 20 to 30 feet of snow he used to get when he lived in the mountains. These days, winters aren’t as cold, hardly dipping into the negative numbers. He remembers when there were frosts going down into the ground three feet, but the last few winters the ground has barely frozen. Saims said that’s due to the drought, too.

Because of the water situation, growers might disregard what Saims calls  old-timers advice — you shut the water off by mid-September to avoid vigorous growth if there’s an early freeze. But with the prolonged drought, everyone was trying to water longer. And in the mountains around Paonia, where the growing season is a few weeks behind Palisade’s, farms water longer anyway because of the higher elevation.

Even so, Saims said harvest is within a week of normal. Cooler weather this summer and a touch of rain has slowed the fruit development down, which is good, he thinks, compared to years where it gets really hot and all the different varieties ripen at once. “If it’s at the same time, it’s a mad scramble.”

He’s been growing fruit since 1992. Even with all of Colorado’s weather hazards, Saims said he grows fruit in Colorado — of all places — because he enjoys making sure people get a good peach instead of something inedible from California.

Where to find Colorado peaches

Saims’s Fruit: Greeley Farmers Market

First Fruits Organic Farms: Boulder and Longmont Farmers Markets

Bonus recipe

Did you know that peaches make a delectable Caprese salad? You can eat a peach out of hand until its juices dribble down your chin, and that’s part of the joy of a ripe peach. But sweet peaches rival tomatoes to create another summer classic, the Caprese.

Sweet peaches rival tomatoes to create another summer classic, the Caprese salad. Photo courtesy of Feeding the Famished.

Peach and Tomato Caprese Salad

• 2 ripe peaches, cut into 1” pieces

  Note: you’ll know if a peach is ripe thanks to its fragrance

• 1 Cherokee Purple or other variety of heirloom tomato, cut into 1” pieces

  Note: substitute with garden grown tomatoes if you can’t find heirlooms. The tomato should be ripe and juicy.

• 2 large fresh mozzarella balls, sliced and halved

• 5 large basil leaves, slivered

For dressing:

• 1/2 cup peach balsamic vinegar (or substitute with white balsamic vinegar)

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

• Himalayan pink salt

• Cracked black pepper

To prepare:

Whisk oil and vinegar in small bowl until emulsified. Salt and pepper to taste.

Combine salad ingredients in bowl and toss gently with a rubber spatula so the fruit isn’t bruised. Add 3-4 tablespoons dressing. Toss. Season with salt and pepper, if needed.

Serves two as a light main course or side salad.

Recipe courtesy of Feeding the Famished.