A quote from Charles Dickens' Tale of Two
Cities best describes the start of this fruit season.
"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times."
The best of times:
As most of you know, we have been working hard for more than 10 years to grow commercial quantities of quality spring-bearing raspberries. This year we have by far, the best crop of red, black and royalty purple raspberries ever. Thru much experimentation, and trial and error, just maybe we have figured it out.
 Also have a very large crop load on all six of our thornless blackberry varieties.
Pick your own berries will be great this year!
Looks like we will have an excellent apple crop. That is if Mother Nature behaves - no hail storm and it doesn't stay extremely wet or hot all season long. More details on the apple crop in later newsletter updates.
Have already made rhubarb sauce, strawberry/rhubarb sauce and fresh strawberry preserves.
Our bees are making lots of honey. Should have some extracted, strained, bottled and for sale by the time we open.
Bunch and muscadine grape crops look good. Planted 3 new earlier ripening muscadine varieties. Be sure to order your concords and fredonias early for juice and jelly making.
The worst of times:
We lost all the peach, nectarine, plum and pear crops to the morning of April 8 freeze.
While we could possibly obtain some peaches from other growers, it has been our goal to provide you with the best possible quality "truly tree-ripened" fruits. That is why we only pick what we can sell each day and avoid putting peaches and nectarines in the cooler. We don’t know how to buy from others and consistently meet our desired level of quality. So we will have no peaches, nectarines or plums available this year.
We removed the 15 year old Heritage red raspberries bushes. Will have no fall raspberry crop this year. Have replanted to a new fall bearing variety. Also increased our spring bearing reds. Adding one new variety.
Fig bushes got froze back. Leaves are coming back out and will have late season crop. Possibly we will be able to make some fig preserves this year.
What is new this year at Perdue's Farm?
- Have new email address: perdueapple@charter.net
- As soon as arrangements are completed, we will be accepting debit and credit cards.
- We planted a considerable number of replacement peach and nectarine trees.
- Planted a new apple variety "Zestar" (early red tart sweet apple) and a new Asian Pear variety.
- Removed the Arapaho thornless blackberries. Replaced with two new thornless varieties, Quachita and Natchez.
- North Tigerville Road is closed for a bridge replacement between Tigerville and Hwy 11. You have to detour around.
We will open our retail farm market for the 2009 season on Saturday, June 13 with red, black and a few royalty purple raspberries. We will not be open Sunday, June 14. While we have the best crop of these raspberries ever, it is small  compared to demand.
For the next two weeks, starting June 13, we will be open for "You pick-we pick" raspberries on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10am to 12pm, and 4pm to 6pm.
Will have a few quarts of red and black raspberries before June 13. Call on my cell phone (864) 979-8378 and will fill what orders we can.
Blackberries and Dorman Red raspberries should be ripe, ready for picking by the week of June 22. We will send out another notice when we have sufficient quantity to stay open all day. The crop on both is fantastic!
Have you heard about the Palmettovore challenge? You should be working hard at becoming one! More about that in later updates.
Look forward to a great fruit harvest season and seeing you real soon!
Dick and Betty Perdue, Jill, Frankie,
Jeremy, Theresa, Dianne, and John
 RETAIL FARM MARKET HOURS
June 13 thru the next two weeks: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, 10am-12pm and 4pm-6pm
FARM ADDRESS FOR INTERNET DIRECTIONS AND MAP
2400 S.C. Hwy 11
Travelers Rest, S.C. 29690
See Map on Google
Retail market phone: (864) 895-0608
View past newsletters, including the first newsletter of the season, and print out our fruit ripening charts online anytime at http://carolinafarmers.com/perdue/.
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