Freestone peaches ready at Reid's Orchard

Attention peach lovers — the freestone peaches are now in season at Reid’s Orchard.

After suffering through a woeful peach season in 2023, when Billy Reid estimates he only had about a 20% peach crop because of freezing temperatures in the springtime, 2024 has shaped up much better.

“This year we were worried about it again because (peaches were) really early blooming, and we did have some damage, but we have about an 80-85% crop this year, so that’s a good size,” said Reid, who was in the field Thursday morning with his workers picking just-ripened freestones. “That’s what everyone has been yelling, ‘When are the freestones ready?’ That’s what everybody is waiting for.”

Reid said this year’s crop benefitted from winter and spring weather being relatively warm.

“First off, you have to go through January, and they don’t like below-0 temperature, and we had some of that, so we had a little damage,” he said. “Usually in the springtime, if they bloom around the first of April, once that bloom opens, you don’t want to get below 28 degrees. Sometimes you’ll be at 30 degrees and the last 2 to 3 hours of the morning it will drop to 28, 27 degrees, and that’s when you can start losing the blooms. They freeze out.”

Reid’s Orchard had some bloom freeze this spring, but Reid still projects he’ll harvest 6,000 bushels of peaches from his 25 acres of peach trees.

Harvesting this year’s peach crop, which is done by hand, began in June with clingstone peaches, one of 30 varieties grown at the orchard. The ripening time for each variety of peach only lasts one to two weeks.

Reid said the freestone peaches, which start the main peach crop during the first two weeks in July, are popular because of their sweetness and ease to eat.

“Mid- to late-season, they’re bigger peaches, sweeter peaches, and when you grab one you can break them open and pull the seed,” Reid said.

Reid’s orchard sells a peck of peaches (15-16 pounds) for $30 and a half-peck for $17.

“Usually, we sell a lot of half-pecks,” Reid said. “People will come out twice a week to get peaches.”

Reid expects to have peaches through mid- to late-August.

While peaches serve as the orchard’s headliner in early- to mid-July, Reid’s market also has several other fresh offerings now, including sweet corn, squash, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.

“We’ve been lucky,” Reid said of the weather allowing the produce to flourish. “We’ve been having the right rainfall, a half-inch or an inch.”

Reid’s Orchard also currently has U-pick blackberries and fresh flowers. Peaches cannot be handpicked.

“They’re hard to pick,” Reid said. “They’re very delicate.”

Reid’s is picking a few summer apples now, with the main apple crop arriving the first week of September. A U-pick option will be available for apples that month.

Apple season runs through early October.

Reid’s Orchard is also filling its events calendar. It will host Spring Flower Market Day from 4-8 p.m. Sunday, July 21 — which will center around Katie’s U-Pick Flowers — and Peach Bliss Market Day from 3-7 p.m. Sunday, August 11. There will be live music, vendors and food trucks at each event.

“They’re on Sunday afternoons, when people are looking to get out,” Valerie Reid Reel said. “We did a couple last year, some different times, and we did a few evenings and that was the best, everybody liked that because it was hopefully a little cooler in the evening and there isn’t a lot of other things to do on a Sunday. You can come out and let kids play, pick flowers, eat and relax.”