The sun’s been shining (mostly!), the leaves are beginning to change, and the cooler October temperatures are finally starting to stick. But it’s not been consistent, so our team has slowed down a little bit.

The slightly warmer weather has meant that we’re not getting all the color that we want, so our team went down to one crew last week and even got a weekend off! Fortunately, this week has been an improvement.

“We were going to run three crews this week but the Stevens beds still have a higher white percentage than we want, so we decided to hold off for another week on those,” says operations manager Matt Giberson. “Right now we have two crews picking about 20 acres a day, mostly the Early Blacks and the Ben Lears we have left. We’re also dealing with frost this week, and our start temperature is a bit lower because we’re trying to give them as much as they’ll take. We’re just waiting for that magic number and hoping that changes color on the Stevens underneath the vine canopy.”

Our team is looking forward to a strong finish, and in the meantime, we’ll continue to do whatever it takes to bring the fruit in!