A stone-fruitless summer at Green Bluff transitions to a bountiful fall

Heading up to the Green Bluff Harvest Festival in the fall is an annual tradition in the Brown family.

For 12-year-old Claire Brown and her sister Una Brown, 9, the sugar-coated pumpkin donuts and farmyard playgrounds are a highlight. For parents Fionnuala Brown and Terrence Brown, the live music and relaxed environment at Walters’ Fruit Ranch are perfect for sipping a beer and enjoying some quality family time.

Following a summer marked by near-complete losses of stone fruits such as peaches and cherries, Saturday marked the second weekend of this year’s festival, which welcomed hundreds of people to the orchards. Many, like the Browns, were locals returning for another year of fun with family and friends.

Camille Sullivan, 70, and her daughter Laura Cook, 35, took Cook’s two young daughters to Beck’s Harvest House for the first time this year. Their favorite part was seeing the kids in cow-themed carts get pulled along by a tractor.

“I think everybody should come out. It’s a wonderful experience, whether you’re old or young or young at heart,” Sullivan said. “It’s a big tradition in Spokane.”

People arrived from out of town Saturday, too. Nia Smith, 30, from Milwaukee, and her friend Cassie Dobos, 30, from Denver, wanted to pick apples with their local friend Hannah Piekenbrock, 30. Smith had never before seen a festival like the one at Green Bluff.

“Where I live, we don’t have something like this, so it’s fun to be able to visit,” she said. “We’re not locals, but we would want to come back, definitely, next year.”

Beck’s Harvest House owner Todd Beck said seeing people return year after year is his favorite part of the work.

“That is what does it for me,” he said. “I just love that people want to come and enjoy what I work all year to build.”

This fall harvest festival is especially important for Green Bluff farms, however, as they took a hit when their trees didn’t produce cherries or peaches.

The trees did not have a chance to go through their normal cycle into dormancy, Beck said. So when the mild temperatures of last winter gave way to a few days of frigid cold, the trees were damaged.

“In the 37 years I’ve been here – that we’ve been doing this here at Harvest House – that’s the only time that I’ve had 100% loss on crops like that,” Beck said.

Jason Morrell, owner of Walters’ Fruit Ranch, described the loss as “crippling.”

“That’s our core thing … we’re a ‘U-pick’ farm. And so when we didn’t have the peaches for U-pick – even though we brought them in from Wenatchee and surrounding areas for people – we didn’t have an outpouring of people showing up,” Morrell said. “It’s not just the crop, it’s the people coming and then buying some beer, having a fresh cider, picking up a stuffed animal in the store. It was a ghost town.”

Though the nice weather may be to thank for the weekend crowds now, Morrell said he is concerned a sudden weather change could impact stone fruits again next year. On the flip side, he said, if the trees are allowed to run their natural dormancy cycle, they should produce huge peaches this summer, thanks to the energy they didn’t expend.

“Farming is the number one biggest gamble there ever is,” Morrell said. “You can control everything, but you can’t control Mother Nature.”

Despite the heavy losses earlier in the year, apples have done well in both Beck’s Harvest House and Walters’ Fruit Ranch. Morrell said that Walter’s also has pumpkins coming in at “unprecedented size.”

“Mother Nature made up for it when it comes to the apple crop,” Morrell said. “It’s great, and I hope people keep coming out.”