08/12/2025
Interesting Farm Fact #7. How Topp Fruits produce magically appears on your grocer’s shelves, in your CSA boxes, and at farmers markets.
1. Six H2A workers arrive on March first. March and April are spent pruning 20,000 trees by hand. Pruning insures proper air and sunlight pe*******on and helps regulate crop load, which is necessary for fruit sizing and flavor.
2. Early May is spent repairing and tuning equipment, netting trees for pest control and mowing, which continues throughout the season.
3. Late May and early June, when the first baby fruits appear, all 20,000 trees are thinned by hand. Thinning is the act of plucking a certain number of the tiny fruits, leaving just the right number per branch. Once again this is done for crop load and to make sure that the remaining fruits receive proper nutrition.
4. In late June a second round of thinning begins along with first harvest of cherries. Crops are fertilized and pest management continues in earnest. Pest management requires an integrated system that includes cover crops, which also help naturally cycle nutrients, attaching pheromone tags to trees, encouraging beneficial populations like ladybugs, and organic sprays when necessary.
5. As the cherry harvest ends around the first of July, the peach harvest begins and continues through September. In August, plums are ready for picking too. Finally, we end the harvest season with apples that ripen from late August through October.
6. As fruit is harvested it is sorted by hand into firsts (blemish free), imperfects (small blemishes) and thirds (not great for selling unless you make juice or brandy). Throughout the season fruits are packed by hand, loaded on trucks and, VOILA, they magically appear on grocers’ shelves, at farmers markets and in CSA baskets.
