Overly ripe conditions? Good harvest for fruit growers this summer

Aug. 31—There's a cornucopia in Orlando Romero's Nambé backyard, and the feast has reached all the way to Santa Fe.

To reap the rewards of an overzealous apricot tree, Romero invited eight bucket-toting people to harvest the fruit.

Even so, the skeletons of apricots littered the ground on Wednesday — Romero said he couldn't keep up with the production.

"We had to haul them off in a wheelbarrow ... and we still didn't finish it," Romero said.

Centenarian cherry trees, Romero said, grown from seeds from the era of his grandfather and great-grandfather, were plentiful, and his family "ate like crazy."

Romero traverses rows of grape vines, tasting each variety. France and Spain ally themselves in the garden, two countries represented by the fruit. Some of the grapes are sweetening faster than expected, he said.

But Romero isn't looking to produce a dessert wine, so he monitors the flavor daily to ensure they don't get too saccharine.

A wet winter, mild spring and rainy summer have all contributed to Romero's heavy backyard harvest, which has been, at times, a boon as well as a burden. Romero isn't alone — other fruit growers have had harvests ranging from good to booming.

For fruit-overwhelmed homeowners in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, help is just a call away.

Erin Garrison, executive director and co-founder of Food is Free Albuquerque, said the organization will help harvest and donate produce to increase food accessibility.

Backyard growers can give the group a call and a team of volunteers will schedule a harvest, arrive at the property and leave with baskets, bushels or pecks of fresh produce. That food is then distributed to community groups to put a dent in hunger — and food waste, Garrison said.

So far, the group has harvested close to 11,000 pounds of produce, primarily lettuce, apples and apricots. In Albuquerque, volunteers have been booked all summer.

This year, the group started regular harvests in Santa Fe. On Saturdays, Garrison travels to Santa Fe to help any interested homeowners — by Aug. 19, Garrison alone had harvested more than 900 pounds of fruit from Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico.

"We've done really well in Santa Fe," Garrison said. "There's been a lot of fruit."

Three weekends in a row, Garrison visited the same apricot tree in Glorieta, which yielded close to 600 pounds of fruit.

Garrison pointed to a "tree cycle" as the reason why. One year, a fruit tree might not produce at all. For the next couple of years, they might produce a bit — and then there's a bumper crop of "massive amounts of fruit on three- to seven-year cycles."

Garrison said parts of the state are in a bumper crop cycle right now.

"We've had plenty of rain. We didn't have that late freeze," Garrison said. "The sun and the moon and the stars — everything aligned, and we've just seen an excellent harvest of all fruit this year."

Eddie Velarde, whose family has been growing fruit in Velarde for 15 generations, said fruit quality and quantity were better this year than last, despite a spring frost and higher than normal temperatures, he said in an email to The New Mexican.

For the Fruit Basket, stone fruits like peaches, plums and apricots — the farm grows a plethora of different kinds — were the most productive this year. A bigger harvest means more labor, but Velarde said that hasn't been a problem, and each year the Fruit Basket adds trees and acreage.

Growth is on the mind for other fruit growers as well; the harvest this year has left Juliana Ciano optimistic for the next.

Since 5000 B.C., when Tewa-speaking people settled in what's now Agua Fría, the land at San Ysidro Crossing has been used for agriculture. It later became the "breadbasket" of Spanish colonialists, said Reunity Resources program manager Ciano, before falling into the hands of World War II veteran John Stephenson, who turned the site into a community farm in a "testament to having a purpose larger than yourself and spending a lot of time with your hands in the soil."

There are apricot, peach, pear, apple and plum trees growing at the farm now, which still give back to the community.

"We've had a fantastic fruit harvest this year," Ciano said. "... The rains we've been having bode well, even for future seasons. Trees have this long lifespan, and one season can also influence the next."

This year, the site didn't experience a late freeze, Ciano said, which helped the harvest. That means that during field trips to the farm, students have plenty to pick and taste "on the spot." It also means the organization always has food to donate to its community fridge and give to food access partner organizations. Later on, the group can preserve extra fruit as jam or applesauce.

Like the site at Reunity Resources, agriculture is in the water and soil at Los Luceros Historical Site. Every apple season, the site hosts a harvest festival.

The apple growth is better than last year, said Los Luceros site manager Michelle Zupan, but she wouldn't call it a "bumper crop." Some of the trees are in a "rest period," Zupan said — the orchard had a bumper crop two years ago, with branches so heavy with apples they started to break.

Last year, a late freeze and extreme summer heat stunted the crop, Zupan said. This summer has been milder, which allowed for a good apricot harvest. Despite the rest period for some of the trees, Zupan has high hopes for this apple season.

"It's going to be a good one," Zupan said.