Nestrovich Orchard Owner Ray Nestrovich poses with his prized apples and peaches at the Granville orchard Friday. (Photo by Peter Francis)
GRANVILLE – After an abysmal 2012 season which saw an early blossom in April only to be decimated by an early frost, farmers like Ray Nestrovich are looking forward to a strong crop this year.
“It’s a good year. It’s a heavy crop from what I’m hearing,” Nestrovich said.
The farm, started by his father Ray, a son of Russian immigrants who migrated to Granville from New York City in 1914, added an orchard to it’s operations in 1950, and the Nestrovich Orchard has been running ever since.
The elder Nestrovich passed away in 2011, but the legacy lives on through his son, and the farm’s produce speaks for itself.
“Macintosh, Cortlands – all the standards will be good,” he said. “Then it divides into different varieties. Galas, Empires and Spencers.”
Nestrovich said he has fourteen varieties of apples, some more so than others.
“Not so much Granny Smiths,” he continued. “They have a long growing season and require about 160 days. Some other orchards in the area do grow some with spring blossoms, but that’s more of a southern apple.”
While the warmer southern air may be good for Granny’s, Nestrovich said the recent cool evenings will be of great benefit for his incoming fruit.
“You need cool weather for a good harvest. (Heat) makes the color different,” he said.
When talk turned to last year’s growing season, Nestrovich shuddered at the thought of the cold.
“Last year, there was a frost during the bloom,” he said. “There was a shortage all over New England. Even as far as Michigan to the East Coast.”
Longtime Nestrovich Orchard employee Shirley Holl readies several small baskets for sale Friday in Granville. (Photo by Peter Francis)
Chief among the other fruit being harvested this fall includes a large, healthy crop of peaches, which were being purchased in bulk by numerous customers yesterday afternoon, including a large group of visitors from Connecticut.
“We’ve been coming here for six or seven years,” said Pete Campbell of Windsor Locks, Conn., who had traveled to Granville Friday to celebrate the 73rd birthday of his wife Mary, who was checking out bushels of fresh peaches and apples several feet away in the barn.
“They have the best stuff around,” she added.
Nestrovich spoke cautiously when asked of what could trip the harvest up yet this fall.
“No heavy rain,” he said. “If we get heavy rain, it’s not good. A late scab infection would be bad, too. It’s difficult to get a good crop (with a scab infection).”
According to the New York State Integrated Pest Management Program put on through Cornell University, apple scab is “the most economically destructive disease of apples in the world.”
“I’ll produce the amount I did last year,” he said. “We really overgrew last year, so my production won’t increase much. But the farmers who didn’t grow any fruit last year, they should see about a 50 percent increase in their crop. But it has to do with a lot of other things, weather, your equipment, hail storms.”
City slickers may wonder how someone can make a statement on the size of an incoming crop of fruit, but when you’ve been at it as long as the Nestrovich family, you earn some ‘Cortland clout’, so to speak.
“There’s a sense of pride,” Nestrovich said of his family growing apples for 63 years. “I want to put a banner up next year for the 100 years of Nestrovich Farm. There’s pride in the family name.”
