A 500-acre farm in Pritchard is preparing for its second busy harvest season, with an impressive 200 acres of the land being covered with cherry trees. Thompson Farm is owned by Jealous Fruits, a family-owned and operated company with several orchards throughout the Okanagan Valley. Operations expanded to the Pritchard location a few years ago.
Manager Neil De Jager said steady progress was made in planting more trees and developing farm systems last year, despite setbacks by the extreme weather events and the pandemic. If all goes well this year, he predicts trees planted in both 2019 and 2020 will produce hundreds of tons of cherries.
“Typically our first year is not as productive as everyone thinks it is,” De Jager said. “We didn’t produce too much last year. The number of cherries produced will get bigger every year.”
Source: infotel.ca