On 2025-07-13 2:41 p.m., Ed P wrote:
Watched CBS Sunday morning and they had a segment on growing cherries in Washington State.
They have huge fields of cherry trees. They also get rain. Once the cherries are nearing peak, if they get wet, the water may be absorbed
and the fruit will split and be no good. Solution? Fly over the fields very low with helicopters to shake the leave and blow off the water.
The only downside, there has been four crashes over the years. Amazing
how they do some things on the farm.
Washington cherries even make it over here where we have our own
thriving cherry farming business. They manage to hit the market before
the local crops.
Rain is indeed an issue for ripening cherries. They are pretty resilient
when they are small and hard, but as they get close to ripening too much
rain combined with that summer sun make the cherries bloat faster than
their skin can crow and they crack. The cracked fruit is hard to sell.
There used to be a few vineyards around here that had airplanes for a
similar sort of procedure. In the fall there is a risk of frost before
the grape harvests so they would fly planes low over the grapes to force
the warmer air down to displace the cool air at ground level. That
practice has pretty well disappeared in the last 20 years as the grape
farmers installed propellers on posts about 30 feet off the ground. They
are propane or NG powered and the wind generated acts in pretty much the
same manner, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper than a plane and a lot
safer than very low altitude flying in the dark.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)