HALL COUNTY, Ga. — Georgia peach growers are grinning from ear to ear right now. Farmers all over the state are reporting an unusually productive harvest.
Aside from worrying about the weather, growers faced another challenge to this year’s crop: The COVID-19 pandemic.
Farmers say the coronavirus threatened to ruin everything but it didn’t and the weather has been close to perfect.
The Jaemor Farms market in Hall County has been very busy lately but nobody knew for sure it would be like this.
“When COVID-19 started, it looked kind of dismal,” says Jaemor Farms owner Drew Echols.
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Echols says growing the produce and then selling it are two different things.
“You didn’t know where demand was going to be -- The restaurants. The schools. All those shutdowns,” Echols says.
But the reopening of the state has coincided with a peach crop that may set records.
Echols says orchards in north, middle, and south Georgia are all having a year that is shaping up to be one of the best. Demand is high and prices are allowing growers a profit and, so far, Echols says the weather has been perfect.
“About every week or 10 days, we get about an inch of rain. So Glenn and all the meteorologists down there at WSB, y’all just keep on doing what you’re doing! If we can order it, if farmers can order it, we’ll take an inch a week. On Saturday night,” Echols joked.
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