"TREE RIPENED PEACHES": NIP THE SCAM IN THE BUD!

A NEW BAYFIELD AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT! WOW! LET'S FIND THEM!

HERE ARE THE PEACHES! WHERE ARE THE TREES?

A THOUSAND MILES AWAY, UNFORTUNATELY

Tuesday, 9:00 AM.  65 degrees F at the ferry dock, 60 on the back porch. The wind is ENE, light with stronger gusts. The sky is mostly cloudy and overcast, the humidity 86% and the barometer falling, now at 29.95".  Rain is  likely tomorrow.
   Back in the '70's, when we lived and worked in New York, I was briefly involved with the management of a peach orchard in the Hudson River Valley.  The climate was very much like that of the Bayfield peninsula, with snowy but not overly cold winters.  The southern portion of the valley was located between the Hudson River and the ocean, much as the Bayfield Penninsula juts out into Lake Superior.  The peach trees were hardy and the peaches large, sweet and juicy when ripened on the tree. Locals and visitors waited eagerly to buy the tree ripened fruit.
   I don't know if peaches have ever been seriously grown in Bayfield, but I have always thought that one of the orchards should try to grow them, and just as do sweet cherries, they could provide yet another local tree fruit to augment the apples and pears currently currently grown.
   With this information as background, you can imagine my eager anticipation to find the "Tree Ripened Peaches" as we followed the signs from Hwy. 13 and Fish Hatchery Road all the way to the north-eastern extremities of Highway J and the Orchard Country.  As we drove into the orchard I looked for the peach trees.  I looked in vain, for as we got to the sales barn it became evident that the peach trees were a thousand miles away, in Colorado.
   I was furious.  A local orchard had enticed me to drive miles out of my way, in anticipation of a fresh local peach, to find it all a fraud, a scam.  I vented my ire on the orchard owner, who said the peaches were indeed "tree ripened," and she claimed she never said they were locally grown, all of which made me even angrier, since truly tree ripened peaches are much too soft to be commercially shipped.
   No peach picked days earlier and shipped eight hundred or a thousand miles will taste anything like a local peach that literally drops into one's hand as it is gently plucked from the tree. Now the peaches, of which she had a sales barn full of bushels, may have tasted O.K., but they weren't "tree ripened" and sure weren't local.
   When visitors come to Bayfield they expect to buy fruit grown right here, fresh and tasty.  Anything else is simply deceitful, deceptive, false advertising, and if this grower gets away with it others will be tempted to do it as well, and the entire local produce produce industry, which is a mainstay of the local economy, will be compromised.
   People are not stupid.  They will pay a premium price for a premium product, but do not wish to be taken advantage of and treated like dupes.  They will soon recognize the lie, and avoid the area as an expensive tourist trap.
   I contacted the Chamber of Commerce.  I hope they have the guts to nip this scam in the bud (no pun intended).