Longtime growers say this year's cherry crop was the worst ever in the valley's 35 square miles of rambling, country-style homes, orchards and pasturelands best known for its annual Leona Valley Cherry Parade and Festival in early June.
The event pays tribute to the "pick your own" cherries that have become the focus of popular family outings for visitors from Los Angeles, Kern, Orange and Ventura counties.
This year, however, not one ripe cherry dangled from a tree in the valley when the parade kicked off June 6. Pies for the pie-eating contest were baked with cherries from supermarkets in Palmdale, said David Clayton, a spokesman for the Leona Valley Improvement Assn.
David Bracken, a deputy commissioner for the Los Angeles County Department of Agriculture, was not surprised.
Cold weather, occasional frost and snow — at the right time of year — were key to Leona Valley's reputation as a cherry paradise, according to Don Hobart, 84, who helped launch the public picking festivities here with 265 fruit trees he planted in 1959.
By the 1980s, more than 8,000 cherry trees thrived in about 30 cherry orchards, providing ranchers with generous tax deductions for fertilizer, ranch machinery, computers, software, telephones and advertising. The growers established a hotline to tell people when the orchards are open and how to reach them.
Today, six growers remain in the association, and the hotline's recorded message is disappointing: "As of June 3, 2015, unfortunately due to the low crop this year, all orchards in the association are sold out."
Source - http://www.freshplaza.com/
