Nick, that's an excellent reply from Ernest that articulates many of the
considerations -
Without knowing more of your business plan (retail? wholesale? 60 day harvest
window? 3 varieties or 30 varieties? etc) it's impossible to make specific
recommendations - I worked for my family's orchard for several years, a retail
operation that grows many varieties, somewhat larger than your acreage - I'll
add a consideration from that perspective -
Have multiple rooms -
A small room attached to the sales area with two doors, one from the back, one
into the sales - both doors sized for a pallet jack - for a few weeks at the
start of the season it may be big enough -
A room common to the others where fruit comes in and can be staged for
grading/sales/processing/cider - this can be run at 50*, Honeycrisp and Mutsu
and similar varieties can be tempered there, hot fruit from the daily
picking/fruit for short term sales can reside there overnight and have the
field heat removed - apples from/to the grading and packing area can be staged
-
The cold room(s) held at 33* or whatever desired temperature - it's hard to
make this/these big enough to never wish it were bigger, but determine some
figure for the maximum number of boxes you expect to have full and the maximum
number of varieties at any one time and calculate the footprint and then double
it -
Do not ask me how a 30 acre orchard can afford such a facility - I do not know -
David Doud
I built a new 14' x15' X 9' walk-in off the sales floor this season and I like
it very much...
On Oct 31, 2014, at 7:53 AM, rollinsorcha...@gmail.com wrote:
> Nick,
>
> The size of a storage will depend on a lot of factors.
>
> 1). How long is your harvest period? The apples that we picked in August are
> sold long before we pick the last of the apples in October.
>
> 2). How long do your varieties keep. If you grow something highly in demand
> you might ask a higher price and have to store them until people want them.
> That may be November some years and it may be March other years.
>
> 3) How close is your alternative when your storage is full? I work with
> another orchard 15 miles away to store some excess fruit when I have a
> bumper crop.
>
> 4)How much do you expect to sell in a month? Conventional wisdom is that you
> have six to eight weeks to sell the apples once you break open a CA storage
> room.
>
> 5) Do you plan on using Smartfresh? You can have a small room where you
> smartfresh a few days harvest before moving it to the main storage room, or
> depending on the variety you can size a room for a week's harvest and
> smartfresh it all together.
>
> 6). Are you planning on growing any varieties with special chilling
> requirements. Honeycrisp require several days at 50 degrees before putting
> them in a colder room.
>
>
> I am afraid I didn't give you answers so much as more questions to ask
> yourself. Our storage capacity is 75% of our maximum yield and it gets
> pretty tight this time of year, but is sufficient 7 out of 10 years. I would
> suggest that you have a plan to add more storage capacity if the need arises
> than go whole hog at first.
>
>
>
> Ernest Rollins
> Owner
> Rollins Orchards, Garland, Maine, USA
> A Family Farm since 1821
> rollinsorcha...@gmail.com
> www.RollinsOrchards.com
>
>
>
>
> ------Original Message------
> From: Nick Lucking
> Sender: apple-crop-boun...@virtualorchard.net
> To: Apple-Crop virtual orchard
> ReplyTo: Apple-Crop virtual orchard
> Subject: [apple-crop] Sizing cold storage
> Sent: Oct 26, 2014 11:20 PM
>
> Does anyone have any good guides on how large a cold storage facility
> should be on your orchard? For example if one was to grow 15,000 bu.
> how much should you have capacity for storing, 50%, 75%? I can't
> really find much info on this.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nick Lucking
> Cannon Valley Orchard
> Cannon Falls, MN
> _______________________________________________
> apple-crop mailing list
> apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
> http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
>
>
> Ernest Rollins
> Rollins Orchards
> Garland, Maine
> _______________________________________________
> apple-crop mailing list
> apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
> http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
_______________________________________________
apple-crop mailing list
apple-crop@virtualorchard.net
http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
