Hill Country peach crop suffering

Weird weather this spring might not have affected you that much, but it's wreaked havoc with the Hill Country's peach orchards — so don't expect to see a bunch of Texas peaches this summer. Between droughts, warmer than usual temperatures, a late freeze and a disastrous hailstorm, 95 percent of the Hill Country peach crop has been wiped out, the second widespread loss since a late freeze caused problems in 2003.

[Gillespie County Co-op horticulture expert James] Kamas said growers expect a total loss only once every seven years. The Hill Country produces about 14 million pounds of peaches annually.

"If anything could go bad, it went bad this year," said Bill Psencik, a peach grower in Gillespie County who can count on one hand the number of peaches he's picked from his 700 trees.

Peaches in the Hill Country are so sparse that some growers have stopped letting customers pick their own, fearing visitors will waste what little fruit the trees offer.

The Hill Country produces about 40 percent of the state's peaches (as a whole, the state produces 2 million pounds of peaches each year, the ninth-largest peach crop in the U.S.). The crop destruction means the orchards with healthy crops have the potential to rake in the dough, but growers like Dale Ham of Terrell said they won't take advantage of that — even though they could: "I could raise my prices 30 percent and nobody would complain," Ham said. "They just want the peaches. They don't care what they cost."