PARADISE — Farmers' markets give local growers a chance to showcase their produce.
But as the season starts to wind down, one Western Montana orchard says theirs is starting to ramp up.
Paradise's Forbidden Fruit says the end of summer is their busiest season.
Check out Forbidden Fruit in Paradise:
We checked in with the family farm to see how they’re handling this year’s peach production.
“On a good year, we generally have around 60,000 pounds," Forbidden Fruit Orchard Owner Tom McCamant said.
Ever since he was young, McCamant has always had a fascination with a specific fruit.
“I would walk home after football practice every day and next to the North Fork of the Gunnison, there was a peach tree growing wild. And for about two weeks, I would stop and pick 2 peaches off that tree to eat," McCamant explained.
After he moved to Montana, McCamant and his wife started growing in 2001.
“Our kids were just turning one and three at the time, and I had a full-time job. We were weekend warriors," he said.
They decided to name their orchard in Paradise, “Forbidden Fruit,” and now utilize nine of their 26 acres growing peaches.
“A lot of people, if they can find a good peach, they will go a long ways out of their way to get it," Tom detailed.
The family farm is supplying local farmers' markets and grocers like the Good Food Store.
“They'll bite into it and be like, ‘Wow, now that's a good peach right there’. I kind of live for that," Operations Manager Kitty McCamant told MTN.
During the dog days of summer and into the early fall, there's a lot of work being done.
"When it's harvest season, you generally spend 6 days a week working and spend the 7th day getting ready to work the next 6," Tom stated.
A unique ritual takes place for ground peaches that didn’t make the cut. At the end of the season, to celebrate a successful harvest.
“They become disease vectors. When we're done picking, we'll go through the whole orchard and pull all of the peaches out from under the trees into the aisle and smash them all. If we have too many, sometimes we'll try to run them over with a tractor," Tom shared.
When Tom and his wife are ready to call it quits from peach picking, the next McCamant generation is eager to take over.
“I want to make a commercial kitchen out here to preserve the peaches, make jam and make pies, ice cream, all kinds of things. I would like to turn it into kind of a community farm," Kitty said.
Forbidden Fruit Orchard also sells other fruits like nectarines. Click here for more information.
