WILLIAMSBURG -- Something's missing at Dennis Hoxsie's family farm market along M-72.
Oh, there are plenty of Michigan-made foods, snacks, ice cream and other products that draw thousands of visitors and locals over the summer season. But the shelves, at least for another week or so, will remain void of plump, popular sweet cherries from his nearby orchards that customers snap up as soon as they're picked.
Chilly springs such as the '09 season slow the harvest and undercut sales and profits.
So Hoxsie found a way to tweak Mother Nature's confines. He installed a set of three 600-foot long tunnels at his farm that cover an acre of 500-plus dwarf sweet cherry trees imported from the West Coast.
Because the tunnels create a greenhouse effect that can speed up a crop's development, Hoxsie said heading into National Cherry Festival week without fresh local sweets soon will be a thing of the past.
"What we were looking at is getting cherries ripe earlier in the year, and two, growing a higher quality cherry," Hoxsie said. "We need ripe cherries the first week in July. For me, this is the way to do that."
Hoxsie is believed to be the first commercial cherry grower in Michigan to utilize growing tunnels, but the technology has been the in the works for several years. Greg Lang, a professor of plant and soil sciences at Michigan State University, operates two experimental tunnel plots near Grand Rapids and Benton Harbor.
Lang came to Michigan several years ago from Washington State University, a region that dominates sweet cherry production in the U.S. because of warm, largely dry spring conditions on the state's east side.
"One of the challenges we face is how do we level the playing field for production of fresh market cherries," Lang said.
His research shows the tunnels can accelerate sweet cherry production by a week to 10 days. Fruit is less susceptible to cracking and disease because rainfall is kept off the trees -- they're irrigated in the ground -- and tunnels also reduce frost damage potential and deter insects.
The results are eye-popping. Sweet cherries from Lang's tunnels are described as being the size of golf balls.
"The cherries are big and beautiful, bigger than anything that's been grown in Michigan," Lang said.
The technology isn't cheap. Tunnels cost around $35,000 an acre, not including the cost of trees or labor for installation. But it can pay off for farmers like Hoxsie who rely on taking fresh, value-added products directly to the consumer.
"You have to do everything right, because that's a pretty good investment," Lang said. "But you can make it work out, and make it work out pretty quickly."
Hoxsie planted dwarf cherry trees in spring 2008, then framed-in the tunnels and installed covers this spring. The plot will produce some cherries next spring, but Hoxsie expects a full harvest is two years out.
The use of dwarf sweet cherry trees is still relatively new in Michigan, but Hoxsie projects his acre of covered trees could generate up to 15,000 pounds of fruit. That's equal to about 6 percent of the farm's total sweet cherry production. Fruit development in such a setting runs more than a week ahead of his outside trees, so Hoxsie said he should have plenty of fruit available for venues like the National Cherry Festival, and for stocking his farm market.
Tunnels also will allow Hoxsie to extend the fresh cherry season well into summer. By leaving the fruit on the trees to further ripen, or by planting later-blooming varieties, he'll be able to keep fresh sweet cherries on hand into August.
"We'd like to extend our season on both ends," he said.
Maintaining trees under the tunnels is more labor-intensive than his outdoor orchards. Because the young, smaller trees are planted close together to maximize the covered growing area, most orchard and tree maintenance is done by hand.
"You don't just put them in the ground and go out and pick cherries in a few years," Hoxsie said. "Very little of the work can be done on a tractor, so there's a little more to it."
Crop tunnels have been used in Europe for years. Lang said they helped revive the cherry industry in Great Britain, where cool, damp weather made it difficult to grow cherries and the country lost most of its market share to warmer climates like Spain.
Crop tunnels also are becoming more prevalent in the U.S. Lang recently secured funding to construct eight to 10 more tunnels at MSU to study their use for developing organic crops.
Hoxsie is just glad the technology will enable him to produce local cherries for the region's signature summer event.
"It's something that's kind of exciting," he said. "It's new, it's fun to do and I think it's going to be worthwhile."
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