This grove’s a real peach
SUN PHOTO BY BRENDA BARBOSA
Small flowers are beginning to bloom on hundreds of peach trees at Edentown Grove in east Punta Gorda, giving off a sweet aroma.
SUN PHOTO BY BRENDA BARBOSA
Tree-ripe peaches are boxed in the packing house at Edentown Grove in Punta Gorda, and then shipped to supermarkets across the state. The farm's tagline is "Feel the Fuzz!"
SUN PHOTO BY BRENDA BARBOSA
Edentown General Manager Ralph Chamberlain shows visitors the packing house where a hand crew grades and packs the farm's tree-ripe peaches. Last year, Edentown produced some 300,000 pounds of the fruit.
SUN PHOTO BY BRENDA BARBOSA
Edentown Grove General Mananger Ralph Chamberlain shows visitors his sweet peach trees. The farm in east Punta Gorda is the only farm in Charlotte County that grows, harvests, packs and ships tree-ripe peaches to markets all across the state.
EAST OF PUNTA GORDA — The sun begins its descent one balmy afternoon in rural Charlotte County, casting golden rays of light over Edentown Grove, a citrus farm on Bermont Road. Hot, white clouds appear stranded in the sky, seemingly unable to get through the humidity. It’s October and, as one worker notes so succinctly, it’s “hotter’n hell.”
It’s certainly not the kind of heat one would expect on a fall afternoon, and definitely not the kind of weather in which you’d expect to find peaches growing. For the most part, the sweet, tender fruit is found in the cooler climates of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, where mother nature offers just the right amount of “chill hours” needed for peaches to thrive.
