As a farmer, George Rajkovich of Fairhaven Orchards has weathered many storms since he and his wife, Lucille, purchased their Hollister ranch with his brother, Martin, in 1958.
This year, however, it was lack of storms that ruined his cherry crop.
Quite apart from the statewide drought that is impacting the water quality of Rajkovich’s wells, California’s winter was simply too mild to chill his cherry trees into the dormant state required to produce fruit in the spring. This means that Rajkovich’s 230 acres of cherries are yielding practically no fruit this year now that the warmer weather has returned.
“We’re just motivated to keep going,” Rajkovich said in response. His family and his business have endured the ups and downs of good and bad seasons many times before and are prepared do so again, he added.
In the past, Fairhaven Orchards hasn’t simply survived difficult years, but has expanded from the original 85-acre plot that Rajkovich and his wife, Lucille, bought in partnership with Martin in 1958 from Bedford Lynn to the family’s current 300-acre ranch that ships its fruit across the world. The brothers started packing under the label of Fairhaven Orchards in 1965.
Through the good and bad years of the preceeding decades, one constant has remained: Rajkovich has always had the support of his family. This includes Martin, who was his partner in business until his death in 2007; Lucille, who started selling baskets of cherries from the family’s garage in 1975 and continues to run the public stand as well as the Rajkovichs’ four adult children; Nicole Rajkovich, Julie Gillio, Peter Rajkovich and Marie Hoffman.
Even the couple’s grandchildren are beginning to help in limited ways. Year after year, members of the family work together to make the spring and summer seasons a success for Rajkovich and Lucille, regardless of the weather.
The San Jose native and his family do have some recourse in difficult years such as this one. In the last few years, they have been able to purchase crop insurance which helps compensate for these kinds of losses, though this safety net wasn’t always available in previous seasons. The inevitable bad years have taught Rajkovich to save money when he has the means.
“If you make $1, you save 50 cents for when you need it,” Rajkovich said.
In addition, this season did yield a limited cherry crop from the Rajkovichs’ separate 100-acre orchard in Gilroy. This keeps the family’s iconic red barn open for business.
Cherries aren’t the only crop the family grows either, though it is their primary business. Of the 300-acres on his Hollister ranch, Rajkovich maintains 60 acres of walnuts and 10 acres of apricots, which are producing normally this year.
Still, “There’s nothing we can plan for next year,” the Rajkovich said, “We hope it is a normal year but I’ve seen it go through 2-3 of mild winters at a time…We have to do the same maintenance whether or not we have a crop.
In a normal year, Rajkovich and his family employ 200 to 300 pickers during the spring and summer, or as many as are required to gather the crop and ship it off to the packing plant with which they contract in Lodi: Delta Packing. The packing plant normally prepares approximately 100,000 18-pound-eqivalent boxes for Rajkovich and sends it across the nation and the world.
The majority of the Rajkovich cherries find their way to Japan, Korea, the Phillipines and other Asian countries where cherries are very popular and very expensive. This is a function of demand in the industry, Rajokvich said, and handled by the packing company after the crop leaves his ranch. He is charged the export fees for the air freight, however, as well as the cost of fumigation required by some countries before they will allow foreign fruit to cross their borders.
Other boxes are sold closer to home, to the drivers of the many cars that park in front of the Fairhaven Orchards’ red barn on Highway 25. Before the barn became their official store when it was built in 1983, Lucille sold cherries directly from the family’s garage.
According to her daughter, Nicole, Lucille sold one box of cherries on her first day of business. Since then, George Rajkovich said, “It has grown from one basket to thousands [over the years].”
For her part, Lucille said that business didn’t pick up until they began putting the cherries in the iconic clamshells that have become their signature. This was Marie’s idea. Marie and her husband, Gregg Hoffman, the owners of Redbeard Communications in Hollister, also helped design new labels and boxes for the family business.
With the work of establishing their brand and orchard behind them, what’s next for Rajkovich and his family?
“We like how it is,” Nicole said when asked if the family planned to expand in the future, “It’s a nice niche market. We don’t want to expand.”
Lucille agreed that she liked the scope of the business she helps to run, as well as the customers she serves.
“Hard work,” Lucille said, when asked to describe her life as a farmer’s wife. “But we have so many customers thank us for what we’re doing.”