Following fire, Summerland orchards race to save fruit from spoilage

Steven Chua · CBC News

· Posted: Aug 21, 2026 10:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: August 24

When Deep Brar arrived back in his Summerland, B.C., orchard about 10 days after being evacuated from the area due to a wildfire, he realized the clock was ticking on his harvest.

"We came in, and we started trying to pick some peaches, but they were just, like, melting in our hands," said Brar, who is the president of the B.C. Fruit Growers Association. 

Brar was one of the thousands of people forced to flee the town when the Bald Range fire exploded in size almost overnight earlier this month. The majority of the town's residents have been allowed to return this week.

While Brar’s property is physically undamaged by the flames, his business, Brarstar Orchards, has still incurred a significant cost — much of his fruit was left to rot on the trees during the evacuation.

"They were soft, they were overripe, they were bruised," he said. 

Spoiled fruits

Brar said he’s only been able to rescue a fraction of what a normal harvest would be. 

"We're throwing a ton on the ground," he said. "Then we're picking them into bins and then we're hand packing into boxes, and we're throwing another 50 per cent of that bin out."

Brar said when he was working at the orchard on Wednesday, he was able to keep only four pallets' worth of peaches.

There are other fruits in his 64-hectare orchard. 

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Cherries were, luckily, picked before the evacuation, he said.  The plums are "pretty much gone" due to being overripe.

The problem with the apples, he said, is irrigation and watering. During the evacuation order, he wasn’t able to go back and check on those things. 

Irrigation problems

Brar isn’t alone. Ted Vollo, a farmer who harvests apples and cherries, said during the evacuation order, power to the town was cut. 

This created problems for irrigation systems.

"For most of us that are running on digital clocks, that meant that if you did not have a clock that had a memory option available, you lost all your programs," said Vollo, who also co-owns Summerland Heritage Cider.

"So then even if your water was turned on when the power came back on, you no longer had an electric clock telling your farm what to water."

When he came back to check on his apples, it wasn’t a good sight. 

"The [areas] that did not have that capability looked really, really bad," said Vollo. 

"Branches are all drooping, yellowing leaves. The trees are dropping leaves. All the fruit has shrunk considerably."

Several hectares' worth of gala apples look like they won’t meet the commercial standards for size, he said.

A U-pick bargain

In the wake of these conditions, at least one farmer is putting his crop out for a deal. 

Jagtaran Saran, the owner of JS Orchard in Summerland, said he had to be away from the orchard for 10 days because of the fire.

Saran said he returned to find his peaches were still good to eat, but too overripe to sell to packing houses.

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As a result, he took to social media, inviting the public to pick peaches at bargain prices.

He was selling them for $1 per pound, down from $2.

"Ready to eat, three, four, days — no problem," he told CBC News.