2020 Harvest Update

 While most of 2020 was unusual and challenging, the same can be said for the 2020 harvest. Kelton Coleman, a farmer from Lamesa, gave us an inside scoop on how his 2020 harvest went. 

“[2020 harvest] was especially challenging because we had an early freeze,” Coleman said. “That killed the peanuts, so we had to go ahead and dig everything earlier than normal, so that hurt yields and grades. This past year our yields were off probably 30 percent.” 

In 2020, Coleman planted about 120 acres of conventional Virginia, 120 acres of conventional Valencia, 1,200 acres of organic Valencia and 600 acres of organic Spanish. Out of those four types, Coleman said the organic Spanish did the best. 

“The Spanish seemed to handle the variations in temperature and weather better than the rest,” Coleman said. “…The organic Spanish yielded about 3,500 pounds, whereas the organic Valencia yielded about 2,500 pounds.”

For this upcoming planting season, Coleman said he will probably focus more on Spanish because they tend to adapt to weather and rainfall conditions better than other varieties. 

“With no rainfall [we have to irrigate more] and our irrigation water has a lot of minerals in it, and those minerals build up in the soil when there is no rainfall to leech them and Spanish tend to handle higher pH in the soil better than other varieties do.” 

Kelton, thank you for taking the time to talk to us about harvest. We would love to hear how your 2020 harvest went and we would love to see pictures, too. If you’re interested, please email kylie@texaspeanutboard.com.