Orchard insurance?

[Jordan Selsor]

Do any of you have insurance on your orchards?
I had a baseball size hail storm come through last May and it tore the hell out of my home orchard. I lost some trees and had to prune many back majorly. Home owners didn't cover any of them. I am up to 80+ trees. Many are producing now. Lots of time invested in these trees. I just reached out to my insurance guy about insuring them. He asked me to come up with a value on the trees. Not sure on that... Be nice to have some coverage if a tornado ripped through. Or does a man just eat it and start over. I'm not the type guy to over insure. I'm more of a savings/self insure kinda guy. But I figured I'd get a quote and go from there.

Thoughts?

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

I don't think it would be worth the hassle unless you depend on that orchard for a decent portion of your household income.

Apple trees are extremely tough - I've had a tornado knock some over and uproot them, but they still lived. My plan is to keep planting 20+ apple trees per year so my orchards can withstand some natural mortality.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

This spring my orchard looked like a scene from a movie with all of the blossoms. A couple weeks later I went out and my trees had more little apples on them than I have ever seen, I was thinking a great harvest this fall, then came the week straight of teens at night, every little apple was brown. There was a couple trees that had blooms on them after the freeze, but very few. I guess this will be a growing year for my trees. :(

As for crop insurance, like what was said, if you depend on them for income, you can get a crop insurance, but if not, it wouldnt be worth it.

 

[Barndog56]

This spring my orchard looked like a scene from a movie with all of the blossoms. A couple weeks later I went out and my trees had more little apples on them than I have ever seen, I was thinking a great harvest this fall, then came the week straight of teens at night, every little apple was brown. There was a couple trees that had blooms on them after the freeze, but very few. I guess this will be a growing year for my trees. :(

As for crop insurance, like what was said, if you depend on them for income, you can get a crop insurance, but if not, it wouldnt be worth it.

That sucks man! Here in Waushara county we escaped any frost after blossom time. I've got limb breaking amounts of fruitset on my trees. I'll be doing a lot of thinning.

You might speak to a local orchard about insurance but I doubt it would be worth it unless it's a source of income.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

I'm not so much worried about an apple crop but more so about total destruction of my trees

 

[Ben.MN/WI]

I think it is unlikely that any natural disaster will kill all of your apple trees at once. There are a lot of commercial orchards here and I've never heard of anything like that. A tornado might rip off most of the branches, but the tree likely will survive if it isn't uprooted completely.

Your insurance carrier will likely take your premium dollars and insure your trees, but when a storm comes and tears up your trees, I bet your adjuster will say the trees are still alive and refuse payment. If you do go ahead with it, I'd be interested to see how they word what determines when payments will be made.

 

[gunfun13]

I was just wondering the same thing about insuring timber value. A huge ice storm went through Northern Michigan this spring destroying millions of acres of forest. I've often thought about supplementing retirement with timber harvest income and have to imagine there are many in this area doing just that. Would be devastating to some I'm sure.

But on the topic of an orchard, I don't think I'd insure unless I was gaining financially from them. At which point I'd be more concerned about insuring for the loss of revenue than the value of the trees. The hard part for me of losing a family/deer orchard would just be the loss of time, which I'm not convinced a settlement check would ease that very much.

 

[Foggy47]

I "borrowed" a grizzly bear from a guy I know. It was the 3rd largest Safari Club bear at that time.....and stood about 9 feet high. Very impressive bear. The owner wanted me to have his taxidermist make a crate for it at my expense to ship it to my booth at the shot show in Las Vegas. I agreed.

After giving that some thought....and seeing how careless the fork lift drivers were at those shows.....I decided I better buy some insurance on that bear. What if the truck was in a wreck or the forklift operator stabbed a fork through that bear. I bought some coverage (I think it was $50,000) from Lloyds of London whom were one of the few that would accept such a risk. The premium was not too bad.....maybe $1000. or so? but I really do not remember.

That bear arrived in my booth at Vegas and the crate was none too good. The bear survived the trip...but we had to rebuild that crate for the ride back to MN. I worried this whole time whether that bear would withstand this trip. It did....and didn't cost me any additional grief.

Turns out this may have been the best draw I ever had to my booth at the SHOT show....and many people told me they had heard about this bear all over the show. Lots of people wanted their pic with this bear......and I sold allot of shooting sticks as a result of taking this risk.

Was glad to get that bear back to the owner without any harm. It was "worth it" but I was on pins and needles for much of that transit. Not sure $50,000 would pay for a broken bear like that. Not today I am sure.

 

[Jordan Selsor]

I "borrowed" a grizzly bear from a guy I know. It was the 3rd largest Safari Club bear at that time.....and stood about 9 feet high. Very impressive bear. The owner wanted me to have his taxidermist make a crate for it at my expense to ship it to my booth at the shot show in Las Vegas. I agreed.

After giving that some thought....and seeing how careless the fork lift drivers were at those shows.....I decided I better buy some insurance on that bear. What if the truck was in a wreck or the forklift operator stabbed a fork through that bear. I bought some coverage (I think it was $50,000) from Lloyds of London whom were one of the few that would accept such a risk. The premium was not too bad.....maybe $1000. or so? but I really do not remember.

That bear arrived in my booth at Vegas and the crate was none too good. The bear survived the trip...but we had to rebuild that crate for the ride back to MN. I worried this whole time whether that bear would withstand this trip. It did....and didn't cost me any additional grief.

Turns out this may have been the best draw I ever had to my booth at the SHOT show....and many people told me they had heard about this bear all over the show. Lots of people wanted their pic with this bear......and I sold allot of shooting sticks as a result of taking this risk.

Was glad to get that bear back to the owner without any harm. It was "worth it" but I was on pins and needles for much of that transit. Not sure $50,000 would pay for a broken bear like that. Not today I am sure.

Love it! Moral to the story is you can insure anything

 

[bigboreblr]

Insurance is to cover for a loss you can not recover from.

More or less it seems homeowner insurance is one n done. You claim, then they dump you. Even more so for unusual claims like that.

 

[Bill]

Insurance and lawyer’s are useless. Until you need them.

When you do, both will screw you.

 

[4wanderingeyes]

A few years back we had a tornado come through just south of me and it wiped out a family apple orchard, this was their business. They did have insurance, and they did pay for planting of new trees, and income for several years to make up for the loss. I know they just reopened last year of the summer before for apple sales. So insurance is a must if it is your business, or source of income. As a hobby, I think they would just mess with you.