Ex-49er’s cherry trees destroyed
Two thousand newly planted cherry trees were plucked from their roots and snapped beyond salvation last week at a Brentwood orchard owned and operated by former San Francisco 49ers football center Jeremy Newberry.
Just five weeks ago, Newberry said he planted 4,100 new trees on his family’s 40-acre orchard, the Newberry Cherry Farm. When the Newberrys bought the land in October, there were 15 acres of cherry trees already planted.
The cherry season kicked off for the family farm last Monday. Customers carried 2- and 5-gallon buckets and filled them to the brim with deep red cherries.
“Everything was going great,” Newberry said.
But Wednesday morning, one of the Newberrys’ colleagues started his shift at the orchard at 7 a.m. to find roughly half of the newly planted trees destroyed. The ordinarily uniform rows of leafy trees, each 2½ to 3 feet tall, were just piles of snapped branches and leaves.
Newberry told The Chronicle he rushed to the farm from training young budding football players after receiving the call from his colleague. He found “half of the orchard tore up.”
“It would take two grown men, literally, and probably six or seven hours, to tear up those trees,” Newberry said. “Just the sheer amount of time it takes to do this. It was a heartbreak.”
He believes vandals made their way onto the orchard late Tuesday night or early Wednesday, knowing the family doesn’t live on the land while its new home is under construction. He estimates the act resulted in $30,000 worth of damage.
The farm still lacks electric power at the moment, so the Newberrys haven’t set up a video surveillance system, which could have offered insight on what happened overnight. The orchard’s irrigation system is powered by a generator, he said.
He called Contra Costa County sheriff ’s deputies Wednesday morning to make a report, and he gathered the remains of 2,000 trees into a pile — destined to be burned.
Sheriff ’s deputies responded to the orchard and took a report, according to Jimmy Lee, the Sheriff ’s Office spokesman.
Newberry said that if the trees had not been snapped in half, it would have been possible to replant them, and some of them could have even yielded cherries. Now, his family is forced to order new trees, which will be planted in February.
He said the incident has shaken up his family so much that he plans on sleeping in a motor home on the land to monitor any suspicious movement amid the remaining acres of trees.
“It’s crazy that I even have to do that,” Newberry said. “It’s disheartening, but we’re going to have to continue to move forward and not let it discourage us.”
The farm is still open for customers to pick cherries by the bucketful for purchase. Lauren Hernández is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren. hernandez@sfchronicle. com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor