My very strange pears

It appears to me that the prices you have listed as cost of replacement trees are based on purchasing new ones the same age as those lost. You also have a column for prior input costs. Including both doesn’t make sense to me because if someone else is raising the tree, canes, or bushes for the same number of years then wouldn’t input cost be reflected in the purchase price of the new tree? Am I misunderstanding?

I did get a laugh out of seeing that you assumed a zero value for cherries, considering your growing area.

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$12 labor to replace a 2-3 year old tree seems really, really generous. $24 for an eight year old tree? Realistically your labor costs should also reflect cutting down the trees and stump grinding (at least in my opinion.) You have more land then I do, but to me every tree killed needs to be removed in its entirety, so that you have usable space sooner. If $12 is your cost for removal and planting, I’ll be flying you out to California this spring…

I cannot express how incredibly helpful these 2 repo ses were and how much I appreciate u taking the time to give some real thought to my spreadsheet…it’s long and that took time. Thank you. I hope others will do the same. Muddy, your point about it being unfair for me to charge for input costs on my dead trees but not give credit for input costs on the replacement tree which are same age and (in theory) had the same input costs is absolutely true and very insightful. I never considered that at all. Great catch. And yea…I had to be realistic about my chancestors of growing sweet cherries in TN. Haha. I know it’s charging windmills. One could probably say the same for apricots

Ryan, your comments were also very helpful. I completely agree that was probably too conservative on the costs of removing and replanting the trees and I very well may amend that figure upward. I’m pretty sure that if I tried to hire some to do everything involved in removing trees and planting new ones and getting them prepared for the cming year and I told that person I would pay them just 12 dollars for each tree he dug out, disposed of and replaced by planting a new tree and them preparing it (prune, stake, water-in, install trunk guard, make and attach lable, etc) that person would tell me $12 won’t pay for all that. But to be fair, only the 8 year old tree was big enough to require stump grinding. The others- even at 3-4 years old, are small enough to just be dug out. Still though, I don’t think i’ll be flying out to CA to remove and replace and prepare your trees for just $12 each!!! Ha. Good point.
AGAIN, I would appreciate anyone else taking time to look at my estimates and make comments. I know that would take a bit of a commitment for anyone willing, but it is so much easier to address problems like @MuddyMess_8a found here than when I am sitting with an insurance adjuster and the farmer and they catch similar errors and think I was intentionally trying to overcharge.

I don’t know if I would be looking for compensation for value of lost fruit.

The guy next door is growing as a business. To him you are a “hobbyist” and he mighy poo poo your valuation.

I would try to get mileage out of it by saying “these numbers don’t count the $____.00 estimated value of the crop lost”.

It might soften his attitude towards the rest of the claim.

Mike

fair point, mike. The thing is, though, that this summer I honestly did buy very close to the amounts of fruit I am showing, and I felt like all the fruit I bought this year- which was the same type and very close to the same amounts shown- I would not have had to buy if my trees had not been killed. So I felt like all the money I spent buying fruit at local farmers market and even at grocery was a very real expense that I would not have incurred were it not for him killing my trees. IN FACT…I VERY strongly considered including a value for my other 60 fruit trees which lost all their fruit this year due to the spray. Remember, the other 60 or so trees I had that did not die lost every single flower or fruitlet, and I didn’t charge for that. I completely understand where you are coming from by saying that since I don’t sell fruit it’s hard to say I lost money when I lost that fruit. You point is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping people like you would bring to my attention and I’d love to hear what others think of my including a monetary value for my lost fruit. But I do feel like I’m on fairly solid ground there…though you may be right?!? But surely all of the fruit people on this wed site grow each year has some kind of monetary value- whether the grower is raising it to sell or to eat. I lost an entire fruit crop because of what he did, and its hard for me to think that there was no monetary loss with all that fruit. I spent real money replacing it, and it had real value to me- but maybe that is just me. I’ll have to give this more thought too! Thanks very much.

Kevin,

From your post I got that you suspected/expected that he was not going to make good moneytarily.

I definitely felt that no matter what he paid you it would not cover your loss.

And since you pretty much kinda took suing him off the table, I was just trying to increase the chance of you getting domething.

Mike

I don’t have any experience dealing with insurance adjusters on agricultural losses. But the thought occurred to me that since insurance companies seem to have tables that cover the depreciation or current value of a host of things beyond what I once realized, there just might be something like that for ag property, too. Such tables may or may not exist. If they do exist, the insurance co. valuations may prove to be to your benefit.

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There are certainly tables for tree losses in orchard districts. Won’t really apply to a home orchard. The values I’ve seen are high.

Thanks, fruitnut. I’m not surprised that there are tables for that. It makes sense. I’ve always been impressed by the compensation offered to homeowners who have lost shade trees from one thing or another, although that may be something that is determined in an entirely different way.

Cityman, what if you took your list sans dollar amounts with you when first talking to the insurance person, and only presented your calculations if you consider their offer low?

@mes111 - I 100% completely get where you were coming from and your point was a very good one and valid of consideration. It just hard for me to say that loosing all my fruit wasn’t equivalent to a real, monetary loss- whether I was going to sell it or use it. But you’re also right that the less arguable items I have in my claim, the stronger the claim.

@MuddyMess_8a , I suppose great minds think alike (ha) because I had already thought about finding some valuation tables for fruit trees and have spent literally HOURS searching the internet for such things. My thoughts were about how much more defensable my claims would be if I could say my numbers were based on estimates done by a 3rd party like an insurance company, university, ag ectension office, etc. But I have never been able to find any good per tree valuations/estimates on the cost of or value of loss of fruit trees for a hobbyist. I even found some values for trees like Oaks, etc …not just values based on lumber but I found some good estimates that the insurance industry uses if someone kills a tree in your yard and how much it changes the value of your property and so on. But to my frustration- no fruit tree info and its too big a jump to compare a giant shade tree to a semi-drawrf fruit tree. Now, (as usual!) @fruitnut is correct- I did find some good valuations for commercial orchard trees. However, almost everything I found was calculated by the acre. IE, what are the input costs to per year to get an apple tree to fruit bearing age and beyond. perfect info, but I could only find it by the acre. Of course I considered determining how many trees are in an acre and getting a per tree amount that way, but spacing varies and often wasn’t clarified and there were other complications with that calculation. In short, I wish there were some good numbers out there for us hobbyists, but I never found any that were even close to being current. Oh well, great idea.

As others have said, it appears I’ve been destined to never get properly compensated since the day this happened. And as only you all can understand, even if he paid me double whatever I say they were worth, I’d much rather just have my trees. Money can’t buy the years it takes (ie time) to get a tree to an age where it produces a full crop.

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Ok, I’ve spent too many hours thinking about this chart in the last day. Here are more of my thoughts.

  1. Fix the typos- your plum tree is “unkown”, and in your footnotes, capitalize Lowes, and please don’t anchor your tree to a “steak”. :smile:

  2. Simplify the chart. If you made it in Excel, combine the first two columns I.e. “Peach- Red Haven”. I’d remove the “Replaced Already” column, keep that info somewhere else, it doesn’t relate to the monetary calculations as far as I can figure.

  3. Get rid of the lost value of fruit. I know the value of homegrown fruit and the pain of losing it. But it’s a ~$250 total amount on what should be a few thousand dollars claim, and it’s an area where a picky insurance adjuster could attempt to discredit and detract from your entire claim. “So you bought replacement fruit? Surely you kept the receipts. You didn’t? Hmmmm. So you’re sure your trees would have produced fruit? Yet you have $0 for your cherries, so you’re telling me some of your trees don’t produce? I see you have claims for sprays, what are you spraying to prevent? Bugs and diseases that could have caused you to lose the crop? Hmmm, interesting.”

  4. I’d make up for the lost money in #3 with getting real, defensible figures on replacing the trees. Get a couple tree removal companies to give you free written estimates. Tell them you’re thinking about removing part of your orchard, and get a per tree removal, disposal quote, in writing. I’ve never had a tree company that didn’t provide a free estimate. Your numbers right now are really squishy in this area. Get real, firm numbers.

  5. With removal taken care of in number 4, get a realistic, objective cost on replacing the trees. Either get a written estimate from a landscape company OR time yourself, from start to finish, in the entire process. I assume you will be planting a few trees this time of year anyway. Start with all the tools put away, and start a stopwatch. Go through your process. Clean up, put the tools away. Stop your timer. Record the time. Do it three times. Get an average. Multiply that by your hourly wage. If random $12 an hour guy didn’t put the trees in initially, why is he doing it now? Have a professional do it, either yourself or a landscaper you trust. I would imagine doing this will drive your bid up significantly, which I feel is appropriate. And this gives it a lot more objectivity than just eyeballing it. Your numbers seem way off right now, that is a ton of plants to have die, need removal, rebuying, and replanting. ~$1900? No way. You have in your notes that your labor estimates are “conservative”. Change that to “realistic and defensible” once you’ve done one of the aforementioned. I’m fairly confident that at least half of the members of this board would have the offender buried in their backyard by now; being realistic and fair to yourself is the least you can do.

Just my thoughts.

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I’d also add a short cover letter to prime them to your cost analysis, something along the lines of: “On April XX, as definitively proven by the State of Tennessee, 2-4d was inappropriately sprayed, resulting in the loss of crops on more than 60 fruit bearing trees, as well as the complete death of X trees and bushes. The attached table is only compensation for the trees and bushes that were entirely killed by the aforementioned spraying, and does not include monetary values for the extensive losses of fruit.” At that point they’re reminded that they are directly, definitively responsible, and that your estimates could be higher.

Also, consider doing a footnote for your pricing sources, instead of spelling them out completely? Instead of listing “Lowes” or “Edible Landscaping”, code them and put that in the footnotes. Right now they really pull the eye when the spreadsheet is opened, and while important, seem to be a distraction.

Kevin,
Remember that 2-4D is a gift that keeps giving. Almost invariably you will lose trees this winter, some will hang on and never die but never grow again. Be prepared for fruit that tastes horrible from survivors. I know you don’t want to hear that but there will be a legacy for years from the overspray you endured. I wouldn’t sign any paper work from the insurance co. till you see what happens this spring. Tylt33 has great ideas, I agree with him but this will be a multiyear damage claim.

Ryan…I haven’t seen you on the board before, so first, I’d like to say “happy to meet you”. Secondly, you have some damn good and well thought out comments. I like that you are not afraid of offending cityman (I know he won’t be offended) and you really pour out the truth my friend. YOU are posting exactly the type of thing that I’m thinking city wants. If I ever get in any position similar to this I want your opinion. You’re writing shows so clearly that you have really thought about things…and concisely delivered (to me) a very valuable opinion.
You remind me of my high school English teacher ripping apart (a no doubt flawed) essay I had worked hard on.

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@Tylt33 - I was out of town this weekend, so PLEASE don’t take my lack of response (until now) to mean I disagree or was in any way offended or upset by your comments! To the contrary, just as @Appleseed70 predicted, I absolutely NEEDED and appreciated the comments you made. I truly wasn’t looking for people to just tell me that my spreadsheet was perfect…that would have accomplished nothing but falsely inflating my ego. :slight_smile: You know, to me it is a lot like having someone proofread a letter. If I write a letter I can read it 100 times and think it is flawless. Then I give it to my admin assistant and she finds 10 obvious errors. These things just take fresh eyes.

I’ve taken almost every single one of your points and made changes accordingly. The good news is I’d already fixes the typos like tying my trees to a “steak”. But again, that’s the kind of thing I COULD have continued to overlook so I appreciated you mentioning it. Another sign that “great mind’s think alike” is the fact that I really had already removed (hidden) the column indicating whether or not a given tree had already been replaced or not. IT just wasn’t relevant to the financial report-just as you said. A seemingly minor point you made which I think was more important than others might is the way the company names of the suppliers sort of dominated the appearance of the documents and drew unnecessary attention to that column which was unimportant. What I did was a combination of abbreviating the names and decreasing the font size so they are still meaningful at a glance but certainly subdued.
I am still struggling with the idea of not trying to claim any loss at all for the fruit I would have gotten. In fact, I only claimed the loss of fruit for this year, when the reality is that as a direct result of his actions, I’ve lost my crop harvest this year and all the years it takes for my replacement trees to bein producing. HOWEVER, since you are the second person to be have some concerns about me claiming the loss of my harvest (and future harvests) I think I am going to take it out. It’s just hard for me to say that my entire fruit crop has no monetary value!!! And btw…the cherry tree fruit crop valuation of $0 was not an error! It was an attempt at honesty, because the likelihood of me ever getting a measurable, meaningful sweet cherry harvest here in Tennessee is - according to the experts here on www.growingfruit.org- is almost zero! But dang-it, my cherry trees look so big, strong, and healthy that I just can’t make myself cut them down.
Out of all your great advice, the only part I’m not completely able to get on-board with is that of coming up with some more objective figures for tree removal and tree. That isn’t because I don’t agree, because I do. I was/am aware that my estimates are just that, subjective estimates and for that reason they are more open to challenge. That’s why I have been so conservative. I know I may get challenged but if I do I just don’t see how any sensible person could possible say that $12 is too high to cover: digging up and hauling off the old tree AND ordering a new one, digging large hole, amending soil (I know many growers oppose this step), planting tree, refilling hole, installing a stake (not steak), securing tree to stake, initial pruning of tree, hauling and applying 1 or more buckets of water at planting and for the next several weeks, then mulching the whole drip line. All that for $12 per tree or $9 per berry plant is, as even you agreed, extremely cheap and therefore very defensible. In fact, I think using that figure would be less controversial than the way you suggested. You see, all the dead trees except 1 or maybe 2 were still very small (1-1.25 inch cal). So the idea of having a company come in and give a real number for digging up and removing a tree and/or planting a small tree would undoubtly be very, very high. They would have to charge- whether they state it in estimate or not- for travel time, mobilization costs, equipment costs, overhead, and so on. Since I actually WANT to plant my trees (I trust myself more than a couple laborers working for a nursery), I think an insurer would look at the high dollar estimates provided by a nursery company and then tell me that there is no way it would cost me nearly that much just to walk in my back yard with a shovel and plant some trees. I know you didn’t know I want to plant my own trees and probably didn’t realize how small they are and that all I’d need is a shovel.

Anyway, I want to thank you very sincerely for your very well thought out critique and advice. It was very clear that you took a lot of time to think about my situation and my spreadsheet and to make those extensive, detailed comments and recommendations. I used almost all of them and they all were enlightening and challenging and I thank you for your sound and detailed advice and comments!

Same to everyone else who offered advice and opinions. You folks are the BEST

Kevin

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Just keep us posted on the final result.

Mike

I don’t have much to contribute other than to say you have my sympathy. If this happened to me I would be heartbroken and furious. I can well understand what this loss means to you. During growing season I pass by and look at all my trees and shrubs nearly every day and as the years go by I get more and more excited for when they will start producing. To have that all destroyed do to someone’s negligence and carelessness would be infuriating.

I think you are loballing your removal and replacement costs. Just because you get a quote does not mean you need them to do the job. I would e-mail your list to 2 landscaping companies with some photos of your trees/land and have them do a rough quote by email. Provide the 2 quotes with your spreadsheet as a reference to the insurance agent. This way you have a quote for removal, replacement, replanting all in 1 shot. Then you just add the cost for lost inputs. Get the money and plant them yourselves.

Be aware you are probably going to find come spring that you lost other trees over winter, I am not sure how you are planning on handling that.

I would also not charge for loss of fruit.

Jeff,

Nice to meet you too! I’m part of the old GardenWeb crowd, and tend to lurk around here more than I post. I’m glad you found my post to be helpful, that was the intent. My wife and I work in a field where we do quite a bit of writing that needs to be as legally defensible as possible, as it has, and will, been challenged in court. Not fun to have your typos and such questioned and an attorney trying to make you look and feel inept.

Kevin,

I’m glad you didn’t take offense, as that was definitely not my intent. My thought was that this is a friendly and supportive environment, and that input and challenges to lines of thought are a million times better here than they will be when you are sitting with the mayor and the insurance adjuster.

I totally get the fruit harvest part. That’s deeply personal. We don’t grow fruit trees for the foliage. The problem is, your other claims are objectively defensible, and claiming compensation for “future fruit you will be buying” would be a really difficult position to defend if questioned, I would think. That’s all I’m saying. If an insurance adjuster meets with you and says “Absolutely not. We will not compensate you for fruit you will be potentially buying” I would just make sure that you’re able to be comfortably emotionally removed when debating the point and/or ready to say “I’m willing to make that concession.”

The other point, regarding the $12/ hour replacement charge; if you don’t want to get a bid (I totally understand that) I really would recommend timing yourself replacing the tree and paying yourself a fair wage. None of you that will be at the table make $12 an hour. If they question the amount of time it takes, you can tell them that you objectively timed yourself, and that you would be more than happy to time them doing the same job, with your supervision for all of your listed steps.

I think where we aren’t seeing eye-to-eye is on two points. First, that you’re trying to be “fair” to everyone involved, with the exception of yourself. The mayor broke the law, and damaged your property as a result. At least be fair to yourself. I think this is also the point that the rest of our cohort here are having a difficult time with.

Secondly, you equate “cheap” with “defensible”, and I do not make that same connection. I view “defensible” as being able to say, “I timed myself performing these actions, can tell you definitively that this is how long it takes, and is not an estimate.” Secondly, I don’t think our group views $12 as a reasonable compensation for your wage. Get the hourly rate for a couple local licensed landscapers. Use that rate. Use half that rate. Something that you can qualify objectively, and is more than $12. You’re not gouging here, you’re just asking to be as close to where you started as possible.

Happy to offer input if it’s helpful!

@hungryfrozencanuck4b - your condolences are much appreciated. In fact, the empathy from the people in this thread have really been the most valuable thing I could have asked for. No one except fruit growers truly understand the time, work, and most of all love that we all put in and take out of our trees. Just like you, I walk through my little orchard AT LEAST once every single day. I stop and inspect every single tree, to the point I can tell you where each scar or blemish is and how and when it got there. And just like you, I get more excited every year knowing that tree is more likely to fruit or fruit better and bigger the next year. Looking forward to the future of every tree is indeed a big part of the fun, and to have those trees and that future ruined on AT LEAST 14 trees is very painful. Non-fruit growers do not get it. They think, well, just go get some new trees and stick them in the ground and wait a few years and they will look bigger and therefore be better. But you obviously understand that this goes much deeper. And btw…I have several trees- probably 10 or so- that ended up surviving (so far) but growing in extremely weird, curly growth. In other words, I am almost certain they will end up being very deformed if they live at all. And I am not claiming a penny on those, because I know that will end up with them saying “they will be fine” and me saying “they are ruined forever” .

@Tylt33 - Ryan, I should have also said something like it’s nice to meet you since I don’t think we’d exchanged posts before either. And not only was I not offended by the minor points we didn’t completely agree on, but I feel very strongly that this forum is indeed the kind of place that is a “friendly and supportive environment” as you said, and different view points and hashing them out is how we all learn. Its one of the many things I love about this site. Disagreements are fairly common, but they almost never end up even a tiny bit uncivil, and in many cases just like this, one side or the other concedes that the other point of view is the better one. But before a brag too much on how well people here handle differences in opinions, I want to point out again that I am almost entirely in agreement with every single point/suggestion that you made. I accepted, agreed, and/or came around to your point of view on 95% of everything you’ve said. In your last post I was really impressed with you pointing out that I might be in error by equating “cheap” with “defensible”. GREAT POINT, and one that moved to closer to your recommendation of getting some independent quotes, at least on the hourly rate of a landscaper.

One other thing, though, that might even account for much of that 5% difference in the approaches each of us thinks is best. Both you and @hungryfrozencanuck4b approached this situation from the perspective of how me and insurance adjuster will negotiate all this or how an insurance agent might view some of my claims. And I know that is because I mentioned it as a potential insurance claim. But the reality is that I am approaching from the position of presenting this and discussing it with the farmer himself (who happens to sort-of be my boss to further complicate it). I have no control over whether he decides to pay it himself or turn it over to his insurance, and I suspect he will have at least a $1000 deductible so its pretty likely that insurance will never come into play. Of course I would prefer that because it would take the personal awkwardness out of it and because I think they would be much more generous and more accepting of things like a nursery company price for planting a tree. The mayor/farmer, on the other hand, would probably look at a quote from a nursery and say "well that is just crazy…it wouldn’t cost you that much to pull up one of those little trees and put a new one in the same hole and cover it with dirt. So while if it were an insurance matter or a court-room matter, some of these quantifiable rates would be less controversial. When you are talking to a neighbor/farmer/boss its just harder to convince him to write a check based on what some “big city” business would charge when he has farm workers who do this kind of work every day for $12 an hour. You and I know its not the same, but he won’t. Don’t misunderstand me…I’m not saying he shouldn’t have to pay a fair price because he doesn’t use his insurance, and I’m not saying your proposed pricing methods are not the most accurate. I’m just saying that I have to approach this a lot different, and probably a lot more forgiving (financially speaking) than I would if was almost anyone else. So yes, this whole scenario is very complex!

You have 100% convinced me to remove all charges for loss of fruit. But for what its worth, I didn’t have that in there as much due to the money I would have to spend to buy fruit as just to loss of fruit that had value. If someone ran off the road in a big semi truck and completely destroyed my corn crop, I would think his auto insurance would probably have to compensate me for the loss of my corn. Even though I wasn’t going to sell the corn, it did have value to me. I was going to eat it, give it to family, etc… I would think I’d be entitled to more than just the cost of the seed since I’d spent a year tilling, fertilizing, spraying, it and so on. So that was the logic I used in claiming that the loss of an entire orchard worth of fruit had some value beyond the cost of the tree. Remember, this last paragraph is purely academic because whether or not I could collect some money on that lost fruit, you and the others have convinced me that it would be more controversial and just isn’t enough money to give them something to argue about. But I’ve enjoyed your logic and point of view and just wanted mention that corn example to get your thoughts…as if these posts haven’t been long enough anyway!!! haha
Thanks again for all the input.
kevin