HARRISON TOWNSHIP, NJ - Avocados aren’t the only produce item thieves are targeting. This time around, it’s peaches.

According to a report from NJ.com, a local peach farmer, Tom Holtzhauser, whose family business is the longest running family-owned farm in Harrison Township, awoke one morning to find that his 144-acre farm had been stripped of its white peaches.

The estimated cost of what the thieves stole is around $1,000—enough to fill a bin that would typically hold 800 pounds of the fruit.

"There was not one peach on any tree," Holtzhauser told NJ.com. "They stripped every tree clean. Big ones, small ones. Ready ones, not ready ones."

Holtzhauser said his employees pick the fruit in cycles, picking peaches from one tree and then not returning to it for two days. Within those 48 hours was when the robbery must have occurred, he stated.

"Whoever did it knew what they were looking for," he said. "It was definitely an organized group. It would have taken four of my men an hour and a half to get what was gone."

He noted that the trees weren't damaged, and there wasn't any trash or tracks left in the field when he reported the incident to police on Tuesday.

The Holtzhauser farm has been in operation since Tom's great-grandfather started it in 1897 and consists of retail, wholesale, and sales to area restaurants. Holtzhauser told NJ.com that the stolen peaches accounted for what he normally would have sold at the retail level in about a week.

Although he’s experienced setbacks before, Holtzhauser hasn’t let this stop him, and isn't going to let these peach thieves get him down, either.

"You just carry on," he said."That's all you can do. It's another day tomorrow."

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