LAFAYETTE -- Anxious farmers across fruit-growing regions in the Great Lakes and Northeast are keeping misters, smudge pots and even helicopters in their arsenals as a cold front approaches from Canada.
The cold overnight Monday into Tuesday morning threatened to freeze trees and vines that budded early amid record-setting warmth. At risk are wine grapes, apples, apricots, cherries, pears, peaches and possibly strawberries.
Workers at Beak & Skiff Apple Farm in LaFayette, spent Monday night trying to protect apple trees from the bone chilling cold.
Peter Fleckenstein says workers set up smudge pots throughout the orchards to try and fend off the cold.
"These trees can handle 22 or 23 degrees no problem. The problem last night is it was 19 in some places, so it's really cold," he says.
"This is a showstopper right here. If we get more nights like this, we just won't have any apples to work with."
Cold nights in March don't normally pose a threat to apple trees but Fleckenstein says the trees have sprouted buds four weeks early this year thanks to record high temperatures earlier in the month. These newly sprouted buds are vulnerable to the cold.
"The goal is if we can raise the temperature one degree some times that is all it takes between having and not having an apple," he says.
Fleckenstein says it will take a little while to figure out how many apple trees have been damaged by the cold.
"Once the temperature goes above freezing, we will go to each orchard and cut the bud in half and look inside. If the tissue’s been damaged by freezing they will have turned brown. If we still see green I will be happy," he says.
If the freeze causes damage, consumers would likely notice it on a regional scale at farm stands, farmers' markets and other local outlets.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
