Area farmers believe peach crops ‘dodged a bullet’ in overnight frost

Overnight temperatures that dipped into the mid-20s are leaving some Pioneer Valley growers in a state of limbo as blossoming peach trees and other crops may have been impacted, but it’s still too early to declare the cold-sensitive crops as bountiful or bust.

Farmers with Clarkdale Fruit Farms in Deerfield, Red Fire Farm in Montague and Granby, and Quonquont Farm in Whately said Tuesday that they experienced lows of 25 degrees Fahrenheit between Monday night and Tuesday morning. They described the conditions as a “thinning frost,” and they hope that will be the extent of its impact on crops.

“We think we dodged a bullet and [I’m] thankful for that,” Clarkdale Fruit Farms’ fourth-generation owner Ben Clark said Tuesday, “but time will tell.”

According to the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Agriculture, Food, and the Environment website about food production amid climate change, stone fruits like peaches survive better in hotter and drier weather, so swings in weather patterns during the winter can result in the loss of cold resistance, followed by tree injury or crop loss when temperatures fall below zero after a spell of warmer winter temperatures.

National Weather Service data shows the temperature dropped as low as 22 degrees during the early hours of Tuesday, April 21, as observed at the Orange Municipal Airport. This drop in temperature comes a week after a multi-day stretch of warm, summer-like weather, with a high of 86 degrees in Greenfield on April 15 and April 17.

As of 1 p.m. on Tuesday, a limited frost risk is in place for the upper elevations of western Franklin County into Wednesday morning. The limited frost risk means that frost could cause minor damage to unprotected vegetation.

At Clarkdale Fruit Farms, heating fans were run overnight in the peach orchard, with Clark noting that the peaches are purposefully planted at a higher elevation on the farm in an effort to mitigate frost impacts. Already, the peach trees are in full bloom, and Clark explained that the hope is that this frost will do some of the work for the farm by thinning out the weaker peach blossoms across the 9 acres of peaches on the 40-acre farm.

This frost is not out of the ordinary either, Clark said, noting how weather patterns have changed over the past few decades. Timing-wise, he said the farm is grateful that the frost came when it did as other crops, including apples, are still in a “tight cluster” phase, giving them some cold resistance.

However, lower elevations on the farm experienced temperatures of 22 degrees, and some equipment that is designed to protect these lower-elevation crops was malfunctioning. Clark said 20 sweet cherry trees were hit the hardest by the frost, but it’s a minor crop for Clarkdale Fruit Farms, meaning the weather has had less of an impact overall on what fruits will be available come harvest time.

Even with this frost, Clark is optimistic that all of the fruits grown at Clarkdale will be available. Still, he’s cautious, as this frost’s impact won’t show until a few more weeks as blossoming continues.

“It’s a little early to tell now, but we’re hopeful that we’ll have a crop of all of our fruits this year,” he said.

Like Clark, Red Fire Farm co-owner Ryan Voiland said he believes the frost is acting as a thinning frost, but precautions were still taken to make sure the crops were protected.

Overnight, the farm used an “agro-frost machine” to blow hot air onto its crops in Granby, with a farmworker running the machine from 11:30 p.m. to 8 a.m. After a long night, Voiland said the hope is that this method protected some of the most at-risk crops, like Asian pears and the 1 acre of white peaches that survived after a cold winter.

As for the health of other crops, like the apples and European pears, Voiland said those plants are “a bit smarter” as they don’t begin to blossom as early as peaches do, and are more resistant to cold, but that still remains up in the air.

“We won’t be entirely sure until full bloom has happened,” he said about these crops.

Leslie Harris, farm manager at Quonquont Farm in Whately, also agreed with the assessment that the overnight weather was a thinning frost for the crop. However, she clarified that farms aren’t out of the woods yet with any potential further frosts.

“I always feel like you don’t really know if you’re out of the woods until you have the ripe fruit in your hand,” Harris said. “I think we may have dodged a bit of a bullet with this one, but there’s a lot ahead of us.”

In terms of preparing for frosts, Harris said Quonquont Farm is not operating with equipment like Clarkdale Fruit Farms or Red Fire Farm to prevent frost; rather, the Whately farm’s method is to “sit around and hope” that the frost doesn’t cause significant crop damage.

Additionally, Harris said frost isn’t the farm’s “biggest enemy” — erratic weather patterns are. She said peaches shouldn’t be blossoming in April, but the 80-degree weather that the region saw a week ago has sped up the process of blossoming despite temperatures returning to a seasonal average this week.

“The last frost date for here is supposed to be the last week in May, so we should expect frost,” Harris advised. “It’s really about the erratic temperature. We shouldn’t be expecting 85- or 90-degree weather in April. That’s crazy, but that’s what’s happening.”

As these weather patterns change, Harris wants to be sure that people understand that a frost, or other extreme weather events, can be costly to farms and local food systems.

“This is why it’s important to support your local farmers,” she said, “because you can see from these little weather events how big a deal it can be to somebody’s entire crop.”