MARION — School schedules, roads and driveways haven’t been the only victims of this winter’s subzero temperatures and frequent snowstorms. While they may or may not be shivering in their boots, local fruit farmers face an uncertain and potentially bleak harvest later this year.Shamrock Vineyard could lose 70 percent or more of its grape crop this year, owner Thomas Van Creasap estimated Monday.
“Yeah, it’s going to be bad,” Creasap said, trudging through snow up to his calves to inspect grapevines near the driveway at his Waldo-area operation on Rengert Road.
“This December the vines never really seemed to harden properly,” he said, referring to the early subzero weather that arrived in the Marion area and the rest of Ohio before the soft tissue of green vines became hard wood to protect against winter weather. “When you have that, the vines don’t get that slow, steady cool-down. ... Then when you get the cold weather, it really wreaks havoc out there.”
At Lawrence Orchards south of Marion, owner George Lawrence ventured to guess the extreme cold may have damaged much of his peach crop, but was less certain about the impact on apple trees. “My guess is we probably lost a little bit,” Lawrence said. “I’m sure there’s some bud damage. ... It would have to be pretty significant to affect too much of the crop at this point.”
Apple trees have five buds, which he said means that he could have four out of five buds damaged and “still have a crop,” although damage typically is spread out unevenly, ruining all five buds on an apple tree shoot while only damaging two or three on another.
“I’m not worried,” he said. “Concerned? Probably. My bigger concern is peaches. Peaches are a little more tender. It may be an interesting year for peaches. ... It’s still up in the air. There is potential for damage on peach trees. That’s my bigger concern because if there’s damage to the tree it’s going to take a lot longer to get my crop back.”
Creasap said he recently raised the prices of two wines produced at Shamrock, the first increase in four years, to attempt to offset rising operations costs and to compensate for weather-damaged grapes. “You‘ve still got to prune, maintain and spray,“ he said. “You just might not have any fruit, but it doesn’t matter if you’re producing or not — you’ve still got to prune.”
He said damage to this year’s crop in Ohio will show up in next year’s wine output, as this year’s wines were made with last year’s grapes. He said consumers could see a price increase of about $1 for a bottle of wine due to the severe winter weather. “The cost of materials, bottles and cork, are going up for us,” he said. “Nothing gets cheaper. ... That being said there are going to be price increases. You have to be delicate. You don’t want consumers to run away. We’ve been blessed. We’ve got great consumers that really support us and embrace us.”
He said if Shamrock runs short of its own grapes, it purchases other Ohio grapes for sale, never going outside of the state for its product because it promises its customers Ohio table wine. Finding grapes from other vineyards in Ohio will be difficult because of the damage caused by the cold particularly to the European varieties wineries sell.
“It’s going to be pretty devastating throughout the Midwest,” he said.
Source - http://www.marionstar.com/
