In a normal year, Verellen Orchards and Cider Mill and Westview Orchards in Washington Township would have been harvesting their peach crop ahead of nearby Romeo’s Labor Day weekend Peach Festival.

But this is not a normal year.

Several stretches of extremely cold days last winter was all it took to wipe out the majority of peach tree buds in Macomb, Oakland and Lapeer counties, prime peach-growing regions in southeast Michigan.

“We have about 60 peach growers in southeast Michigan, and there is not one grower with one peach,” said Bob Tritten, MSU Extension district fruit educator who covers 60 counties in east Michigan. It has been decades since the losses were this staggering, he says.

Overall in Michigan, the state’s crop is expected to be down about 50% from last year, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Great Lakes Region 2014 forecast.

In 2013, Michigan harvested 41 million pounds of the fruit, ranking fourth in the nation for peach production. This year, the USDA forecast projects that Michigan will harvest 20 million pounds and drop to No. 8 in U.S. production. The USDA does not forecast by region or area but noted there was a lot of winter kill in southeast Michigan.

When temperatures dropped to more than 13 below (the benchmark of what peach trees can handle) for several straight days during several months last winter, it was enough to kill the flower buds on the trees and the trees, according to Tritten.

“Trees that are younger, did better, but the cold killed a lot of trees,” he said.

A double whammy

At Westview Orchards, co-owners and sisters Katrina Roy and Abby Jacobson say that out of the more than 35 acres of peach trees on their farm, they saw only four peaches.

“We know the trees can handle minus 13,” Roy said. But their farm weather indicator showed temperatures of 17 below on several days.

“Ten to 14 years is the lifespan of peach trees,” Jacobson said. “Our younger blocks of trees, they survived; the block that was 10 years old didn’t.”

The double whammy, Roy said, is that they typically order new fruit trees in December at the annual Farm Market Expo in Grand Rapids, to be planted the following season. Not expecting to lose what they did, “we only ordered what we’d normally expect to lose,” said Roy. That means the farm will have far fewer trees to replace the ones that were lost.

“It takes about five years for those trees to come into production,” Jacobson said.

Jacobson says the farm is bringing peaches in from Grand Rapids to sell, and that prices are up about 20% from last year.

“A bushel of nice-size peaches is $60 to $68, and that’s a good 50 pounds of peaches,” she said.

Bill Verellen, owner of the Verellen Orchards and Cider Mill in Romeo, which was started by his grandfather some 94 years ago, says the past few years have been anything but normal for fruit growers.

In 2012, he says, most tree fruit crops were damaged by the unseasonably warm March followed by cold temperatures and a killing frost in April. In 2013, peach trees saw some damage from hail. But the harsh winter is what did the trees in, he says.

“We have about 12 acres of peaches and we completely lost five acres of trees,” said Verellen, estimating that his farm has about 1,500 trees left. “But we have young ones coming on, and we will probably put some new ones in next year.”

West Michigan peaches

Orchards like Verellen’s and Westview are open for business, buying peaches to sell from other orchards in the state, especially those on the west side, where many peach trees withstood the cold because they were protected by lake effect.

Bringing in peaches (and other fruit) from other sources is common when there is no crop. It was last seen on a considerable level in 2012, when most of Michigan’s apple crop was decimated.

“It’s part of farming, and farming is gamble. You have to do what have to do,” said Sharon Ashton of Ashton Orchards and Cider Mill in Ortonville.

Source - http://www.freep.com/