As orchard harvesting wraps up this month, farmers like Bill Patterson, owner of Patterson Fruit Farm in Chester Township, are looking back at a below-average crop season and hoping that another polar vortex doesn’t return this winter. At least for the sake of his 4 acres of peaches.

“There wasn’t a peach grown in Ohio,” Patterson said. His 150-acre farm lost its entire peach crop and a few of its trees during the extended below-zero cold.

Patterson said he had to stock his year-round market at 11414 Caves Road with out-of-state peaches until next year’s harvest.

“We prefer to be selling our own fruit as much as we can, but it wasn’t possible to stretch the season,” he said.

A few varieties of his apples also were lost, but generally, the apple crop endures double-digit, below-freezing temperatures better than peaches, Patterson said.

Similar to vineyards this year, many peach growers across the state have reported zero-sum yields on their crop. And that was felt in Geauga and Lake counties as well.

With 26 acres of peach trees, Lake County farmers are the 12th largest peach producer in the state, tying with Ashtabula County in volume, according to 2012 agricultural census data.Geauga County farmers grow about half of that amount at 13 acres of peach trees, according to the agricultural census.

Ty Kellogg, organization director of the Lake, Geauga, Ashtabula, Trumbull and Mahoning Farm Bureau, said the area’s corn, soybean and hay crop had a “spotty yield” this year, but not so much because of the polar vortex. It was a delayed end to winter and a wet spring that troubled row-crop farmers, he said.

But the biggest hit this winter was the wine-grape and peach crops, he said.Patterson said he estimated his farm yielded only 50 percent its crop this year. He originally had expected to reach only 80 percent because it was an off-year orchard harvest. He said his farm yielded 120 percent the year before.

Like Patterson, Bob Sage, co-owner of Sage’s Apples Fruit Farm in Chardon Township, said all 3 acres of his peach crop was lost too, as well as a few trees.

“When you are in the peach business, you expect stuff like this to happen once in a while,” Sage said.

On the 25 acres of apple crop, Sage’s said only two of his 50 apple varieties suffered some losses.

And like Patterson, Sage said he also had to buy peaches elsewhere for his year-round market at 11355 Chardon Road.

So what does this mean for next year’s peach harvest? For both Patterson and Sage, hopefully it means built-up momentum for a 100 percent yield.

“There’s nothing telling us we won’t see anything less than a full crop, but when it’s minus 22 degrees in April, everything will go out the window,” Patterson said.

Source - http://www.news-herald.com/