Freeze stuns fruit farmers

Cold snap is a blow to apple, peach and blueberry growers -- and buyers

Easter weekend's killing cold may make it harder and pricier for North Carolinians to pursue a rite of late spring and early summer - buying fresh, home-grown fruit from a farmers market or roadside stand.

A withering, record-breaking freeze early Sunday devastated the state's peach and apple orchards just as tiny buds of fruit started to appear and may have damaged the blueberry crop, growers said Monday.

Early crops such as sweet corn, squash and green beans were also whacked by four nights of temperatures at or well below freezing. Forecasters expected temperatures to dive under that mark again early this morning.

"We won't have those crops in early," said Ronnie Best, manager of the Raleigh Farmers Market, one of five such markets across the state run by the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

Best and other agriculture officials said it will take two or three days to assess damage to crops across the state. What they find out will give consumers a glimpse of how hard it will be to find the fresh local produce they savor -- and how much they'll pay.

"There'll be some gaps in supply and the prices will be higher," said Best, whose market sells only produce grown in North Carolina. "Anybody who survived this will be asking a premium price."

Other agricultural experts were more optimistic.

"Most of the people who have been used to purchasing local fruits and vegetables will still find plentiful supply," said Karen McAdams, an agricultural extension agent with the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service in Orange County.

Much of South hit

Freezing weather blanketed much of the Deep South, complicating the price and supply picture at North Carolina roadside stands and private produce markets. The late season blast of wintry air damaged tomatoes in Florida; peaches in Georgia, South Carolina and Alabama; and apples and wine grapes in Georgia and West Virginia. Michigan's apple crop was also struck.

Supermarket prices will stay relatively stable, insulated by imports from Chile and other countries along with supplies from states unaffected by the freeze.

North Carolina's long growing season gives farmers enough time to reap a second planting of corn or squash, which means consumers can expect to get a fresh fix of homegrown produce come midsummer, said Best.

But there are no second chances for growers whose apples, peaches or blueberries were wiped out. Like sports teams knocked out of the playoffs, they'll have to wait until next year.

Ken Chappell, who grows peaches and apples near the western Moore County town of Eagle Springs, already knows the cold nailed both crops.

"They're 100 percent killed," he said.

The temperature in Chappell's orchards dipped to 21 degrees around daybreak Sunday, freezing the sap of delicate peach and apple buds that had risen early because of unseasonably warm temperatures in March. Unlike strawberry and blueberry growers, Chappell couldn't use overhead irrigation sprinklers to protect his blooms with a thin coat of ice. He did use wind machines in an abortive effort to keep the cold from blanketing his crop.

"You've heard of the perfect storm -- well, this is the perfect freeze," said Chappell, who grows 30 acres of peaches and 10 acres of apples. "I've never been killed on Easter before."

Peaches devastated

Growers elsewhere in the Sandhills region of southeastern North Carolina, where much of the state's peach crop is concentrated, report similar devastation, said James Parsons, president of the N.C. Peach Growers Society.