How do you like them apples?
This year’s crop is looking perfect so far, but farmers are keeping a cautious eye on heat and hurricanes
Good spring weather has made for good apples this fall, but some farmers are watching the heat and storms threatening to hit Connecticut carefully before making a final call on the 2017 season.
Drought and a spring frost that coated trees with freezing rain in April last year made for a disappointing apple harvest in 2016, but local farmers say all varieties are coming in big and colorful this year.
All they need is for fall weather to officially arrive and get people in the mood for apple picking.
“People aren’t in the mode of, ‘Oh, we’ve got to go pick apples, we’ve got to go to the corn maze’” in the 80-plus degree weather this week, said Karen Scott, who helps run Scott’s Yankee Farmer in East Lyme.
According to state Agriculture Commissioner Steven K. Reviczky, Connecticut sees an average yearly harvest of about 500,000 bushels, worth $12 million.
The size and color of the apples that were ready to pick by Labor Day surprised Rick Whittle, the manager of Willow Spring Farm in Mystic.
“They’re absolutely beautiful,” he said. “Every variety seems to look fantastic, and taste fantastic.”
The Cortland apples are sweeter than usual, he said.
The farmers said they have been cautiously watching the weather this summer, as several hurricanes have threatened to come up the East Coast and damage their orchards.
Whittle said the weight of the apples makes them more vulnerable to falling from the trees during a heavy storm, so the farm’s staff picked many trees clean and put the apples in cold storage when it seemed that Hurricane Jose might hit Connecticut’s coast in early September.
“With all that weight, they just sway,” he said. “We picked like crazy, because it looked like it was coming here.”
The storm changed course and the orchard avoided any serious damage, and Whittle said the refrigerated apples can be sold through October.
But watching the storm head toward New England still caused some anxiety.
“The last couple of weeks (it
feels like) every week there’s been a hurricane,” Scott said. “It’s been a stressful fall.”
Now, Scott said, the heat is the new cause for worry. In addition to keeping visitors out of the autumn mindset, she said it can cause apples to fall off the trees faster and shorten the pick-your-own season.
“Come sooner than later,” she said. “I am so looking forward to this weekend, when they said it would be mid-60s to low-70s.”
But, Scott said, she’s optimistic that sweater weather will be here eventually.
“Sooner or later, the weather’s just going to change,” she said.