Farmers assess winter’s toll on orchards, seek aid

The capriciousness of Mother Nature and Maine’s severe winter weather has become all too clear as the state’s orchard operators take stock of winter tree loss. Although the damage varies from orchard to orchard, it appears that some apple growers have sustained a sizable ruin.

“It depended on which way the wind blew,” Marilyn Meyerhans, president of the Maine Pomological Society, said Tuesday afternoon. Meyerhans and her husband, Steven Meyerhans, operate orchards in Fairfield and Manchester.

“In one orchard, winter took an entire row while the row next to it was untouched, she said. “Where the trees were not protected by snow, the cold was deep and fast this winter.”

With more than 3,500 acres under cultivation, apples bring more than $11 million into the state annually.

Meyerhans said state officials are assessing the damage to see if any of Maine’s counties qualify for federal disaster assistance.

She said it was too early to tell what impact the tree loss would have on this fall’s harvest.

In some places, such as Auburn and Turner, the lack of snow and severe cold decimated the orchards, while just a few miles north, in Newport, Madison and Etna, no damage was reported.

Edward Buzanowski operates Rowe Orchards in Newport with more than 15,000 trees.

“We lost 50 trees,” he said, which he quantified as a large number to lose to winter weather.

“I keep having people stop by who have three or four apple trees in their back yard, and they are asking why they died,” said Buzanowski. “I tell them it’s simple: lack of snow cover.”

Mary Ellen Johnston of the Maine Department of Agriculture said Tuesday it may be a while before the full impact of the winter is known.

“It is just now becoming apparent that there may be damage,” she said. “We had such a long, cold spring that the trees were late in developing leaves, and now we can see that some of them have just run out of steam and are not producing fruit.

“In some cases, the trees blossomed well, but then the flowers turned black and fell off. In others, the leaves developed and then also fell off,” she said.

Perennial flowers, shrubs and blueberry crops also have been affected, Johnston said. Some pickers in Washington County who normally work harvesting berries for three to four weeks are being told to expect only a single week’s work.

“The damage really appears to be geographical,” Judy Dimmock of Northstar Orchards in Madison said Tuesday. “We have no damage, and, as of today, we have a beautiful crop coming.”

In Etna, Vincent Conant who harvests 2,000 trees at Conant Orchards, agreed.

“We came through [the winter] really well,” he said Tuesday. “All our trees are standard root stock and it appears that many of the dwarf or semi-dwarf varieties are the ones with the problems.”

The story is not quite so rosy at Wallingford Orchards in Auburn, where Peter Wallingford estimated he lost 25 percent of his 4,000 apple trees and 100 percent of his peach trees.

“We’re counting dead trees not by the hundreds, but by the thousands,” Don Ricker of Ricker Orchards in Turner said. “There’s an awful variation from orchard to orchard. It depends on the soil. It depends on elevation. It depends on snow cover and water in the ground.”

Meyerhans said that most Maine orchards plant dwarf or semi-dwarf varieties, which grow quickly and yield heavily, but also are susceptible to winters such as the one just experienced.

She said Maine’s congressional delegation has been notified of the situation, and they are waiting for a full assessment by the USDA Farm Service Agency.

“If some counties can be declared a disaster, it will trigger aid,” said Meyerhans. She said the loss must be 20 percent per producer and the damage is assessed on a county-by-county basis.