We have great apples, world!!!
"Apple growers fret as mercury swings" by Associated Press | April 19, 2010
Frank Whittemore has been growing fruit for a lifetime and can’t ever remember a year when the buds started peeking out on his 30,000 apples trees so early in the spring. And that’s what has him worried.
“We’re just praying that we don’t get some really, really cold weather over the next few weeks,’’ said Whittemore, 85, co-owner of Brookdale Fruit Farm in Hollis, N.H. “It would be a disaster for us.’’
While most residents of the Northeast were enjoying the recent spate of warm weather, apple growers fretted about an unprecedented early bloom that could leave the nascent fruit vulnerable to a dangerous cold snap.
Trees are blossoming two to three weeks ahead of schedule because of a balmy early spring, an early snow melt, and heavy rains in March, according to orchard managers and fruit experts. That leaves plenty of time for the region’s notoriously unpredictable weather to strike back with a killer freeze....
Then why are they blaming global warming all the time?
And it’s not just apples at risk. Peaches and plums that generally blossom slightly ahead of apples are also off to a much faster start this season. A hard frost is not uncommon in New England in the last two weeks of April and not unheard of in early May....
Not this year; its past time, and we have avoided it.
Going to be a sweet and tasty summer!
And the pies, readers, the pies!
