Big temperature swings this spring were nerve-wracking for farmers, who saw some crops damaged or killed when the mercury plunged. And that could affect supplies of some fruits and vegetables at Chicago-area farmers markets, farmers say.
Flatwater Farms in Buchanan, Mich., sells dozens of crops on summer Saturdays at the Green City Market in Lincoln Park, and the dip to 39 degrees after a warm spell in April damaged its few peach trees and some vegetable crops, according to Andrew Flynn, the farm’s assistant manager.
“The asparagus got decimated,” Flynn says, and tomatoes were hurt, too.
He says Flatwater workers scrambled to cover crops with protective sheeting and that other, more cold-loving crops weren’t affected.
“Kale, chard, cabbage, broccoli are loving life,” Flynn says, and there also is an abundance of fennel and peas.
That’s good news since the farm in April transplanted a lot of produce from indoor grow houses, including arugula, spring mix, Asian greens and chamomile.
“We already invested enormous amounts of time and effort,” Flynn says. “This year and last year, we gambled with the weather.”
Temperatures in Chicago reached a high of 81 degrees in April but plummeted to a low of 35. Fluctuations at farms in Illinois, Michigan and Indiana that supply Chicago-area farmers markets also have been dramatic, though conditions at each farm varied widely depending on their location and geography. Higher ground will be warmer, for instance, and crops planted there are less affected by cold.
Raghela Scavuzzo, the Illinois Farm Bureau’s associate director of food system development, says farms in some placed suffered damaged from the cold while others were unscathed.
“Stem fruit that was potentially in bloom could be in jeopardy, but I know farms that had no damage,” Scavuzzo says. “Some had complete loss, some had 50% loss. Some had none.”
Like the weather, the outlook for produce is “unpredictable and can change at any time,” she says.
Fruit trees can be especially vulnerable to the temperature swings. Lake Breeze Organics, a farm in Benton Harbor, Mich., that sells at Evanston’s downtown farmers market on Saturdays, warned customers that its apples and peaches were hit hard.
Scavuzzo says farmers markets this summer “might look different than how it normally looks.”
“We won’t have a complete shortage of anything, just pockets of shortage,” she says. But she says she’s “hopeful we will have a better peak season than last year.”
Scavuzzo is hoping that customers who might not be able to find some produce will still buy other items: “Maybe farms lost their cherries but have rhubarb. So think about that when you’re doing your purchasing. If they had a big crop loss, they will need more help than ever.”
René Galder, owner of Ellis Family Farm in Benton Harbor, Mich., says April’s cold snap didn’t affect her crops. Galder, who sells at the Green City Market on Saturdays, says the farm’s raspberries and blueberries are in full blossom and look good.
The 60-acre farm is near Lake Michigan so it “doesn’t get too cold or hot,” she says.
When temperatures reached 28 degrees in April, it was “fine for apples and peaches, depending on what stage we’re in.”
But January’s unseasonably warm temperatures followed by a brutal freeze dealt a harsh blow to apples and peaches that started to bud, according to Galder, who says the farm’s peaches are “down half a crop or less” and that nectarines also were affected but that late-growing peaches still fared decently.
Apple varieties that blossom early, such as Pink Lady, were damaged in the freeze, according to Galder, who says others that blossom later, like Honeycrisp and Swiss Gourmet, “came out really good.”
