Well,
its been a cold and snowy
winter. While there have been low temperature records set in
neighboring states, especially Illinois, we so far have been fortunate
in that as cold as it has gotten at Pickerel Lake is -8F. The
coldest it got at Magicland Farms was about -5 (estimated). When
the lake is frozen it gets colder near the lake than at the farm on
clear calm nights. When there is no ice it's warmer near the lake
than at the farm. Why am I mentioning this? Well,
peaches! Peaches, peaches, peaches! They don't like arctic
cold! At a temperature of -14F the flower buds of the hardy
varieties like Redhavens, start dying. At -20F all flower buds
are gone and one is unlikely to even find one live tree come
spring. Well it looks like so far so good this year! There
still is February, though. A week of mild weather means that the
-14F critical peach temperature will be higgher--perhaps even as high as
0F!
While we try to plant hardy varieties--at least as hardy as
Redhavens--few, if any, can take temperatures as low as -18F. But
they are ooh so good! And customers just love them so we keep
plantin' 'em. Our previous peach orchards were frozen out in 1984
and 1994. We are again into peaches and our (mostly) young trees
should be increasing in the size of their crops. GO GLOBAL
WARMING--ARE THE PEACH TREES SLOGAN!
We might re-open in the spring, say in
April, and put up for sale the apples we are storing in our new
cooler. However, the crop was small last year, and the cooler is
only about a quarter full. Though we won't have many for sale, the
quality of
the apples in April should be much better quality than other Aprils
since the apples were in
the cooler since shortly after picking.