Fruit trees are sensitive creatures. They play a delicate game every spring here in Utah, waiting for just the right conditions to flower.
How do they know when the opportune moment has arrived? As Curtis Rowley from Cherry Hill Farms put it, they spend the winter literally counting down the hours.
"The buds, they need to have so many chill hours during the wintertime, and those chill hours have to come between certain temperatures," he explained. "Typically, that's somewhere in the 30s and the mid 40s, and once they meet so many chill hours, then the buds can move towards breaking dormancy."
Rowley is a fruit farmer with operations in Santaquin, Hurricane, and southern Idaho, growing cherries, apples, peaches, nectarines, and apricots.
He said that in a normal winter, the buds would wait to break dormancy for several weeks.
But the warm conditions in December and January tricked the trees into thinking that spring arrived when the dangers of frost had not yet passed.
"Typically, we see peaches bloom between the 8th and 10th of April; this year they were blooming around the 15th to the 20th of March," Rowley said. "Tart cherries typically don't bloom until the 25th to the 30th of April, and this year they were blooming the first week of April. The same thing with apples; everything was just moved forward three weeks."
Early blooms aren’t bad, but when combined with late frosts, they spell trouble for farmers.
"We're usually prepared [for frost], and we can manage through that in most years," Rowley said, "but this year everything was so developed and so far out when we had that early April freeze. It really got us this year."
Rowley and other farmers across the Wasatch Front — where most Utah fruit production is concentrated — lost most of their crop.
While the numbers are still uncertain, the Office of the Governor estimates that more 90% of Utah fruit production could be destroyed this year.
For farmers that depend entirely on annual fruit production to make a living, an extreme weather event like this could mean disaster. But some have found a way to buffer themselves with diversification.
Thayne Tagge, a fruit farmer in Perry, cautioned against farming that focuses entirely on single crops.
"Don't put all your eggs in one basket, you know?" he said. "This is what I've learned: Not everything works out right every year."
Tagge also grows peas, tomatoes, melons, corn, and other types of produce.
"By diversification, everything has its time and its season, so it's not ripening all the same time, it's all coming on at a different time," he said. "The whole idea is to spread out the season, so that you can make money from June, when peas and cherries start all the way through October when pumpkins are there, so you're diversifying not only to spread your risk, but you're creating a larger opportunity to have a longer season."
And even though Rowley at Cherry Hill Farms doesn’t grow many other types of produce, he still sees silver linings in the current challenging circumstances. For one, he can put in the effort this year to get his trees as healthy as possible before next season comes around.
"When you have a crop, you can't put too much fertilizer on [the trees], because it hurts the fruit," Rowley said. "This year, there's no fruit, so we can put a little bit more on, and it'll help that tree be a little more vigorous."
And without a fruit crop, Rowley can reduce water use, supporting nearby farmers who might be impacted by drought conditions.
"There are a lot of other farms around here, not just fruit," Rowley told UPR. "Some of these guys that would only be able to get two crops off their field, they're able to rent that water and maybe get a third crop this year, so it's just a way to help others and help agriculture in general."
