Due to unseasonably
warm weather followed by a frost, Tempel
Farms Organics must select fruit from outside our local farms. We know you
choose us because you choose local and we feel we will be able to choose
reputable farms that are slightly outside of our county to fulfill your
requirements for fresh and delicious organic fruit.
In March we quickly put away our sweaters and winter hats as
we celebrated unseasonably warm weather. Record breaking temperatures reached
many parts of the United States. While temperatures should have remained in the
upper 30’s into the 40’s we had 9 days of 80+ degrees! The last time we had
such a warm March was in 2007. This was followed by a freeze in April where
temperatures dropped into the low 20s’s. Why am I going on about the weather?
Being a farmer, weather is our focus in how we can predict our season. The
frost in that 2007 April “caused over a billion dollars in damages across the
Midwest and Southern U.S to fruit crops, especially apples and peaches, as well
as alfalfa and winter wheat.”
While the weather was picture perfect in March people asked
if we were going to start the farm season planting early. This definitely was
tempting and believe me while the weather tricked us into thinking it was June
we felt pretty restless in knowing that we had to wait until that last frost date
to transplant many of our plants. Most vegetable farmers in this area hold May
15th as the last frost date. We then roll up our sleeves and go full
throttle until the cold weather meets up with us in November.
Fruit farmers are not as lucky with this last freeze date.
All fruit trees and shrubs are perennials. So imagine back in March when the
weather made daffodils bloom, the trees started to bud and bushes too so did
the fruit shrubs and trees. Fruit trees in Southwest Michigan began to bud up
tiny apricots and peaches, cherries, apples, blueberry shrubs where leafed out
and tiny buds of blueberries were close to producing early blueberries by early
May! Mick Klug, from Mick Klug Farm reported that “this could be the best year for fruit with the weather or the worst,
we’ll have to see what April gives.”
On April 28th Saturday morning, a phone call came
my way from Mick Klug, our main fruit supplier. The frost had hit his farm
pretty hard just days before and put severe damage on his cherry trees, peaches,
plums, apricots, apples and more. It was a difficult phone call for any farmer
to listen to. Understanding how crops have been severely damaged without having
any ability to revive them, your season has really come to a halt. Mick
reported, “Our tree fruit and stone fruit
took a bad hit with about a 70 percent crop loss and 100 percent on some of our
peach trees. It's right next to a disaster on tree fruit."
As you know, nearly 90% of our fruit for our Seasonal Fruit
CSA is supplied from Mick Klug. Knowing that Mick was unable to supply with
most of the fruit we needed this season we’ve spent the next several weeks
seeking out other local fruit farmers. We found that most of Michigan fruit
growers were hit pretty badly by the frost. Those farmers that are on higher
ground in Michigan were not hit with as much frost damage but do not offer as
much variety as we need for our CSA.
With our research and talking with all sorts of farmers
(local and non) we believe that while we considered to cancel our Seasonal
Fruit CSA we decided that it is even more necessary to fulfill
our Seasonal Fruit CSA for you. We will put every effort to find as much
local, organically grown, or local IPM
grown as possible. If this is unavailable we will take our next approach in
finding you organically grown non local.
Our effort will be to keep your food dollars locally so that we can sustain our
neighboring farmers. In the event that this cannot happen and we feel the need
is to reach out from the Midwest we will let you know from where in the U.S.
your fruit came from.
We appreciate your support of our farm so that we may grow
for you year after year. If you have any questions about this year’s Seasonal
Fruit CSA please don’t hesitate to send us an email and we’ll be happy to answer
them. Tempelfarmsorganics@yahoo.com
We’ll see you on June 14th!
Your farmers,
Tania and Chris Cubberly and the crew at Tempel Farms
Organics
