April is the cruelest month: The Killing Frost

What is a killing frost to those of who live largely indoor lives? It's probably not much to us other than turning up the heat or putting an extra blanket on the bed. Maybe if we're gardeners, we worry about our spring plants. As food consumers, we may see higher prices in the grocery store for food. But it's so much more to those who cultivate the earth for a living. As I've noted in other blog entries, the weather has stayed with me as a constant concern after growing up on an apple orchard in eastern Washington State. A killing frost can mean the difference between money in the bank and foreclosure. Recently, there was a spectacularly bad killing frost in Georgia, South Carolina, Kentucky and other states that wiped out the pecan, peach, and apple crops among others. This on the heels of a horrible killing frost in CA for the citrus crop--see my January blog entry on that and on crop insurance. Perhaps some of you heard the NPR interview with Robert Chapman from Zebulon, GA who lost his whole peach crop. I've included a link below the audio file of the NPR interview plus an overview CNN interview. You won't forget it soon if you listen to Chapman talk about the fate of his crops, the role of the weather in farming, and his fatalistic attitude.


Peach crop is a 90% disaster

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WEATHER/04/12/frozen.crops.ap/index.html


Go to NPR and listen to peach farmer Robert Chapman from Zebulon, GA
http://216.35.221.77/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9554303

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"A 25-degree freeze on Easter Sunday blackened the insides of Chapman's peach crop, which provides most of his income.
While Chapman's bushes and trees will still bear fruit next year, he says he may have to find another job in the meantime. Farmers throughout the region report heavy crop losses and are bracing for another expected cold snap next week."


Here's a typical April and May night on the Schell and Schell apple and pear orchard when it was in business:

In the morning, the radio broadcast the fruit farm report and in the spring the fruit frost forecast, which we listened to intently because all depended on its predictions about wind and air temperature and the likelihood of a killing frost. When the temperature dropped near freezing, often at 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning, my parents took measures to save the crop. To keep the apple and pear buds from freezing, my father, mother, and the hired men set out smudge pots, large blackened pots full of heating oil that resembled a cross between a genie’s bottle and a stove pipe. The pots sat squarely in the rows and when the temperature dropped, they lit the pots with a punk, a wick on a butane canister, resembling a giant-sized cigarette lighter. The fuel caught fire and produced a blue flame and smoke, which was piped through the pot’s chimney and burner holes. The heat emitted by the pots warmed the air and protected the precious buds. We called it "firing season."

For my mother and father and any of us on frost patrol, the nights were filled with watching the pots, a lonely exercise of walking the darkened rows of apple and pear trees illumined by the pots’ eerie orange glow. If the temperature continued to drop, the burner holes were opened to full capacity and the fire sucked in the oxygen and omitted more heat. Out in the orchards, one’s mind could wander and noises were magnified; a crash a few rows away could be a coyote or a neighbor’s dog or perhaps a cougar prowling its territory. A satellite blinking overhead could become a UF0. At first the chill and the uncertainty brought on by sudden noises kept one awake. As the night waned into the early light of morning, it was easy to become languid, the orchard rows warming and causing one to feel a pleasant, distant sensation while walking. Periodic checks of the thermometer stations positioned at key points in the orchard indicated whether the temperature was rising sufficiently or if there would be damage to the crops. A few hours of frost meant the buds were diminished and the fruit would be light or even non-existent.


Later came the electricity powered wind machines, the $15,000 towers with airplane-like propellers that circulate the air at night. The thwock-thwock-thwock of the machines could be heard across the valley all night, circulating the cooler air with the warm air. Even then, losses were still possible.

I remember one night in 1999 (late April/early May) when I was visiting Cashmere and on research leave, my mom was out of town, so I took her place as part of a two-person "firing" team that included my brother Mike and me. Earlier that night, Mike asked me to keep the phone by the bed and when he called, to check the temperature and turn on the wind machine on our Flowery Divide property, Later he asked me to come over to the Hansen place at around 3 a.m., one of our other orchards where he had pots set up to warm the buds. We kept adjusting the burners on the pots and trying to warm the air, but we couldn't get the temperature up over 30 in some places. The temperature just kept dropping. At one point, I started praying. At another point, I was swearing. Eventually, I was just numb and resigned, walking up and down the rows to check the pots. As the day dawned, we lost quite a bit of the crop on that place. I remember that we drove back to the farmhouse deflated and had breakfast. We did all we could to warm the air, and we still lost out against the elements that night. This was just one of many nights that Mike faced during his 20 plus years in farming.


Just a few memories. Even thinking about it gets the adrenaline going....

T.S. Eliot was right that April is the cruelest month.