Pick-your-own-fruit farms feeling the heat amid dry spell
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — The sun is shining, but the berries are a bust.
"Around Christmas time and New Year's, we had those really cold temperatures, down into the negative 20s at times," said Adam Voll, farm manager at Soergel Orchards. "We lost some of our peach crop, our cherry crop and some of our strawberries were affected at that time."
Soergel Orchards in Wexford gave KDKA-TV a closer look at the lackluster lot. A perfect storm is to blame, one without rain that is.
"With the lack of rain and all the other weather conditions going into it, the crop itself wasn't as good as we had hoped," Voll said.
We're two-plus weeks into a dry spell with no measurable rain, and bone dry equals small berries even if they are watered like crazy.
"We try to do our best at the time here, but berry season and strawberry season is quite short for us. You can't really make it up," Voll said.
Soergel Orchards isn't the only one posting the news on social media. Trax Farms just canceled its pick-your-own berries too. So thinking positively, is there anything different they can do now to stop it from happening next year?
"The crop we have in the ground now, we're really trying to irrigate and water and take care of it now, so hopefully we have a good crop next year because if those plants don't really flourish, then next year could be a problem," Voll said.