Owners of Dalton Farms worry about short season for Tulip Festival
LOGAN TOWNSHIP, N.J. (CBS) -- Farmers say warm winter and hot April threaten a popular New Jersey Tulip Festival.
It's tulips as far as the eye can see at Dalton Farms in Logan Township, New Jersey for the fourth Tulip Festival.
"We got a million tulip bulbs and more than 200,000 daffodil bulbs," said co-owner Chris Viereck.
With just days until Easter, we found hundreds of people out Friday morning hunting down their perfect bouquet. There are more than 150 different types of tulips, plus wine, food, and even the Easter Bunny. There's something for everyone.
But the star of the show is undoubtedly the beautiful bulbs.
"It's a very rare season to have this many flowers in bloom this early in the season, but it's magical," said Viereck.
But it's that early bloom that has the owners at Dalton Farms worried. Viereck says the warm winter really sped up the process for the tulips, and while March was better, April has been hard.
"80 degrees in April? That shouldn't happen," said Viereck. "And it wasn't just one day, it was three days in a row. Looking at the long-range forecast, I'm seeing it again next week. So that's really going to push these flowers too fast."
Viereck says the tulip season can typically run as long as 30 days. But with the heat we've been seeing and what's expected ahead, he thinks this year could drop to only 21 days. The farm has even paused ticket sales for its final week, worried they won't have enough flowers in bloom.
That's a big blow to their bottom line.
"One weekend for us, that's a big deal," says Viereck. "We'll probably lose about 30% to 40% of our revenue for this year and that's terrible."
The message from the farm this year: get your tulips sooner rather than later.
"There's nothing that bothers either one of us any more than someone calling up and saying 'Hey I want to come out and see your flowers,' and they've missed it," says co-owner Keith Dalton. "So it's one of those: get here now, because it's going to be a short season."
