WATSONVILLE — This year’s apple crop took a hit from unusual weather patterns that began last year with heavy rainfall.
That caused the trees to bloom early, but a frost in April damaged much of the blossoms, apple farmer Nita Gizdich said.
The trees recovered, only to have their apples severely damaged by several days of hot weather, she said.
“The heat practically cooked them on the trees,” she said.
Gizdich, known for her ubiquitous pies and cider, estimated that she lost 35 percent of her crop.
“We got hit hard,” she said. “We lost a lot of the crop.”
Worse still, the current warm weather is keeping the leaves on her trees, meaning they cannot be pruned for the winter.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in all my apple years,” Gizdich said.
Nick Prevedelli of Prevedelli Farms said his family experienced similar troubles.
“It was a disaster,” he said. “Our crop is definitely down. We will be finishing early.”
The unseasonable weather has also meant that trees are producing smaller apples, Prevedelli said.
That is not a problem for that farm, which sells its wares at farmers markets to customers more concerned with quality than quantity.
But it can hurt farmers who sell their apples to grocery stores, where customers prize size and shine, said California Apple Commission Executive Director Alex Ott.
Still, the farmers are getting relatively good prices for their apples, he said.
Unrelated to the weather, the apple industry is also facing a labor shortage, fed in part by increased enforcement of immigration laws and by the sheer difficulty of finding skilled agricultural workers, Ott said.
“Agriculture is a skilled labor position,” he said.
Ott also stressed the importance of shopping locally.
“It’s important that we support local growers as much as possible,” he said.
