5 months ago
Farmers spend months preparing their land for the right conditions to yield good crops, but Mother Nature can reverse all that work in days.
Blueberry farmer Ted Wach of Wach Farms, says frost conditions at his Bolingbroke farm took out 99 percent of his berries.
"The freeze came and just about everyone of them that we had. There's barely enough out there that we got out there that my wife got to make a pie," said Wach. He and his wife bought the farm 10 years ago. Opening it up each summer for people to come out and pick blueberries from their 2.5 acres. While they've had setbacks before, Wach says he's never seen anything like this before.
He's not alone. Loretta Lamanna, of Pot Luck Nursery in Milledgeville says frost played a role in taking out about 50 percent of her blueberries. Now that summer's here, she says the heat is hurting the crop too.
Seth Peed at Deer Creek Farms in Forsyth, planted an acre of his own berries just last year. He's still waiting for the bushes to reach their full height, but he says there's only so much a farmer can do prevent weather damage.
"Once you get down to about 20, 22 degrees and lower, your ability to protect that crop is severely reduced," said Peed. Wach agrees, but he says he hates turning away the 1,500 to 2,000 people that make the trek to his farm to pick berries. Wach says he sees people from Florida, Tennessee and all over Georgia.
"It's an awful feeling to see all this. People would be enjoying all this but you can't do much about it," he said. Until next year, all Wach can do is remember what his farm looks like during a good season.
"You can see them all over this place here. The blue color, oh it's beautiful, it really is," he says of the sight he's anxious to see again.
He's hoping with warm weather his plants will turn over a new leaf.
"These plants are growing. They're putting out leaves like you can't believe cause they didn't have any blueberries. So they're putting out the leaves and next year, I don't think we'll ever see a crop like that again," he said. "There will be more blueberries next year then you can ever dream of."
