Late-spring frost and bears impact 2026 fruit crop in Connecticut
This year’s apple and peach harvests are a little smaller this year than in previous years. There are two main culprits: late-spring freeze and bears.
“In May, it got down to the 20s, and it came out at a bad time, right? It zaps a lot of those young buds, and once we lose those buds, you have to wait until next year to get that same crop,” said Allen Clark, owner of Clark Farms in Granby, Connecticut.
Freezing temperatures in May came as the apples were growing this year. However, there are some bright spots this fall.
“My Honeycrisp apple seems to be loaded, so that’s probably the only one that I had the majority of that there, and maybe some Golden Delicious because they were kind of spared,” said Allen.
The peaches, however, did not survive the summer at Bushy Hill Orchard.
“We got whacked with the bears. The last three years, we haven’t picked a peach on this farm. There’s a mom and two cubs that just patrol this area, and they take every single peach that we have,” said Allen. “Fortunately, they don’t bother the apples. If they bother the apples, we wouldn’t have a business.”
With this season’s smaller harvest, the Clarks are already looking forward to next year. They weren’t able to go through with summer pruning as they do in years past.
“This year with the smaller crop, we’re not able to do that, so we’re going to for a fall pruning that’s going to be where we’re going to start that new,” said Zach Clark, Clark Farms Second Generation.
Pruning can help provide as much sunlight as possible for the crops, which is especially helpful during the colder and darker months of the year.
“The tree, like during the winter too, you know, it stores its energy in the roots, and the trunk itself can actually save some of the energy that those pruned branches would lose, and it can direct that towards producing better crop,” said John Flanagan, an employee at Clark Farms.
As for this fall, the Clarks are just hoping for nice weekend weather to encourage people to visit.
“You just got to hope that we don’t have any rainy weekends, which happened to us a couple years ago. It rained every single weekend except for one,” said Allen.
The family said that there should still be enough apples to get them through this season.
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