The frost that coated the Mid-Atlantic on April 21 is making for a bleak season ahead for vintners and farmers who experienced losses of up to 90% of their crops.
Robert Butz, of Windridge Vineyard in Darnestown, Maryland, told reporters Wednesday, “There’s no way to sugarcoat it, on the grape side of our business anyway, pretty much 100% of any living tissue was frosted off on that morning of the 21st.”
Butz said since Windridge expanded from growing grapes to moving into wine production, his farm can blunt some of the effect of the April frost.
“In the early days of growing grapes, I was a grape grower, I didn’t produce any wine,” he said, adding that an event like the one that hit the region earlier this month, “I would have lost all my income on grapes for the year.”
But thanks to planning and past harvests, Butz said, “We’ve been preparing for this over the years, and we do have some inventory,” but he added, “That’s going to set us all back and we’ll be working for the next five years to climb out of this event.”
However, Butz said, his business wasn’t hit as hard as many of his neighboring farms who produce peaches, apples and strawberries. Because of the frost damage that devastated those crops, Butz said, “They’re just not going to have those to sell.”
Many Montgomery County farms offer community-supported agriculture, or CSA, deals, where customers sign up for memberships and get weekly or biweekly boxes of produce throughout the growing season. Butz said, those farms “may not have exactly everything that the customer was used to getting in years past. 鈥� But now more than ever, we all of us, need the business.”
Speaking during Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich’s weekly briefing, Butz urged consumers who enjoy getting fresh produce to continue to buy available produce from local farms.
“Even though one or a couple of things may not be in stock, there’s still tons of great produce,” he said, adding his own farm has past vintage in stock. “Please keep coming out to see us.”
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