According to Dan Kielar, a horticulture technician with the Peninsular Ag Research Station, the late and cold spring pushed cherry season back 8 to 10 days this year. He said tart cherries could be ready for picking as early as Saturday in lower parts of the area. Kielar expects peak tart cherry season to be from July 24th to August 6th.
In some parts of the state, like Wisconsin's main hub for cherries Door County, the weather simply pushed back the season by a week or two. In other parts it did much worse. Steffen's Orchards in Fort Atkinson saw a brutally cold winter kill most of their orchard.
In all they've lost 15,000 to 17,000 trees. They planted new trees, and they will let some of the damaged ones sit for another year to see if they'll bounce back next year. “We're not hopeful, but there is a chance that some of them could so we want to give them that opportunity,” Steffen said.
The orchard has been around for nearly 40 years. It's mostly a U-pick farm. Luckily the cherries don't account for the Steffen family's main source of income, they work other jobs. However, it's still a financial hit for them. They have years of re-growing ahead of them before the orchard returns to what it was.
The Steffen family orchard is in southern Wisconsin. In Door County, which produces the majority of the state's cherries, they'll simply come late rather than not at all.
Source: spectrumnews1.com
