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CHILTON COUNTY, Ala. (WIAT) — With cold weather happening Sunday night, farmers are concerned how it could impact peaches.
Colby Jones, manager of Durbin Farms Market, said peaches are the most sensitive when they begin to bloom.
That is why he and other farmers are doing everything they can to protect the crop from dying, like using windmills, to prevent frost from settling on the peaches.
“Here, we have a lot of machines planted in certain areas where you do have many mid varieties because typically that’s when you do have your cold snaps,” Jones said.
Jones said farmers who don’t have a windmill system hire helicopter pilots to run their copters blades over peaches, which pushes warm air down to protect them.
He said it’s too early to determine if they’ll be enough peaches to go around for the season.
“Right now, everything looking good,” Jones said. “But even going into tomorrow, you still have to wait and see what’s going on with the trees.
“You still must cut them and check them and see if the peaches are dead in certain spots. We can go through and see how many peaches are doing well in certain spots. We can see how many peaches are doing well on certain trees and getting metrics, and that kind of lets you know if you do have a loss what percentage or if you’re good past that point.”
Jones said if they don’t experience a long period of cold weather, the peaches should be ready by May.
