MONROE COUNTY, Pa. — The entire strawberry field at Heckman Orchards near Effort should be filled with little white flowers. Instead, only some of the plants have them. The farm planted 30,000 strawberry plants, and because of the low temperatures overnight recently, owner Mark Heckman says he'll be lucky if even half survive.
"Due to the cool spring, what we do have is running behind, but a lot of it we lost due to the frost and the freeze. We will not be able to pick your own because we're not even going to have enough to supply our store here. That's how bad they got hit," Heckman said.
With the lack of rain, sprinklers stay on to help the plants grow and produce fruit.
Heckman says one below-freezing morning about a week and a half ago is what hurt the strawberry crop.
"I was up every hour checking the temperature, and by 3 o'clock, we were already down below 30 degrees, so we had the irrigation running on the strawberries, but we got all the way down to 26 degrees here on the farm. And even with the irrigation running, it just froze."
The dry weather is also a problem for other crops.
"Normally, we'd have sweet corn by like the second week of July. If we don't get any rain, we're not going to have any until August sometime. It's just delaying everything. Our potatoes are just barely trying to pop through the ground. It's just dry as dust. We haven't even planted our pumpkins because there's no moisture for the seeds to germinate."
The farm does have irrigation, but it's limited. They now have to pick and choose what's most important to water.
Heckman says these problems aren't local to his farm; many other farms throughout the state are having similar issues.
"I sure hope that people come and support us and get whatever we do have available to sell anyways. It might not be a bountiful year, but we'll still have some produce here for everybody."
The owner says this year, expect to see fewer apples and peaches and no cherries, pears, or plums.