After March brought us a miraculous string of 80-degree days, Midwestern fruit farmers were praying for an equally miraculous April — one warm enough to protect all the vulnerable fruit blossoms coaxed into early bloom.
But a punishing frost in the last days of April dashed those hopes along with most of the Midwest tree fruit harvest, experts and farmers say.
"Our tree fruit and stone fruit took a bad hit with about a 70 percent crop loss and 100 percent on some of our peach trees," said Mick Klug, whose orchards in southwest Michigan supply several restaurants and farmers markets in the Chicago area. "It's right next to a disaster on tree fruit."
Chicago-area farmers markets, many of which have already opened, are likely to watch this disaster play out in coming months, with scant and expensive supplies of peaches, cherries, apricots, plums and apples.
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