FRONT ROYAL, Va. — Unable to sleep due to dire overnight freeze warnings, Shelly Cook sat in her car in the middle of her vineyard hours before dawn on April 21, praying the Rosary as her headlights illuminated grape blossoms doomed by the plunging temperatures.
“The [freeze] just turned everything black within hours,” Cook recalled. “You’re never prepared for this.”
Similar scenes of desperation and hopelessness were playing out at vineyards, orchards and farms across the Mid-Atlantic U.S., where grapes, apples, peaches, blackberries, strawberries and other seasonal fruits that had been coaxed into an early bloom by 80-degree days in March were devastated by the late-April freeze.
Torches, wind machines and other frost-mitigation measures were of little help; it was simply too cold. Growers and state officials in the region described the damage as the worst in recent memory.
“This is unlike anything many growers have experienced in decades,” Dustin Tarpine, chairman of the Garden State Wine Growers Association, told NJ.com.
At Oxbow Farm in Parkton, Maryland, a farm connected to the Catholic Worker Movement, John and Julie Dougherty reported damage to peaches, pawpaws, grapes, chestnuts
