Great Lakes Fruit Belt
2023 is a tough year for our farm. Some of you who grow gardens may remember a late spring freeze on May 18th that most likely killed any tender annuals you had already planted in the ground. For us, and many other farmers in our region, that freeze had a significant impact on our apple crop. The freeze happened right after blossom, a time of great vulnerability for the current year’s crop as well as for the trees themselves. Temperatures got down to 28 for several hours – more than enough time to wreak havoc on the newly fertilized baby apples. Our U-Pick Orchard suffered the worst damage – over 60% of our crop was killed that night.
The next day my husband and I went out to the orchard and cut into fruitlet after fruitlet and instead of finding the bright white ovules that indicated a viable fruit, we found brown and shriveled tissue – a dead giveaway (literally) that we were holding a doomed fruit. The fruit that remained developed at the normal rate, however many of the apples had a brown scabby frost patch or ring on the skin surface. This scar that formed the night of the freeze, a small blemish on the tender exterior of the fruitlet, continued to expand and grow in size as the apple itself grew. It was incredibly disheartening to watch a crop develop with such extensive damage.
Our U-Pick Orchard is just 6 acres of the 250 acres that we currently farm. That 6-acre U-Pick Orchard is located on Ridge Road in Medina, the former shoreline of the ancient Lake Iroquois. The rest of our acreage is planted in Lyndonville, just six miles north of our U-Pick Orchard, centered around the original homestead of my husband’s great-grandfather and our farm’s founder, Leonard Oakes. These acres suffered from the freeze as well, but not as significantly as our U-Pick Orchard. Those six miles of distance put our other orchards six miles closer to Lake Ontario and therefore they were better protected from the perils of that cold cold night. We are so fortunate to be farming on land that is so close to a natural microclimate regulator, but it’s not just by chance that our farm is located there.
The entire Great Lakes region boasts several areas of farmland known to be ideal for growing tree fruit and grapes. These areas are called “Fruit Belts” and they yield huge quantities of fruit each year – they are the reason New York and Michigan are the second and third most productive apple-growing states in our country. But how can the proximity of the lakes be so beneficial for growing fruit?
The Great Lakes are immense bodies of water. I still remember when my French brother-in-law saw Lake Michigan for the first time - he was absolutely shocked that he wasn’t looking at the sea. The sheer amount of water in these lakes acts as a heat sink and source and moderates the temperature shifts in the shoreline directly adjacent, called the ‘lake plains’. Because of this moderation, temperatures stay cooler in the spring, delaying the development of flower buds and buffering the severe impact of below-freezing temps. The lake also holds on to heat longer in the fall, enabling a slower ripening of the crop and allowing more time for harvest. In addition to temperature moderation, the soils close to the Great Lakes shoreline are incredibly fertile. They used to be the bed of the ancient Lake Iroquois which was formed by melting glaciers some 13,000 years ago. As the ancient lake retreated, it left behind soils rich with nutrients and organic matter, and ideal for plant growth.
Early settlers to Western New York recognized that the shoreline of Lake Ontario was ideal for growing fruit, whether or not they had the scientific data to back it up. The first orchards were said to have been planted in the region in the early 1800s and New York became a major exporter of apples throughout the 19th century. There’s so much cool history in apple growing in our region that I definitely want to leave that for a separate post.
For today, I just want to recognize the unique growing zone that is the Great Lakes Fruit Belt. To acknowledge the terroir of our region that produces such delicious fruit. And to be grateful to the natural protection offered by Lake Ontario that saved our crop from a total loss this year.
Best,
Katie