00:00That's classic frost injury.
00:03A mid-spring frost left its mark on apples across the northeast, damage that Scott Hill
00:08is still finding at harvest.
00:10The timing of it was really poor because we had a lot of warm weather preceding that cold
00:15and it made the trees susceptible to damage.
00:18Orchards of Conklin in New York's Hudson Valley lost roughly 20 percent of its crop.
00:23But as the season progressed, more surviving fruit became apparent.
00:27It took about two months, but the crop showed up and it kept showing up.
00:32When there's no apples on them.
00:33At Soons Orchard, Art Soons says he lost at least 90 percent of his apple crop.
00:40You want to call it everything, 90 percent is everything.
00:43The 93-year-old grew up on this farm, which has been in his family since 1910.
00:48He says this year's freeze caused the worst crop loss he's ever seen.
00:52This orchard never froze, period, since 1910.
00:57My grandfather bought this place.
00:58There's never had a freeze out.
01:01Soons says some of his 3,000 trees were already in full bloom when the April freeze arrived,
01:06several days ahead of some other orchards.
01:09We had the disadvantage now of being a week, three, maybe three or four days ahead of everybody
01:16else up there.
01:17With little of their own crop to sell, the family has been buying apples from other growers
01:21to keep their sales up.
01:23It's keeping us going.
01:24Back at Orchards of Conklin, Hill says rainy weekends have also disrupted the pick your
01:29own season.
01:30This year has been a difficult year.
01:32I think it rained every Sunday in September or pretty close to it.
01:37We even had one weekend where we had the Northeaster.
01:41It rained three straight days.
01:42From spring frost to rainy fall weekends, this year's weather has forced these family farms
01:47to adapt.
01:49But I think that we're creative and resilient and we always find different ways.
01:56For AccuWeather, I'm Heather Fordham.
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