We are fortunate to have a variety of fruit-producing trees and shrubs on our Littleton farm. Unfortunately, following a nearly snowless winter, a hard freeze struck in mid-spring, wiping out fruit blossoms and eliminating most of our fruit crop this year.
Apples, plums, mulberries, crabapples, apricots, wild cherries and pears have not appeared; there has been a limited supply of chokecherries. The only fruit trees with their usual crop are the junipers, a welcome development for robins, cedar waxwings and for our lone Townsend's solitaire that arrives by October. Indeed, the lack of fruit seems to have had a significant impact on the number and variety of birds observed on the farm this summer.
Growing fruit in this semiarid ecosystem is always a bit of a gamble but I do not recall any previous year when a spring weather event has been so deleterious. Followed by an extremely hot and dry summer, that hard freeze seems to have been a warning sign of rough times ahead.
