L. MOUNT BETHEL TWP., Pa. – Freezing late-April temperatures are taking a toll on vineyards in the region.<\/p>\n
A winery owner in Northampton County says their property has already had a harsh winter, but they still hold onto hope for a good crop this season.<\/p>\n
Nestled in between the hills of Lower Mount Bethel Township, sits Franklin Hill Vineyards.<\/p>\n
“We’re lucky where we’re located, right here. We’re on top of a nice big hill, a lot of breeze going through,” said Jeremy Aguiar, assistant vineyard manager at Franklin Hill Vineyard.<\/p>\n
The vineyard is peaceful and quiet.<\/p>\n
Aguiar said there are 12 acres in production, and when everything is in bloom, there are going to be six tons of grapes per acre.<\/p>\n
“This will really look totally different.” said Aguiar.<\/p>\n
Before the peak season arrives, the highs and lows will come and go.<\/p>\n
“This past winter, we actually had a really harsh winter,” said Aguiar.<\/p>\n
Followed by an indecisive Spring.<\/p>\n
From record breaking summer-like temps dropping to below-freezing within a matter of days, the vineyard, established back in the 1980’s took a hit.<\/p>\n
“We’re not sure what the long-term effects are, until they get out a little bit farther,” said Aguiar. “As you can see here, some of the buds that we have turned out really nice. But then we have some other ones that are a little bit withered.”<\/p>\n
Vineyards across the Lehigh Valley and beyond are also experiencing dead buds and leaves, and split canes from the sap freeing.<\/p>\n
Aguiar said their primary buds are damaged and they are crucial for fruit production.<\/p>\n
“We’re not sure how or why certain parts of the vine got damaged, but what is mainly damaged is our primary buds, which is more the fruiting buds that we have for the vines that usually produce more fruits than for us. The secondary bud will come in afterwards and take over for us,” said Aguiar. “The secondary isn’t quite as fruiting. And so our crop load is going to be affected a little bit. Our process estimates are going to be a little affected by this year. We’re not sure how much yet.”<\/p>\n
“When I saw the frost, I got very disappointed, of course, because we worked so hard to get to this point,” said Elaine Pivinski, longtime owner of Franklin Hill Vineyard.<\/p>\n
Taking it one day at a time, Pivinski said she remains hopeful for a warm and busy season ahead to get from root to bottle.<\/p>\n
“I just have to have hope again, we’re farmers, that it’ll come back and we’ll have a good crop,” said Pivinski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L. MOUNT BETHEL TWP., Pa. – Freezing late-April temperatures are taking a toll on vineyards in the region.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,77307,77308,10534,77309,77306,157,434,77310,77305,5997],"class_list":["post-172252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-crop-loss","tag-franklin-hill-vineyards","tag-freeze","tag-frost-damage","tag-grapes","tag-lehigh-valley","tag-northampton-county","tag-primary-buds","tag-vineyard","tag-wine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}