{"id":224329,"date":"2026-06-21T11:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T11:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224329\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T11:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T11:25:07","slug":"lehigh-valley-fruit-farmers-finding-limited-relief-available-for-crop-losses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/224329\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh Valley fruit farmers finding limited relief available for crop losses"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chalkboard at the Gulick\u2019s Fruit Farm<\/a> in Lower Mount Bethel Township reads, \u201cNo Fruit 2026. No cherry 2026. No peaches 2026.\u201d In Lowhill Township, Weathered Vineyards<\/a>\u2019 newly opened tasting room stands in front of painstakingly cultivated vines nearly bare of grapes. Bethlehem and Emmaus farmers markets have shared\u00a0Facebook posts<\/a> urging customers not to abandon growers whose signature crops won\u2019t make it to their stands.<\/p>\n

The devastation is real for Lehigh Valley fruit farmers, and they\u2019re not alone.<\/p>\n

An April heat wave spurred early blossoming at orchards and vineyards, but subsequent nights of extreme cold killed the buds, with farmers reporting near total losses to crops ranging from cherries, peaches and pears to apples and grapes.<\/p>\n

Some assistance is now on its way.<\/p>\n

Federal natural disaster designations have been declared to assist farmers across a wide swath of the mid-Atlantic, including counties in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, D.C., Virginia and West Virginia. Northampton County is currently on the list. Lehigh County, however, is not.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pray Lehigh County gets approved. In my opinion if they do for one county they must do for all. This is great news,\u201d Kelly Gulick wrote The Morning Call after learning federal natural disaster designations include Northampton.<\/p>\n

Asked about Lehigh County, a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson wrote on June 17, \u201cState and local partners are currently working to see if these counties would meet the required documentation that would support a disaster declaration. As of now, USDA does not have anything further to announce.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal funding isn\u2019t the only potential source of relief for farmers contemplating whether they will need to take out loans, draw on retirement savings or call on friends, family and customers to help them weather a year in which their harvest will be virtually nonexistent. The Shapiro administration has also requested a $20 million recovery package to be included in budget negotiations, a Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

Tending to the trees<\/p>\n

Kelly Gulick\u2019s husband, Todd, is a sixth-generation farmer on land his family has cultivated since the 1850s. The 160-acre operation has a small staff, consisting mainly of Kelly, 56; Todd, 57; Todd\u2019s father, Jim, who turns 88 on Monday; and neighbor Kelly Swisher, who helps operate their on-site farm stand.<\/p>\n

Other family members pitch in, including Kelly and Todd\u2019s daughter Julia, who helps with weekend harvests in the fall.<\/p>\n

Loyal customers come from all over the Lehigh Valley to buy from the farm stand and pick their own fruit, activities the farm won\u2019t be able to support this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s heartbreaking,\u201d Kelly Gulick said. \u201cYou feel like you\u2019re letting people down.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the farm has a strong following among customers of Eastern European heritage, with Russian, Polish and Ukrainian visitors reporting the orchards make them nostalgic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they\u2019re here, it brings them home to their home countries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Beyond their local customers, the farm sees visitors drive in from areas ranging from New York City to Scranton to South Carolina. Some customers aim to ship fruit home, flying back to Utah and Florida with boxes of produce.<\/p>\n

A Facebook post explaining the extent of the farm\u2019s losses garnered 100 comments in three weeks, with customers pledging to return later in the summer for sweet corn and in the fall for pumpkins and one offering to start a GoFundMe if the family agreed.<\/p>\n

Kelly Gulick said she\u2019s heard of other farmers going that route, but wasn\u2019t sure that was right for her family. The farm is exploring merchandise options, like T-shirts and hats, and is planning to sell baked goods.<\/p>\n

The Gulicks are now looking to see how low the interest rate will be on the USDA Farm Service Agency emergency loans they hope to access. Knowing the couple will also need to utilize their retirement accounts, Kelly Gulick said she anticipates federal funding will help minimize the tax penalties that come with early withdrawal.<\/p>\n

Looking back on the historic combination of extreme weather that led to the crop loss, Todd Gulick said the farm had been left with few options.<\/p>\n

Strawberry farmers who have the resources to do so can run a continuous spray of water to protect their crops, he said, explaining that the formation of ice creates heat that provides a small amount of insulation to the fruit.<\/p>\n

That kind of irrigation-based solution is rare in orchards, he said. If an inversion exists, farmers can use large windmill-like machines to try and cut through the cold air layer and draw warmer air down toward the trees, he said, noting that some farms use helicopters to achieve the same goal.<\/p>\n

Even those with the necessary equipment could find that the weather makes that strategy moot, he said: \u201cThat\u2019s IF warm air is there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Managing the vines<\/p>\n

Rich Woolley is a vineyard owner with his wife, Dana, but \u2014 as the name of their business, Weathered Vineyards, indicates \u2014 he is also a weatherman.<\/p>\n

He watched the stretch of early April 90-degree days cause the vines burst into buds and new leaves nearly two weeks ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen we hit 23 degrees. On the 21st of April. And I knew it was coming, and I went to bed that night \u2014 as a meteorologist, I know it\u2019s coming. So that\u2019s a curse because you worry about it five days ahead of everybody else,\u201d Woolley said. \u201cBut I knew it was coming. There\u2019s nothing we can do about it being that cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lighting fires amid the vines wouldn\u2019t have nearly been enough to offset the damage from blossoming vines being subjected to that extreme cold, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat pretty much wiped the crop out this year,\u201d Woolley said.<\/p>\n

Grape vines grow three sets of blossoms. The early budding meant nearly all of those were wiped out, but some vines had latent buds inside their woody stems that can now be seen growing into new leaves and sprouts.<\/p>\n

Woolley\u2019s head winemaker, Hillary Gary, is advising him to focus on nurturing those new branches, ensuring the vines build enough carbohydrates to survive the winter rather than harvesting the few grapes that are still growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s tough to be out there, pruning all winter, and then see it absolutely obliterated,\u201d Gary said.<\/p>\n

Woolley and Gary start tending to the vines in January, getting everything ready to go for the growing season by the start of April.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo all those hours were spent in cold and wind and miserable conditions, and then it just starts to grow and \u2014 whoop \u2014 gets wiped out,\u201d Woolley said.<\/p>\n

He estimates that about 10% of his 5,000 vines died completely, although others should make it through the next winter with careful cultivation.<\/p>\n

Woolley and wife Dana recently invested in the construction of a much larger tasting room on the Weathered Vineyards land that also hosts live music and private events.<\/p>\n

They normally source from other growers when they need to supplement their own grapes. Woolley estimated it would cost at least $30,000 to try and buy enough grapes to replace an entire lost 2026 harvest.<\/p>\n

But this year Woolley said the freeze damage has affected vines in such a large area that he\u2019s not sure who will even have crop to sell.<\/p>\n

\u201cPretty much everybody from Michigan to Virginia to New York was hit, so I\u2019m not sure,\u201d Woolley said. \u201cI think there\u2019s still a little bit of grape up in the Lake Erie region, right on the lake.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chalkboard at the Gulick\u2019s Fruit Farm in Lower Mount Bethel Township reads, \u201cNo Fruit 2026. No cherry…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2470,119,121,120,433,182,12279,5348,139,434,28,432],"class_list":["post-224329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-agriculture","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-lower-mount-bethel-township","tag-lowhill-township","tag-news","tag-northampton-county","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224329","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=224329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}