In today's Philadelphia Inquirer Local section is an article titled "Hot start is yielding a bumper crop", by Edward Colimore. It notes that orchards throughout NJ and PA are harvesting 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule, which is only a plus for farmer Eric Johnson of Medford, NJ.
"People are excited about everything being early. Typically we'd begin picking in the third week of June"...
Not this year, not after the warmest first four months since the start of official temperature records in 1874.
(more below)
Other crops, such as strawberries, blueberries, and apricots, are also early. And the trend includes the Midwest New England, and even Ontario. This seems to be unadulterated good news to Jerry Frecon, agriculural agent and director of Frecon Farms in Boyertown, Pa. (Unheard early blooming in Michigan and pa. "We were just lucky". Tom Holzhauser of Holzhauser Farms at Mullica Hill is also upbeat:
Things are moving along and looking wonderful...We bloomed on March 23. That's 3 1/2 weeks early for me.
The only fly in the ointment this article seems to see is maybe more disease and insect "pressure" because of the mild winter.
Now the article is an upbeat one, and the farmers delight in short term profits from big harvests is understandable, but couldn't there have been some discussion of the portents for global warming (Oops, sorry Bill Maher, I mean climate change).
I mean ONE MONTH EARLY harvesting and no even cursory discussion of the causes?
The ending of this article unintentionally illustrates what may be a reverse head in the sand ignorance of science relating to climate change, as Tom Holzhauzer opines on the early harvest (apparently just one of those things):
'We had one year, 1984, when there wasn't one piece of fruit' because of weather conditions. I have enough faith in God to get us through, though. He will give us a crop or he won't. This year it came early.
Fun fact: NJ is #4 in U.S. peach production and Pa. #5. Who are numbers 1-3?
Warning: Anyone not getting #3 will be liable to being slapped silly (perhaps by a George Patton descendant :) ).