by Marty Green ·
Friday, May 1, 2026
It was a close call, but the recent cold snap seems to have done only limited damage to Harvard’s orchards. However, as Chris Green of Westward Orchards said, “It’s still pretty early in the game to know what’s going on.”
The late April frost—especially after an early warm spell—was a sharp reminder of the disastrous weather of 2023. That year, Harvard orchardists lost their entire crop of peaches, nectarines, and cherries, and there was heavy damage to the apple crop, too.
This year, the apple blossoms were at a vulnerable stage in late April, Green said, and some were damaged, especially by the coldest nights—April 20 and 21—when temperatures fell as low as 29 degrees in Worcester County. “It’s a percentage—not like a 100% wipeout. … They were not all hurt, by any stretch,” Green said. He noted some parts of Westward’s orchards are at a fairly high elevation in town, which always provides some protection because the coldest air settles in low-lying areas.
Christiane Turnheim of Good Spirits Farm said her trees are always a little late to flower because of her location at the foot of Bare Hill, but her peach blossoms look a little light now. “It won’t be a bumper crop this year,” she predicted, and she isn’t sure yet how the apricots will do.
Pam Lawson of Doe Orchards said the peach crop was at the most risk, as their peach blossoms were just opening when the cold set in. After the coldest night, she said, “We thought we’d lost the whole crop. But we found most of the blossoms seem OK.”
Lawson had alerted readers on the social media platform Nextdoor that they might hear some noise from her orchards at night, as she would be using wind machines to keep the cold air from settling around the trees. In a telephone interview with the Press, she said the protection had worked well for the coldest nights. She explained she has a weather station in the orchard that tracks the temperatures all night and alerts her when she needs to turn on the machines.
Years and years ago, Lawson said, before they had the wind machines, the family warmed the orchard by burning wood in barrels during a cold spell. And they hired two helicopters to fly over the orchard and stir up the air around the trees.
Katie Carlson, the manager of Carlson Orchards, reported similar limited effects of the cold snap. “We don’t know the full extent of the possible damage,” she said, but she expected there had been some harm to the apples. The risk was higher, she said, because the very warm days a little earlier had “gotten everything moving.”
Carlson’s orchards are laid out with different varieties of apples in different rows. Some rows that had started to blossom were stopped by the cold snap, but they are now moving ahead again, Carlson said. The loss of a small part of the apple crop might even be helpful, she suggested, because it would do some of the thinning that is generally needed later in the season.
Lawson said the second week in May is when the Harvard orchardists can usually stop worrying about cold weather. Carlson agreed, saying cold temperatures are not likely to be a problem after Mother’s Day.
Cold is not the only weather problem for orchardists, though. Green, Lawson, and Carlson all mentioned they expected the bees that are brought in as pollinators to arrive soon, perhaps this week. (Turnheim has her own hives.) And, as Green pointed out, a long stretch of rainy weather can keep the bees from doing their job.
For Harvard residents looking forward to peaches later in the summer, Carlson had a hopeful prediction that was handed down in her family: “If the forsythia is good, it should be a good peach year.” And all around Harvard, forsythia bushes seem to be blooming very well indeed.