After extreme weather events brought about a particularly challenging growing season for Pioneer Valley farmers in 2023, this year’s peach crop appears to be shaping up to be devastating for some western Massachusetts farmers, while most weathered the storm.

Clarkdale Fruit Farms owner Ben Clark, who lost the entirety of his peach crop and 70% of his apples and pears in 2023 due to subzero temperatures that February, said this year’s crop has been comparatively bountiful. He credited his crop’s success in Deerfield to planting at a higher altitude — a farming technique that he said makes peach trees more resilient to the cold.

“Peaches are much more susceptible to cold damage than apples are, so in any of the lower areas, the cold can really settle in and will just get affected more adversely,” Clark said. “Fortunately, up in Franklin County, most of our orchards are up on a hill. Because peaches are sensitive, growers generally plant them in their best location, the highest elevation, so they get good air drainage and good sun exposure. … Franklin County had a good crop because we didn’t have the same negative impacts. We did get some cold, but nothing that really affected the crop.”

“It all depends on where your trees are planted, and sometimes frost settles just perfectly in those low-lying spots in your orchard,” agreed Courtney Basil, co-owner of Apex Orchards in Shelburne, noting that a frost event can happen very quickly. “We can have an orchard that’s not far from us, just a few miles, and they could have frost damage, and we might not.”

Apex Orchards is among the Pioneer Valley farms that experienced success with this year’s peach crop. Basil said the orchard has been particularly fruitful this summer.

“It’s definitely been all peachy,” Basil said. “You never really know until you get it picked and in the barn, but looking on the trees, the peaches look very clean. They look beautiful.”

Pine Hill Orchards in Colrain is also headed toward a good harvest this year, according to co-owner Brady Shearer. While Shearer said the farm has seen particularly difficult growing seasons amid extreme heat in years past, the farm has worked hard to ensure its peaches are “big, juicy and beautiful.”

Clark also noted that while Franklin County farms are seeing a healthy harvest, some orchards in Hampshire and Hampden counties, which are typically on lower-elevation flatlands, saw a more devastating peach season.

Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton saw a 40% loss in its peach crops, according to co-owner Russell Braen. Two years ago, Braen said the farm’s peach yields took a hit because of unusually high heat, whereas this year he lost the portion of the crops that were planted at the bottom of a hill, rather than the top, due to the cold.

“Peaches are, you know, probably the most endangered crop from climate change down south, where they don’t get cold enough, since they need a certain number of hours of cold in the winter to reset their system clocks, basically. Up here, it’s different reasons,” Braen explained. “This year, it was winter damage from those really cold days we had in January. My peaches are on a hill, and the bottom of the hill doesn’t have any peaches on it — the top of the hill does, so it probably got super cold at the bottom at some point.”

Brad Morse, co-owner of Outlook Farm in Westhampton, had a lucky break, as his crops did not see any frost issues. Morse said his crops “came through with no problems whatsoever,” as they did not face subzero temperatures this season.

Aside from the altitude-related frosts damaging portions of the Easthampton orchard’s peach trees, Braen noted that the summer is bringing, all in all, a “pretty good fruit year,” and that he has already harvested roughly 4,000 pounds of fruit total.

“When peaches are good, they’re good. We probably get eight good crops out of a decade,” he said. “We had one total loss and one semi-loss, so there’s enough peaches that we have them at the markets, and we have them at our farm stand. I wholesale on some years, but I’m not wholesaling any this year.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.