N.B. farmers hoping for warm temperatures after harsh winter

COCAGNE, N.B. – New Brunswick farmers are still reeling from the effects of a harsh winter.

At La Fleur du Pommier apple orchard, staff say high snow drifts and heavy snow are ripping their trees apart. Hundreds of trees throughout the orchard have limbs dangling from their trunks.

Leopold Bourgeois is the orchard’s co-owner.

“Just the weight of the snow, in some places we had 10 feet in the orchard,” he said. “So just the weight and it compacts and grabs the branches and pulls down as it settles.”

Bourgeois says staff have been busy pruning trees but he said when the damage is done it can take years for branches to heal.

“If it heals it will leave your tree without lower limbs and you’ll lose production of course,” he said.

Other farmers say the high amounts of snow have made it difficult to get out to their fields.

Organic farmer Alyson Chisholm is co-owner of Windy Hill Farm and says her crops are still buried under four feet of snow.

“If you start too late you never get the yields that you want,” she said. “So we are a little bit concerned but I think next week its supposed to get a bit warmer so we’re hoping we’ll get that melt.”

She says farmers need the temperatures to warm-up but she hopes the spring thaw won’t cause another problem.

“We hope we’ll get the temperatures we need for it to melt and we hope we don’t get too much flooding,” she said.