Image Credit: CFJC Today / Adam Donnelly

By Jill Sperling

Cold Harvest

Unseasonably cold temperatures impacting Kamloops area crops

Oct 26, 2020 | 9:39 PM

KAMLOOPS, B.C. — Kamloops is experiencing winter conditions much earlier than normal and that’s having an impact on area crops.

Farmers’ fields are covered in a layer of snow, following last Friday’s (Oct. 23) early snow dump. However, the bigger concern is how cold it’s been.

It’s harvest time at Privato Winery. Most of the grapes have been picked and are ready to become wine. But, there are still some grapes left on the vine.

“It’s tough right now in particular because of the cold weather, everybody’s out picking their fruit and a lot of times people share the pickers,” said Adam Woodward of Privato Winery and Woodward Cider. “So, it’s a matter of supply and demand. They’re just hard to find. So, if you get a solid five-to-10 person crew then you can go out and actually pick what you need.”

There is a need to work fast because of the cold temperatures.

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“Just freezing the actual juices inside the fruit, as soon as it freezes you want to get it off the vine as soon as you can,” Woodward said.

On the same property, the harvest for Woodward Cider is complete.

“All of my apples were actually picked as of last week before the cold,” Woodward said. “So, right now, we’re just seeing the effects of the cold weather on the grapes.”

Despite this, Woodward is still expecting a successful harvest for Privato Winery.

“We’ve got all of our grapes in now except for our Pinot Noir, behind me here this is Merlot going in,” Woodward said, “so we just have the one variety left to do and that’ll kind of be it for us.”

Meanwhile, the cold weather has brought some farmers’ season to an abrupt halt.

“I had a number of things that were still left in the field,” said Dieter Dudy of Thistle Farm. “I haven’t got my garlic in yet, but my understanding is [the weather is] going to moderate. So, what it’s done is it’s slowed down what we were trying to achieve. I may have lost a few things because it wasn’t so much the snow, we could have dealt with that, but when the temperatures went down to -11 and further, that probably affected what beets I had in the ground and some of the other stuff, because it just makes them unusable then for market.”

Dudy can regularly be found selling produce from Thistle Farm at the Kamloops Regional Farmer’s Market.

“For me, my season essentially stops at the end of market,” Some people carry on with winter markets and that, but for me I pretty much stop at that point.”

The final Kamloops Farmer’s Market of the season takes place on Halloween, Saturday, Oct. 31.