Cold Winter, Cool Spring Bring Mixed Results For Lehigh Valley, N.J. Farmers

English: Apples on an apple-tree. Ukraine. Русский: Яблоня со спелыми плодами. Украина. Latina: Malus domestica (Borkh., 1803) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This winter’s cold temperatures that stuck around until late spring have curbed apple production at one local orchard, although local vineyards say the grapes are some of the best they’ve ever seen.

Tianna DuPont, an educator for sustainable agriculture at the Penn State Cooperative Extension, said the growing season started out about three weeks late, although recent warm weather is helping plants catch up.

Matty Matarazzo, the owner of Four Sisters Winery in White Township, expects a smaller than usual yield of apples this year. He said they’ll grow enough for the winery’s apple wine but not an abundant amount.

Bob Best, of Bests Fruit Farm in Independence Township, said the cool spring threatened his crops initially, but once the weather warmed up the produce started to grow.

Read more: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2014/07/despite_cool_start_growing_sea.html

Pennsylvania Is A Wine And Grape Producing Powerhouse

This is a very interesting set of facts that I stumbled upon while doing my usual internet surfing for stories.

Many people know that Erie County is a big grape and wine-producing area.  What you may not realize is where the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania stacks up out of the 50 states for wine and grape production.

This data is for 2007 but is the latest available information on this subject:

Pennsylvania is the 3rd largest juice grape producing state.  Who knew?

Pennsylvania is the 7th largest wine-producing state!

Pennsylvania had 114 wineries in 2007, up from 104 wineries 2005.

Wine, grapes and grape juice contributed $2.35 BILLION dollars to Pennsylvania’s economy in 2007!

So do your part to help the state’s economy and drink some delicious Pennsylvania wine 🙂