EUSTIS, Fla. — Due to overnight freezing temperatures, some growers in Central Florida are worried about their livelihoods.
Michael Hill, owner of Amber Brooke Farms, is dreading the cold weather. “It’s just a deep pit in your stomach at night when you know it’s coming, and you know you’re gonna have loss.”
He owns strawberry, peaches, and blueberry crops. “We just try to take it and take it day by day.” Around noon, we could still see icicles hanging from his blueberry plants after spraying them with water overnight.
“32 is our temperature. And we put that layer of ice on there to insulate the plant and actually, it creates fusion when ice is being formed.”
He says his beautiful sunflowers have some frost damage. And so does his zinnia flower bed. “This is all burnt.”
It’s not the first time Michael has had to deal with damage, back in October, 20-percent of his strawberry crop was destroyed and a retention wall was also damaged from 19-inches of rain. It was thousands of dollars to make repairs.
“We took all that dirt and put it up there, just kind of moved it all, and then we had to re-sod everything,” Michael says. They have 1,000 acres of blueberry plants across the state, and each year they pack and ship 8 million pounds of blueberries.
“We grow and sell to retail to Publix, Aldi, Walmart,” and Costco as well.
As the afternoon sun warms his crops, Michael says they’re not out of the woods yet. “My concern is this weekend, they’re calling for 25- to 26-degrees with 15 to 20-mile-an-hour winds. That could be devastating this weekend.” If he experiences a large loss, he says he’ll have to sell what survives at a higher price.
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