Freeze damage unknown for several days at Kuipers

Thursday night was a long one for the owners of Kuipers Family Farm in Maple Park.

Wade and Kim Kuipers spent it watching the thermometer, as temperatures dropped and dropped.

“We were up all night,” Kim Kuipers said Friday afternoon. “It was dropping fast.”

Around 3:30 a.m., when it 29 degrees, Wade Kuipers ran out to their apple orchard and fired up the machinery they hope will save their 2012 apple crop.

But they won’t know for sure for a couple days if they were successful.

And Kim Kuipers suspected they would have to do the same thing Friday night, and may have to again Tuesday, as freezing temperatures are forecast.

This extra warm late winter and early spring may be pleasant for humans, but it isn’t good for apple trees. They blossomed about a month ahead of schedule, making them vulnerable to late spring frosts and freezes. Kuipers said freezes are possible until at least May 6.

The Kuipers installed an inversion windmill, to draw warmer air down into the orchard.

And they are experimenting with something else: boiler heaters. The boilers are typically used at construction sites to thaw ground so foundations can be poured in cold weather. Instead, the Kuipers have looped heat-tube hoses through the trees on the western side of the orchard. Hot water runs through the tubes.

The goal was to keep the temperature above 28 degrees. At that point, they would expect 10 percent of the crop to be damaged. At 25 degrees, they could lose 90 percent.

Kuipers said they managed to keep the temperature at 30 to 31 degrees.

“Everybody is in the same boat,” she said, noting that when they visited friends in Pennsylvania last week, a freeze hit that killed the friends’ peach crop.