Simmons Farm won't have pick-your-own peaches this year, citing overnight cold snaps

A popular Washington County farm won't be offering pick-your-own peaches this year. 

The overnight cold snaps in the last few weeks knocked out a majority of the peach crop at Simmons Farm in Peters Township. Now spring's bounty is looking more like spring's folly this year for Simmons and other orchards across the state.

"That's part of being a farmer," part-owner Scott Simmons said.

While there is plenty of green on the trees, finding a juicy, sweet peach is tough. According to Simmons, only a fraction of what normally grows is coming through this year.

"Each one of those branches should have 20 or 30 peaches at this time, but as you can see, there are almost nothing on them at all," Simmons said about his peach trees.

Some of the warm temperatures in March got the trees budding, but then the cold snaps at night over the past few weeks killed them off. Simmons said about three out of every 10 years, peaches have rough years around here.

Across the state, the cold snaps have done a number on farmers. Gov. Josh Shapiro's office estimates farmers could lose between $150 million to $200 million.

"We're very fortunate we have a lot of different crops to fall back on," Simmons said in his orchard.

The farm's apples and strawberries are still okay. They plan to let people still pick those fruits once they're ripe.

"Most of our vegetable crops will be in the ground within the next week and hopefully we will be picking soon enough," Simmon said.

Pennsylvania is one of the nation's leaders when it comes to growing apples, peaches and strawberries.