Farmers brace for the worst as Dorian bears down on Nova Scotia

As workers furiously filled their baskets with apples picked from the trees of Jim Stirling's orchard, the veteran farmer acknowledged it's a stressful time.

"If the wind blows, we're going to have apples on the ground and we don't make money when the apples are on the ground," Stirling said from his farm in the Wolfville, N.S., area.

Stirling said hoped earlier in the week that Hurricane Dorian would avoid the province or at least weaken.

But by Friday it was all hands in the fields as the new trees in a 10-hectare, high-density orchard were being tied down and workers picked as many apples as they could from more mature trees brimming with early varieties.

Heavy rains combined with high winds bring the risk of broken tree limbs, knocked-over trees, damaged crops and fire blight, a bacteria that can kill fruit trees and cause problems long after the cleanup from any storm is complete, said Sterling.

'You can't do anything about it'

Still, he talks about it with the pragmatism of a farmer who's been at it long enough to know he isn't going to win a battle with Mother Nature.

"All you can do is all you can do," he said. "We've just got to make sure we've got everything covered, as much as we can get done done before the storm hits."

Not far away at Luckett Vineyards, owner Pete Luckett was displaying a similar sense of matter-of-factness.

"It's scary, but you can't do anything about it," he said.

"There's 50 acres of vineyard here. There's no way you can cover it in or tidy it up or wrap it up."

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Some of Luckett's biggest concerns include potential damage to the trellises that support the vines, as well as crop damage.

The wet and cold spring means his crop is about three weeks behind schedule and Luckett said he needs a warm and dry September and October to get the grapes to where they need to be before harvesting.

Vineyards remain the new kid on the block in Nova Scotia's agriculture industry. Most people in the sector haven't experienced the kind of storm that's expected today, said Luckett, and so they're waiting to see what it will mean for them.

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Larry Lutz, president of the Nova Scotia Fruit Growers' Association and a farmer in Berwick, said crops were already reduced severely last year due to frost damage and Dorian could only make things more difficult for producers.

The worst-case scenario is to get lots of rain first, which would soften the ground, before the wind arrives, said Lutz. That would lead to many trees being knocked down.

While efforts can be taken to protect the trees, not much can be done for the fruit other than trying to pick as much as possible, he said.

"The fruit is going to get banged around in the wind, unfortunately."

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