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Ann and her husband have been growing blueberries for over 40 years. Nestled in the heart of Bacon County, AA Berry Farms boasts sandy acidic soil which leads to the perfect spot to grow blueberries. “This is pine tree country down here and you’ll see farmers go in and cut all the pine trees to plant blueberries because that is the perfect soil.” explains Wildes. 

It takes about three years of taking care of blueberry plants before a farmer has enough to harvest. During that time, it’s imperative to protect the plants from cold temperatures and one of the ways farmers do that is by spraying water on the plants before the temperature drops. “You go ahead and put ice on it before it hits freezing and then once it hits freezing the plant won’t get any colder.” says Wildes. The water acts as a shield, protecting the plants from frost. 

However, in March of 2018 parts of Georgia experienced freezing temperatures that caused significant damage to our state’s blueberry crop. Wildes recalls how that particular storm devastated her farm in Alma, the Blueberry Capital of Georgia. “That year was a tremendous late freeze.” 

She said the temperatures dropped into the low 20’s and they couldn’t put enough water on their plants to protect them. “There was nothing we could do” While the berries weren’t turning blue yet, the farm had a lot of little green berries on their plants, a false promise of a plentiful crop to come. Their later blueberry variety, Rabbit Eye Blueberries, were just starting to bloom. “The next morning we woke up and all of the little green berries were like raisins, they were purple and dried up.” 

The freeze had frozen the blooms, and without a bloom you can’t produce a berry. “So that particular year we lost every berry on the farm.” She says the silver lining to losing their entire blueberry crop in 2018 was that they had crop insurance. “Crop insurance is very important today for all crops really especially for our blueberry crop, you don’t make money off of it, but it helps you to pay your bills.” 

She says fifty years ago, when she first married and began farming with her husband, crop insurance didn’t exist. So, if their corn crop dried out because they didn’t have enough irrigation there was nothing they could do, it was just a total loss. “Now there is crop insurance and we are very thankful for that, because without it we would have been in big trouble. I can sleep better at night knowing that we have coverage.”

Talk to your local agent today about insuring your crops so that you’re protected like Ann should mother nature throw a curve ball your way. You can find out more information about crop insurance here.