On April 17, a spring freeze wreaked havoc on the orchards across Colorado’s Western Slope, resulting in nearly complete crop loss in Delta County and severely damaging fruit on smaller, less well-equipped farms in Palisade.

April snows and freezes aren’t uncommon on the Western Slope, with the National Weather Service reporting that the average last freeze occurs late in April for much of the area. However, the timing of such freezes and the weather pattern can devastate the crops in the vulnerable fruitlet stage.

“In this specific frost event, we had snow the day before, which created a humid orchard, and at night we had a great inversion, a high-pressure system that trapped the moisture and made the air very still,” said Chris Schmaltz of Clark Family Orchards in Palisade.

“Normally, you wouldn’t want an inversion unless you had a wind machine. The machines were able to move the air around, bringing the warm inversion air down, which saved the crop.”

Some smaller Palisade farms without access to wind machines did make use of sporadic fires and smudge pots to help warm the trees, but Schmaltz said that the data doesn’t prove the fires or pots work well.

“We were in the fruitlet stage in Palisade,” said Schmaltz, who manages 150 acres of orchards, “which is much more vulnerable than full bloom, because they have insulation from an air pocket that adds extra protection for the developing peach. In the fruitlet stage, they don’t have that protection and are more vulnerable.”

Clark Family Orchards, like most of the larger farms in Palisade, managed to save its crop. After a phenomenal year in 2025, Schmaltz said he’s looking at 85%-90% of that harvest.

The situation farther south in Delta County was much more dire. Harrison Topp of Topp Fruits in Hotchkiss spent the week of April 10-17 feverishly checking the myriad of weather apps on his phone. While temperatures hovered in the low 30s in Palisade, Hotchkiss saw the temperature dip to 23 degrees.

“We did a myriad of things to save the crop,” Topp said. “We started by applying a calcium spray … that would make the fruit hardier to the freezing temperatures. We lit propane burners and burn barrels, we ran wind machines all night long. We did all the things that we knew.”

Although Topp and his six-man team ran the wind machines all night and took it in shifts to keep burn piles going. It still was not enough. By the next day Topp’s 50 acres of peaches, cherries and apples were wiped out. Only the fruit on two peach trees directly in the path of the wind-machine exhaust survived.

“The peaches were in the fruitlet stage, cherries were the size of a thumbnail, the apples were in post-bloom. Unfortunately we are at a complete loss,” Topp said. “I would say the vast majority of Delta County is out of commission.”

Topp was loath to play up the hardship side of farming because, with crop insurance, which was incentivized for more farmers to purchase, the money will see the farm through this lean year.

“There are a lot of people who don’t have the same safety net,” Topp said. “The crop insurance isn’t enough to keep our workers employed for the year. That’s a huge hardship. There are people who rely on the revenue from buying and selling peaches who are going to have a harder time. We on the farm are lucky.”

Delta County grows 75% all of Colorado’s apples and this year was slated to take part in the state’s Local Food Program, which would have put Delta County apples on student’s lunch trays.

“Delta was responsible for the apples,” Topp said, “and so many people had worked hard to get geared up, we were so thrilled, we’d be able to grow apples for Colorado kids. That’s where my heart hurts. Hopefully, the years to come are better and folks can make it work.”

Bruce Talbot, of Talbot Farms in Palisade, has seen decades of ups and downs in the agricultural industry on the Western Slope.

“In Olathe, farmers are looking at the most complete wipeout of their fruit in 40 years,” Talbot said. “In Spanish Fork, Utah, even the pie cherries froze out, and that almost never happens. In the high desert, we are three weeks ahead of our normal growing season, and we have such a long frost season that the chance of keeping a crop is so low. Our biggest risk is always a spring frost.”

Talbot was extremely nervous about what this freeze meant for the long-term viability of Delta County’s fruit industry.

“For the last 20-30 years, Delta has been on the edge of viability, with struggles from economy to water and weather,” Talbot said. “It takes a farmer, who is already on the ropes, to come to the point where they can’t do it anymore.