Blame it on a cool wet spring, pollination problems, an army of voracious tent caterpillars and a summer heat wave.
With an apple crop that's more than a few pecks short of a bushel, organizers have cancelled this year's Saltspring Apple Festival, set for Sept. 30.
Organizer Harry Burton said he's sad to have to cancel the event, which last year drew 1,500 people to 16 Saltspring apple farms.
"Everybody I talk to is really affected by it," Burton said Thursday.
On the apple festival website, he said the poor crop "would not do justice to the incredible apple bounty of Saltspring Island and I believe it would be detrimental to our reputation.
"It would be an insult to Saltspring Island, which we lovingly call Apple Heaven," said Burton.
The event, held for the last 13 years, draws people from Saltspring and elsewhere to munch their way through the 350 varieties grown there.
Burton said his own crop, with 200 varieties of apples, is 30 per cent of normal yield.
No one is more disappointed than the apple farmers, who are passionate about the fruit, he said.
"We call them appleholics," said Burton. "If the spacing for a tree is 16 feet, appleholics will push it to 15 because they want to get one more tree in the row."
The festival has been an opportunity to bring apple eaters in contact with growers, he said.
"My farm had 100 varieties for tasting and we had two different vendors selling food and there were educational signs throughout the orchard," he said.
Apple crops are in trouble elsewhere in Canada, he said. Ontario's fruit crop was damaged by a late frost, while growers in Nova Scotia orchard have had a lack of rain. Many U.S. growers have also been coping with drought.
The extreme weather "creates a lot of problems for the farmer trying to get some product to market," said Burton.
