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W.Va.’s Apple Industry Is Still Hurting. Growers Hope New Administrations Will Renew Aid

As the apple industry continues to struggle, West Virginia growers hope a change in government administrations won’t mark the end of federal and state aid.

Apple trees barren from the recent winter frost span miles of backroad in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle. In a few months, the trees will flower; come autumn, they will bear local growers bushels of ripe fruit.

Blossoming apple trees are a familiar sight for the region and play a key role in the local agriculture industry. But federal and state officials say market woes have placed the future of West Virginia’s orchards at risk.

That is a reality Don Dove, general manager for Orr’s Farm Market in Martinsburg, has felt first hand.

Dove says demand for his apple supply has waned. One-third of the apples his team grows go toward food processing, but processing companies have requested fewer and fewer apples since 2023. That year, about 20 percent of his total apple crop went unclaimed, he said.

“It added a real big stress onto our crop there, right off the bat, as soon as we started picking,” he said. “That’s when we knew we had a problem.”

Orchards remain in jeopardy

Dove is not alone. The importation of apples and apple concentrates for food processing from countries with lower labor costs has widely displaced domestic growers.

In early 2024, retail prices for apples grown in the United States fell to a three-year low, according to Catharine Weber, agricultural economist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service.

Weber delivered data on the current state of the U.S. apple industry through a prerecorded video presentation at a regional forum Thursday. The event was hosted by the Farmlink Project, a nonprofit that helps domestic farmers redistribute excess produce to eliminate food waste.

Farmlink invited apple growers from across Appalachia to the event. The afternoon forum followed a tri-state meeting that morning, which aimed to familiarize Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia farmers with various forms of state and federal aid available to agriculture businesses in Appalachia.

Farmlink organizers used the second meeting to inform Appalachian growers like Dove about the state of the apple industry and solicit feedback over how to best support their business needs.

“These are wonderful farming families from wonderful communities that have got the most nutritious produce item we could have — and that is the apple — to improve food insecurity and nutrition health in our country,” said Mike Meyer, head of farmer advocacy for Farmlink.

At his orchard, Dove said the fallout from West Virginia’s apple market issues has not been as severe as it could have been. That is because orchards like Orr’s Farm Market found support from the state and federal government and their work with Farmlink.

Apple growers from Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia met in Martinsburg Thursday to discuss the state of the apple industry with the nonprofit Farmlink Project.

*Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

When the state stepped in

In 2023, the USDA allocated $10 million to the West Virginia Department of Agriculture (WVDA) through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a 1933 law that allows the government to subsidize agricultural oversupply. The USDA provided a subsequent $3.1 million in 2024.

The WVDA allocated this funding to nonprofits like Farmlink, which coordinated the distribution of extra apples to food banks and hunger relief programs nationwide, while paying farmers for the produce.

Between September and December 2024, Farmlink distributed 18 million pounds of West Virginia-grown apples to food insecurity charities, Meyer said. 3.3 million pounds of apples were sent to recipients within the state, including 49 charities.

“We hope to grow the program,” Meyer said. “We’ve been successful in West Virginia for two years. It’s a large, team effort.”

Jody Sims works for Kitchen’s Farm Market, an apple and produce business based in the Berkeley County community of Falling Waters. Last year marked her first time working with Farmlink, and she said the redistribution process was a boon for business.

“They have been amazing. They help with finding food banks that are willing to take the loads,” she said. “20, 30 minutes later, they’re calling you back: ‘Hey, I got a truck coming. How many loads you got?’”

Meyer said Farmlink hopes to model its work in surrounding states around its partnership with West Virginia state officials. This could help regional apple growers through a tough spot, he said.

But the future of efforts like these depends on a renewal of government funding. With new elected officials being inaugurated on both the state and federal levels this month, Meyer said Farmlink is reaching out to new administrations to keep programs like these going.

Barren amid the off-season frost, fruit trees stretch across the property of Orr’s Farm Market in rural Berkeley County.

*Photo Credit: Jack Walker/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

An uncertain season ahead

Meyer said it is unlikely for demand issues in the apple industry to end soon.

“When I think about 2025, I think it will be a similar supply situation to 2023 and 2024,” Meyer said. “I think, unfortunately, some of these markets are gone for good — particularly in the eastern United States.”

Federal officials with the USDA are currently looking into long-term solutions, but Meyer and the team at Farmlink are hoping a new slate of elected officials will renew shorter-term forms of aid in the interim.

Amie Minor-Richard serves as assistant commissioner of the WVDA, under recently reelected Commissioner Kent Leonhardt. She said there is no “one direct program” that will solve issues in the industry, but that the WVDA hopes state and federal representatives will provide farmers broad support.

Minor-Richard said the WVDA’s is advocating for a reexamination of policies surrounding apple importation to ensure that domestic farmers “are on a level playing field.”

“We don’t want to lose our apple orchards here in the United States, because then we’ll have to depend on foreign countries to provide us our nutrition,” she said. “That’s a scary, scary idea.”

The WVDA is advocating for a higher tax credit for farmers donating excess produce, in addition to a renewal of redistribution support for the state’s apple growers, Minor-Richard said.

But funding for redistribution support from groups like Farmlink has previously come from budget appropriations on the federal level. In the past two years, former Sen. Joe Manchin led the effort to secure this funding.

With Manchin’s seat now filled by the state’s former governor, Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., Minor-Richard said the WVDA intends to discuss the program with the Justice administration.

While Minor-Richard said Justice was supportive of agriculture in the past, his delayed inauguration meant these conversations are yet to take place. She added that WVDA have also reached out to the office of incumbent Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., regarding federal forms of aid.

“We hope to have those conversations in February,” Minor-Richard said.

In the meantime, farmers like Dove are bracing for a season of uncertainty ahead. Without financial support from the government, he worries that the Eastern Panhandle’s apple industry could face serious risk.

“It really could fold up quickly without the proper funding and proper safety net,” he said.

This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.

Another Apple Surplus Prompts Search For Long-Term Solutions

Fall in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle means apple season. Visitors from near and far visit Reddington’s Farm & Orchard in Harpers Ferry to pick their own apples — a way to get fresh produce, and also a fun family activity.

This year, owner Tina Reddington said her main concern has been the weather. The region experienced a severe drought in July and August, followed by a sudden tropical storm.

“We’re in a funky spot where, when the storms come through, they kind of go around our farm,” she said. Still, “We’ve been affected by the drought, so we have less apples than we usually do.”

Across the state, local orchards might have a normal season ahead. Or, like Reddington’s, they might even be slightly behind on apple output.

But the situation is vastly different on larger, commercial farms, which grow apples specially to be processed into packaged products like applesauce and apple concentrate.

Many of these orchards are found in West Virginia. And, despite the weather woes, many of these orchards currently cannot find buyers for all of their apples.

Nowhere to sell

“Imports in the apple ingredient community have greatly diminished the opportunity for the American farmer to sell a perfectly good apple into the apple processing world,” said Mike Meyer, head of farmer advocacy at FarmLink. His nonprofit helps connect farmers experiencing oversupply with food banks and hunger relief programs.

“This has most directly impacted the farmers in West Virginia, but they’re not alone,” he said.

According to Meyer, the country’s increased dependence on imported goods reduces sales for American farmers. Plus, apple exports fell during the pandemic, and haven’t fully recovered.

Apple trees blossom in the springtime at Shanholtz Orchards, located on the outskirts of the Hampshire County town of Romney.

*Photo Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Problems like these in the apple industry aren’t new. Last year, tens of millions of pounds in West Virginia-grown apples didn’t have an immediate buyer. Many farmers were unsure how to proceed.

“It is fair to say that the apple processing market and those communities have all but disappeared,” Meyer said. “What is remaining is of so little economic benefit to the farmer that the farmer has to decide if it’s better to not even harvest their apple at all and just let it go to waste.”

A federal intervention

Then the federal government stepped in. In 2023, the state received $10 million in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) funding through the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a 1935 law allowing the government to subsidize agricultural oversupply.

Officials with the West Virginia Department of Agriculture used this funding to subsidize millions of pounds of apples. Then, through nonprofits like FarmLink, the 16 million pounds of produce were donated to food banks and hunger relief programs nationwide.

This year, West Virginia will repeat that process. In late August, Sen. Joe Manchin announced that the USDA would provide West Virginia $3.1 million this year to help growers sell off their surplus.

One West Virginia business that participated in the program in 2023 is Appalachian Orchard Company, a family farm in Berkeley County. The company was one of many that experienced apple oversupply last year.

“A lot of them went bad in storage and they lost money on them,” said sales team member Christopher Daniel. “They haven’t been able to recuperate from everything.”

Daniel said federal support saved last season’s harvest. While the conditions causing the oversupply this year persist, he said Appalachian Orchard Company feels better knowing the fund redistribution program can offer additional support.

“I think this is going to help a lot of growers who didn’t have an outlet at all because they grow primarily processing apples,” Daniel said. “It’s going to give them somewhere to ship their apples where they would’ve just had to let them fall on the ground.”

Patriot Guardians, a Kanawha County-based agricultural education program for veterans and military service members, grows apples to be turned into ciders.

*Photo Credit: Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The bigger picture

Still, some state and federal officials worry that recurring supply problems could mark a long-term issue for the industry.

Manchin, who Meyer said played a key role in securing the 2023 and 2024 USDA funding, recently pushed for a USDA study on the apple surplus in West Virginia.

The bill was passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee, and aims to better understand the issues affecting the state’s apple market, namely difficulties preserving and selling surplus produce.

“This study will examine the limited refrigerated storage capacity within processing facilities, particularly in West Virginia and the broader region where these facilities are located,” a representative from Manchin’s office wrote in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting.

The study will also explore “whether there has been a significant increase in foreign apple imports, including apple concentrate, which may be displacing local apples in the market,” the email read.

Meyer agreed that struggles in the apple industry extend beyond a single year’s harvest. But, at the same time, he thinks part of the problem for farmers is simply not knowing where to send produce.

According to the USDA, about 14 percent of U.S. households faced food insecurity in 2023.

Meanwhile, the USDA has also found up to 40 percent of the nation’s food supply goes to waste. That is more than 133 billion pounds of food.

Meyer says supporting American farmers and reducing food waste could go hand in hand. It’s just a matter of connecting extra produce with people and communities in need.

And this year, FarmLink will help reroute trade networks once again, packing millions of pounds of apples into trucks for redistribution.

“Fresh produce is a much lower-cost alternative to prepared foods to combat food insecurity.” Meyer said. “But fresh produce requires a completely different handling system. So it’s not the end-all solution, but it can get us a long way there.”

Abandoned Mine Turns Apple Orchard With Help Of National Guard

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.

Major General Bill Crane said this apple orchard was an abandoned mine seven years ago.

“We’ve got about 20,000 apple trees in the ground,” Crane said. “It’s an experimentation site that we work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

This is one way the National Guard is taking on climate change and pollution. The Guard has teamed up with scientists from the USDA and West Virginia University (WVU) to find ways to grow apple trees on land that was previously thought to be somewhat of a waste land.

First they had to tackle one major problem: No topsoil. The solution: Chicken poop from pastures in the state.

“The nice thing we’re doing here is we’re bringing chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle, we bring it here to help make the soil better,” Crane said.

Chris Dardick, a scientist with the USDA, said taking the chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle to the orchard helps mitigate farming runoff into rivers. He said nitrogen from animal waste has been running into rivers, and creating algae blooms, which cause other aquatic life to die.

“Much of [chicken manure] contains nitrogen,” Dardick said. “Bringing it out here, out of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and using it to amend the soils for apple production or other crops, that’s sort of a win-win.”

Tracy Leskey works with Dardick at the USDA as the research leader for this project and said the trees absorb another climate changing element — carbon.

“One of the things that we recognized a few years ago is this opportunity for apple trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” Leskey said.

Trees take in carbon, and store it in their trunks and roots, or deliver it to the ground. The process is known as carbon sequestering and is one tool for fighting climate change.

And where the land had carbon removed from the soil in the form of coal, Leskey said the soil can now hold, or sequester, more carbon than the typical soil can.

But this project isn’t only aimed at helping the earth. Melissa Stewart, director of Patriot Guardens, hopes this project will also help the mental health of both active and retired service members.

“When they come back home from a deployment, and maybe they have seen some things that they don’t want to remember, they can’t have a conversation with somebody to get that out of their mind?” Stewart said.

She hopes that service members can create a “side hustle” and learn a hobby that brings peace and healing.

“Through agriculture, they can work with their hands, in an atmosphere like this,” Stewart said.

This is one of many projects the National Guard is working on to produce food like peaches, strawberries and arugula in the state. These projects are aimed at combating food insecurity in West Virginia where one in seven children experience hunger. Stewart says this is where the farming work takes on a special meaning for service members who are transitioning out of the service.

“To take that need to serve and give it purpose as they come out a uniform, being able to illustrate that they’re still serving our state as they transition into more of a civilian status by helping grow the food that helps feed our families helps feed our state,” Stewart said.

Medication Guidance And A Visit To Virginia Farm Foggy Ridge, This West Virginia Morning

n this West Virginia Morning, Virginia’s first modern apple cidery Foggy Ridge helped launch a craft cider industry in Virginia, but while the cider business closed in 2018, the farm stayed open. Owner and orchardist Diane Flynt now sells apples to other cider makers and has a new book out. Radio IQ’s Roxy Todd visited Flynt’s farm in Southwest Virginia and has this story.

On this West Virginia Morning, Virginia’s first modern apple cidery Foggy Ridge helped launch a craft cider industry in Virginia, but while the cider business closed in 2018, the farm stayed open. Owner and orchardist Diane Flynt now sells apples to other cider makers and has a new book out. Radio IQ’s Roxy Todd visited Flynt’s farm in Southwest Virginia and has this story.

Also, in this show, with the closing and consolidation of pharmacy chains and independent retailers, patients are left wondering where to go for guidance and their medications. Emily Rice has more.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Caroline MacGregor is our assistant news director and produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Millions Of U.S. Apples Were Almost Left To Rot. Now, They’ll Go To Hungry Families

Many growers across the country have been left without a market due to oversupplied apple processors. West Virginia rescued its surplus, with a plan that donates apples to hunger-fighting charities.

By Alan Jinich

NPR Staff

Listen to this story and see more photos on npr.org.

It’s getting late in the harvest season in Berkeley County, West Virginia and Carla Kitchen’s team is in the process of hand-picking nearly half a million pounds of apples. In a normal year, Kitchen would sell to processors like Androsthat make applesauce, concentrate, and other products. But this year they turned her away.

“Imagine 80% of your income is sitting on the trees and the processor tells you they don’t want them,” Kitchen says. “You’ve got your employees to worry about. You’ve got fruit on the trees that need somewhere to go. What do you do?”

For the first time in 36 years, Kitchen had nowhere to sell the bulk of her harvest. It could have been the end of her business. And she wasn’t the only one. Across the country, growers were left without a market. Due to an oversupply carried over from last year’s harvest, growers were faced with a game-time economic decision: Should they pay the labor to harvest, crossing their fingers for a buyer to come along, or simply leave the apples to rot?

Bumper crops, export declines and the weather have contributed to the apple crisis

Christopher Gerlach, director of industry analytics at USApple, says the surplus this year was caused by several compounding factors. Bumper crops have kept domestic supply high. Exports have declined 21% over the past decade, a symptom of retaliatory tariffs from India that only ended this fall.

Weather also played a role this year as hail left a significant share of apples cosmetically unsuitable for the fresh market. Growers would normally recoup some value by selling to processors, but that wasn’t an option for many either – processors still had leftovers from last year sitting in climate-controlled storage.

“Last year’s season was so good that the price went down on processors and they said, ‘let’s buy while the buyings good,’ ” Gerlach says. “These processors basically filled up their storage warehouses. It’s just the market.”

While many growers in neighboring states like Maryland and Virginia left their apples to drop. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was able to convince the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to pay for the apples produced by growers in his state, which only makes up 1% of the national market.

A relief program in West Virginia donated its surplus apples to hunger-fighting charities

This apple relief program, covered under Section 32 of the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1935, purchased $10 million worth of apples from a dozen West Virginia growers. Those apples were then donated to hunger-fighting charities across the country from South Carolina and Michigan all the way out to The Navajo Nation.

A nonprofit called The Farmlink Project took care of more than half the state’s surplus – 10 million pounds of apples filling nearly 300 trucks.

Mike Meyer, head of advocacy at The Farmlink Project, says it’s the largest food rescue they’ve ever done and they hope it can serve as a model for their future missions.

“There’s over 100 billion pounds of produce waste in this country every year; we only need seven billion to drive food insecurity to zero,” Meyer says. “We’re very happy to have this opportunity. We get to support farmers, we get to fight hunger with an apple. It’s one of the most nutritional items we can get into the hands of the food insecure.”

At Timber Ridge Fruit Farm in Virginia, owners Cordell and Kim Watt watch a truck from The Farmlink Project load up on their apples before driving out to a food pantry in Bethesda, Md. Despite being headquartered in Virginia, Timber Ridge was able to participate in the apple rescue since they own orchards in West Virginia as well. Cordell is a third-generation grower here and he says they’ve never had to deal with a surplus this large.

“This was unprecedented territory,” Watt says. “The first time I can remember in my lifetime that they [processors] put everybody on a quota. I know several growers that just let them fall on the ground. … The program with Farmlink has really taken care of the fruit in West Virginia, but in a lot of other states there’s a lot of fruit going to waste. We just gotta hope that there’s funding there to keep this thing going.”

At the So What Else food pantry in Bethesda, Md., apple pallets from Timber Ridge fill the warehouse up to the ceiling. Emanuel Ibanez and other volunteers are picking through the crates, bagging fresh apples into family-sized loads.

“I’m just bewildered,” Ibanez says. “We have a warehouse full of apples and I can barely walk through it.”

“People in need got nutritious food out of this program. And that’s the most important thing”

Executive director Megan Joe says this is the largest shipment of produce they’ve ever distributed – 10 truckloads over the span of three weeks. The food pantry typically serves 6,000 families, but this shipment has reached a much wider circle.

“My coworkers are like, ‘Megan, do we really need this many?’ And I’m like, yes!” Joe says. “The growing prices in the grocery stores are really tough for a lot of families. And it’s honestly gotten worse since COVID.”

Back in West Virginia, apple growers, government officials, and Farmlink Project members come together in a roundtable meeting. Despite the existential struggles looming ahead, spirits were high and even some who were skeptical of government purchases applauded the program for coming together so efficiently.

“It’s the first time we’ve done this type of program, but we believe it can set the stage for the region,” Kent Leonhardt, West Virginia’s commissioner of agriculture says. “People in need got nutritious food out of this program. And that’s the most important thing.”

Following West Virginia’s rescue program, the USDA announced an additional $100 million purchase to relieve the apple surplus in other states around the country. This is the largest government buy of apples and apple products to date. But with the harvest window coming to an end, many growers have already left their apples to drop and rot.

Milder Winters Pose Potential Problems For Local Food Producers

This past winter was unseasonably mild. That’s put some of the state’s fruit farmers in an unexpectedly precarious position as plants produce before the threat of frost is gone.

Garry Shanholtz has been growing apple, peach and cherry trees in his Hampshire County Orchard for close to 60 years, part of a rich agricultural tradition in the state.

“Most people don’t realize what history West Virginia has in the fruit business,” he said. “Of course, the Golden Delicious apple was found in Clay County, and it’s the most widely planted apple in the world. It’s cross bred with a lot of other apples.”

Garry said his father was also in agriculture, mostly timber and cattle, but bought land with a small orchard in the 1950s.

“I decided to go with the orchard because them trees go to sleep in the wintertime, and I take a vacation,” he said. “You don’t have to get up to feed the cattle and so on, so forth. But it’s been a great life.”

But that downtime is starting to get shorter as temperatures warm up. This past winter wasn’t the warmest on record, but according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, it did rank in the top 20 of all time. Garry’s son Kane, who helps him manage the orchard, said farmers are taking notice.

“I was at one of my farm meetings, and there was a guy there talking about the weather,” Kane said. “And he said, ‘It seems like it’s staying warmer later. And then it’s not staying as cool as long as it should, then it warms up.’ Then that’s what happens, everything pops out ahead.”

Almost three weeks ahead by the Shanholtz’s estimation.

During a visit to the orchard in mid April, the pink peach blossoms that would normally be peaking, had already come and gone. The apple orchards were wearing their white blooms, which used to not arrive until the first week of May.

“The Apple Blossom Festival in Winchester has always been the first weekend in May,” Garry said. “Well, the apple blossoms are almost gone.”

Apple trees in one of the Shanholtz orchards in full bloom, three weeks earlier than normal. *Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

A closeup on apple blossoms. *Credit: Chris Schulz/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In most lines of work, being ahead of schedule is usually a good thing. But for the Shanholtz and their orchard, early fruiting puts their production at risk. A freeze right now could mean a total write-off of their crop for the year.

“Right here are some peaches coming out of the shuck,” Kane said, indicating budding fruit on the branch. “So now they’re really vulnerable. If we don’t have a freeze, you know, we’re gonna have a good crop. I want it to stay warm to get through this bloom period on the apples in it, get it behind us.”

Threats from a changing climate don’t stop there. Beyond the threat of a freeze killing off early fruit, plants like peaches, apples and cherries – all of which the Shanholtz’s grow – need what are called “chill hours” to produce.

“The sap goes down in the fall of the year on peaches and apples and everything, and then everything stays asleep for a certain amount of hours,” Garry said. “It varies on different crops, different apples, different peaches, then once that time’s up if you get warm weather, that’s when sort of everything starts coming. And that’s been happening, everything has been coming a little sooner.”

Garry said even in a warm winter like the one we just had, West Virginia still gets plenty of chill hours to accommodate his plants, but it is starting to become a problem farther south.

“They actually plant peaches that take less hours, but we’re not close to that yet,” he said. “We’ve had enough cold weather for him to go into dormant back out. It’s just that they’re coming out of dormancy sooner.”

Dee Singh-Knights, an extension specialist of agribusiness economics and management with the WVU Extension Service, said that in economics, climate and weather fluctuations fall into the category of “wicked problems.”

“By wicked, what we mean is that it’s generally not well understood, because the data is still emerging,” she said. “It does pose significant economic burdens. We’re talking about food that is the underpinning of our society.”

The Extension Service aims to provide producers like the Shanholtz’s with both long and short-term solutions, but Singh-Knights said that has to happen on a case-by-case basis.

“I like to say, ‘When you’re seeing one farm in West Virginia, you’ve seen one farm in West Virginia,'” she said. “That simply means that our farm operators, in terms of the vulnerabilities, every single farm operation will have different vulnerabilities on a very individual level.”

That variety is its own sort of insurance, because Singh-Knights said food systems that will stand up to a changing environment will have to be varied in place and production.

“Whereas we do want to have a very resilient local food system, where our small farm families continue to be profitable, to be sustainable, resilience really is making sure that we’re not putting all our eggs in one basket,” Singh-Knights said.

Peach producers in warmer, southern regions can still provide fruit if a freeze knocks out a local crop, and vice versa if winters down south prove too mild for a good production.

“It’s about deliberate planning,” Singh-Knights said. “It’s about deliberately understanding what you’re doing in the face of climate change and making these changes so that you remain profitable.”

For now, however, Kane said all he can do is work with what’s in front of him.

“Years ago, we used to stress over the weather. But you know, when you’ve been in it as long as we have, it is what it is,” he said. “We can’t control it. So we got to take what Mother Nature gives us, and sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad, you know?”