MOUNT VERNON — Severe wind damage, such as the damage sustained from the recent storm that hit Knox County, can be anything from a minor hassle to a major hardship to most people. The damage generally involves damage from fallen limbs and whole trees.

But for those who make their living from trees, especially apple trees, the damage done by high winds can be devastating.

To one degree or another, local orchards have suffered significant damage to their apple crops. Many varieties of apples were just about ready for harvest; others were just two weeks away from ripening. All suffered some degree of damage.

Glen Hill Orchards was not really affected by the high winds, for the simple reason that the apple crop had been severely damaged by a hail storm earlier in the year.

Owner Maureen Buchwald said there was nothing salvageable of the crop. The hail-damaged apples were not even suitable for putting through the orchard’s processing machine, which peels the apples. The machines could not handle the damaged areas, and doing it by hand was cost prohibitive.

Buchwald said apples would be available for the farm market the orchard operates, because the Buchwalds belong to a large co-op that is able to supply them with apples from other parts of the state.

Buchwald didn’t expect to be able to salvage any of the apples on the ground.

“Once they’re on the ground, you have the possibility of E. coli and other problems,” she said. “There are a lot of raccoons around here.”

Damage to other orchards has varied, probably because of location and topography. All, however, had significant losses.

Just south of Knox County is Legend Hills Orchard, owned by Dick Hoar.

“Oh, it knocked out a heck of a lot of apples,” Hoar said of the windstorm. “Maybe 30 percent. I’ve heard some places had more than that. Some had 70 percent. We had about 30 percent blown onto the ground.

“Some of the [apples] are ripe right now,” he said. “The others were going to be ripe about the first of October.”

Hoar hoped the damage would not be a total loss.

“There’s a possibility we might be able to sell some of them,” he said. “I don’t know yet. We’re just checking the loss right now and doing the best that we can.”

Branstool Orchards, also near Utica, experienced significant damage as well.

“We lost an awful lot of apples that were two weeks away from picking,” said Marshall Branstool. “Now we’ve still got some on the trees, so we will be open through the fall. The ones that are on the trees are fine. But the winds knocked an awful lot of them off.”

Branstool is diversified in its fruit crop, and many of the other produce was not affected by the high winds.

“We’ll have a lot of pumpkins and we’ll still have a lot of apples. And we’ll do some pick-your-own, too,” he said.

Losses toward the southern part of the county, although significant, were not quite as bad as losses suffered in the north.

Apple Hill Orchards, on Fredericktown-Amity Road near Fredericktown, had much heavier damage than more southern areas. The orchard is owned by Russell and Mark Joudr’y.

“I really haven’t been out in the orchard, but from what everybody’s telling me, most of the crop is on the ground,” said Ginger Carpenter, manager of Apple Hill Orchards. “So it’s not good. Some are not as bad as others. It all depends on where they were and how the wind hit them.

“We had harvested the Galas,” Carpenter said. “And we just started on the Red Delicious when the storm hit.”

Early apples took the biggest hit. Early Blaze apples were almost 100 percent on the ground. Others, such as Golden Delicious and Cortland, were not hit as badly as the others.

“And the Red Delicious were pretty much wiped out,” Carpenter added. “Those trees are where the wind comes through and it got most of them.”

Carpenter thought some of the apples could be salvaged for juice.

“The apple juice companies will love us,” she said.

Ohio as a whole was expected to have a better than average apple crop this year, and many areas of the state were either not hit as hard as Knox County or not affected at all by the weekend storm. Because of this, Buchwald did not expect apple prices to rise much, if at all.