However, for members of the Apples South project, the weather had an unexpected bonus.
"If they can crop under those conditions, and crop well, they deserve a gold star," Katherine Raine, of Owaka, said.
The aim of the project, which began in the winter of 2006, is to identify, collect and preserve as many as possible of the numerous old apple trees surviving in the region.
Last spring, the best of the trees identified by Apples South were grafted and taken to Riverton, to be added to a heritage apple collection curated by Robert Guyton, co-ordinator of the South Coast Environment Society Open Orchard project.
"So basically they are holding the Catlins collection," Ms Raine said.
Mr Guyton and his wife Robyn, who have the space to grow the collection, are committed not only to preserving old apple varieties but to growing additional trees to return to the families who donated the originals.
Apples South member Barbara Johnston, of Purakaunui, said her focus had always been on flavour but she was also interested in the keeping qualities of apples they found in the Catlins, on the Taieri, in the Clutha Valley and at Purakaunui.
"The Catlins is a rich area for roadside trees," she said.
Some had been planted but many were seedlings that had sprung up alongside the Catlins railway line, closed many years ago.
"A lot of local people know those apple trees and pick from them each year," Ms Johnston said.
Where trees had been planted, "very many people knew the names of their apples", Ms Raine said.
"And similar things turned up in different orchards."
From 222 different orchard apples and 80 roadside trees, the two women blind-tasted fruit, trying anything from 10 to 20 apples in a sitting.
"It is subjective," Ms Johnston said, "but the good ones really do stand out."
Although the collection is now largely centred on Riverton, she is doing some work grafting favourite old varieties, including an unnamed one from a property she lived in many years ago.
"It took 25 years before I grafted it," she said.
That apple, and many others, will survive thanks to projects such as Apples South, and with rising interest in the community, the hope is that people will think twice before cutting out an old fruit tree.
