ROXBURY — Howard Bronson, owner of Maple Bank Farm, was coming in from the fields on his tractor almost two weeks ago when the sky turned dark and a deadly windstorm struck.

“You could barely see 40 feet in front of you,” Bronson said.

Luckily, the only damage on his farm was a pole blown out of the greenhouse. His crops were unharmed and the farm was spared the hail that hit the southern part of town.

Bronson is familiar with the dangers of hail. In 2002, he lost $50,000 worth of crops to a hailstorm.

“It was a fairly narrow band of extreme damage,” Bronson said.

A bigger concern for farmers like Bronson was cool weather earlier in the month. Both blueberries and apples blossom in May, he said, and cool weather can discourage pollination of fruit trees and bushes during this critical time.

“Sometimes the bees don’t want to work in that kind of weather,” Bronson said.

On May 1, the temperature fell as low as 36 degrees at Danbury Airport. Toward the middle of the month, when the apple blossoms were at their peak and the blueberries were just starting, temperatures fell into the 40s at night, according to the National Weather Service.

Bronson said the deep freeze in early winter and the near-weekly snowstorms in March didn’t really affect his crops.

“The extreme cold might have bothered some of the peach growers, but the apples are pretty tough,” he said.

Sally Futh, owner of Starberry Farm in Washington, said variable weather, including warm periods followed by cold snaps, meant they didn’t have to thin their peach trees as much as usual. In normal circumstances the practice is to thin about 90 percent of the young fruit so the remaining peaches will be of good size.

“It looks as if we would be able to take care of our regular pick-your-own and farmstand customers,” she said.

Futh also was grateful she didn’t see hail in the May 15 storm, which has destroyed peach crops in previous years.

“Washington was fortunate to be spared the terrible storms that hit Danbury and surrounding towns last week,” Futh said. “We just had an inch of needed rain, a little thunder, and strong but not devastating winds.”

Both she and Bronson said they were thinking of those who weren’t as lucky.

“We sympathize with the farmers and everyone else impacted so badly in the neighboring towns,” Futh said. “Farmers are always at the mercy of the weather.”