This is the first of a two-part series on the impacts of this spring’s weather on agriculture and the local watersheds.
You can’t fight mother nature, or so the saying goes, and few know this better than the local farmers fighting to put food on everyone’s tables in the face of unfavourable conditions.
While April brought temperatures about 1.5 C warmer than average, and offered an early start to the planting season, data from Environment and Climate Change Canada shows that from April through June, Bradford and Innisfil saw about 51 days with rain, or about 27 per cent more than the 40 days that would be normal for that time of year, which brought about 480 millimetres of precipitation, or about 72 per cent more than the 280 mm normally seen in that time.
“We got out early, which was great, but now, with all the water everything is basically swimming,” said Emilio Spina, owner of E.F.T. Farms in Cookstown which has been operating since 1994.
With “quite a few” fields completely flooded, Spina said they’ve lost most of their potatoes and fresh lettuce, and unfortunately, there’s not much they can do about it.
“The ditches can only hold so much water, so you can only pump so much out. Once the ditches are full, that’s it,” he said.
Despite the hit to the pocket book, all is not lost and the team at E.F.T. Farms still have reason to be hopeful. Spina explained the corn is coming in nicely along with a few other crops that could do well, especially if the farmers’ markets see big crowds. Plus, if summer heat helps to dry up the fields, they might be able to plant some extra garlic or wheat.
In the meantime, Spina is hoping for less rain.
“On a farm you can basically do everything except control mother nature,” he said. “When you’re in a low plane, there’s not much you can do.”
In the Holland Marsh, things are a little different.
Shane Singh owns Springh Farms, which has been operating in Bradford since 1979, and he explained the marsh farmers work with the Holland Marsh Drainage Systems Joint Municipal Services Board to ensure the canal levels are dropped ahead of rain storms.
That makes room for all the extra water being carried off Spring Farms thanks to a combination of tile drainage systems and a variety of different on-farm pumps if necessary.
Early in the season, the extra rain helped make up for a mild winter with little snow, according to Singh, and the warmer temperatures helped with setting seeds and germination.
Now, with the “extreme heat” and ongoing rain, he estimates they lost about half of their strawberries, and based on his conversations with other growers, he’s not the only one facing that problem this season.
“We have two strawberry farmers that actually come to our market and both of them cancelled,” Singh said.
That meant limited availability at the Bradford Farmers’ Market strawberry festival on July 13.
“For a berry fest right now, it was very difficult to get berries for it,” Singh said.
It’s not just berries suffering, though and Singh described the task of trying to find certain items at the Ontario Food Terminal in Toronto as “next to impossible.”
Luckily for consumers, local farmers know better than to put all their eggs in one basket. They plant a diversity of different crops, and at Springh Farms, leeks, lettuce and leafy greens are among the vegetables taking advantage of the hot wet weather.
Despite having fewer fields at risk, smaller farms were no less affected by the soggy season.
For about two years, Pat Rea has been operating the “tiny” Pat’s Farms, with about 80 chickens and a variety of vegetables, but all the “brutal” rain this year turned the ground to “mush.”
“It was drowning all my plant starts,” he said. “All my beans, all my peas were gone.”
Luckily his zucchinis have done well and his several varieties of radishes “loved it.”
Some of Rea’s veggies, like tomatoes and peppers, are grown in a three-by-six-metre tunnel-style greenhouse, which helps protect against adverse weather, and after this year, he’s planning to buy two more.
“I learned a long time ago, that you just roll with it; it’s all you can do,” he said. “It’s going to hurt you one year, it’s going to be nice the next year.”
Having previously worked in the entertainment industry for about 32 years and the restaurant industry for about 12, he’s plenty familiar with volatility.
That’s something Tracy So has been trying to avoid for a little more than a year operating Curious Caps Mushroom Farm, growing a variety of mushrooms inside a 12-m shipping container.
That sheltered environment includes a heater that allows So to grow mushrooms straight through the winter, and while the extra rain doesn’t have much of an impact, the container isn’t impervious to all the extra heat we’re getting now.
“The mushrooms don’t like it too hot,” she said. “There’ll be a burst of growth once it gets to their optimum temperature and then once it heats up it stunts it again.
So has plans to add air conditioning to the unit, and in the meantime is still averaging about seven to nine kilograms (15 to 20 pounds) of mushrooms per week. The Oysters, in particular, are “one of the most vigorous.”
Part two, which runs on Tuesday, July 23, will look at the extent and causes of volatility in spring weather patterns and this spring’s impact on local watersheds.
