Local farmers have a case of rainy day blues
All the soggy weather has meant harvests are later than usual
Ignacio Ruiz’s peach crops will be feeling the effects of this week’s hailstorm for the rest of the season, says the Beamsville, Ont., farmer while selling produce at the East York Farmers’ Market on a rainy Tuesday morning.
“Holes like this,” he says, as he digs his nail into an apple and rips out a chunk. Ruiz, of Reyes Farms, said his damaged cherries will also be a tough sell. “People buy with their eyes.”
This spring’s tumultuous weather and surplus of rain has left some farmers in southern Ontario struggling to provide customers with the usual produce supply for this time of year.
Several farmers told the Star that their community supported agriculture (CSA) deliveries, a subscription service for local seasonal produce, are starting weeks later than expected and, in some cases, are smaller than usual.
“The combination of the really cool, wet weather when things were starting and then that immediate snap of hot, dry weather is really tough for plants to handle,” said Angie Koch, owner of Fertile Ground farm near Waterloo, Ont.
She said her CSA deliveries started a couple weeks late and have so far been about half the usual size for this time of year. She said the wet ground made it difficult to plant seeds, so crops such as lettuce, fennel and swiss chard are smaller than normal.
She’s made a point to update her customers but knows for new subscribers first impressions matter.
“I don’t want people to think they are paying a certain amount and they are not getting good value for their money,” she says.
Koch intends to compensate with extra produce once her crops catch up. Still, having locked in a loyal clientele, she said CSA farmers are likely better off than their peers at farmers markets.
“There is some forgiveness and understanding and support that makes it so much more feasible to farm (CSA) when weather is extreme than if you’re dependant on being able to make sales at a farmer’s market where you don’t have the same level of commitment from a customer base,” she said.
Chris Devries, farmer and owner at Common Ground Farm, south of London, Ont., said he’s been lucky as his harvest hasn’t been badly affected. But excessive rainfall elsewhere can lead to waterlogged soil that makes it difficult for food crops to grow, noting different parts of the province could be dealing with very different conditions. It’s something customers might not consider.
“What I find at our markets is that people have a very short-sighted look on the weather compared to a farmer,” he explained. “Because all they care about is, ‘Did it rain this weekend or not’ and for us it’s like, ‘How many inches or rain did we just get.’ ”
Farmers say the heavy rains are in contrast to last year’s challenges, which saw farmers scrambling to keep their crops irrigated.
“Too much rain is never a good thing, too much of anything — like last year we had too much drought, too much dryness — the crops need a balance,” said Melanie Golba, owner of Plan B organic farms in Hamilton that runs a multi-farm CSA.
Golba said early summer vegetables such as carrots and lettuce might be slow arriving this year, since some seeds planted in spring might have either washed away or had trouble germinating due to the ground’s wetness.
“What I find at our markets is that people have a very short-sighted look on the weather compared to a farmer.” CHRIS DEVRIES COMMON GROUND FARM