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An already steep learning curve for first-time farm owner Hannah Tripp has been exacerbated this season by the related forces of rainfall, weeds and crop disease.
Tripp said excessive rains from storms Elsa, Henri and Ida, which started in July after an unusually dry spring, have since made it difficult to plant on the usual schedule and impossible to pull weeds with the tractor on his farm. of suppliers in Salem. Diseases, including one that ruined the first two broccoli plantings of the year, are more common in humid conditions.
She said vegetables like peppers and eggplant – the few that were there – were smaller than usual.
“Fall is usually a time of plenty, and there’s no extra this year,” she said.
Gary Lessor, chief meteorologist at the Western Connecticut State University Weather Center, said total precipitation in the region this summer was not close to breaking records despite the three storms. But he noted that September was “a very wet start” with 4.57 inches already reported at Groton-New London airport, up from 4.36 inches in July and 3.95 inches in August.
Tripp admitted that the fall was going to be “difficult”. With much of the return earmarked for shareholders from the Farm Community Supported Agriculture Program, or CSA, it does not remain as much as it had hoped for wholesale distribution to shops and restaurants in Colchester, Mystic. , New London, Niantic and Willimantic.
She said wholesale profits so far are down about a third from projections based on previous years. She bought the farm business in November from its founders, Max and Kerry Taylor, who moved to Amherst, Mass., To take over Brookfield Farm.
Tripp started out as a volunteer with the Taylors in their first season here in Salem nine years ago and then rose through the ranks from part-time farm laborer to assistant manager.
“When they announced that they were going to move on, it wasn’t an easy decision to try and figure out what to do next, but I just felt like I couldn’t do without it,” she declared. “Feeding my hometown is an incredible opportunity to have.”
Despite the challenges this year, she said she was optimistic about her prospects for next year based on the lessons she learned this time around. She also hopes that the “wild and unpredictable weather” attributed to global warming doesn’t mean that every year will be so difficult.
“There’s that fear. But I still think there’s reason to think it won’t be like this every year,” she said. “So we hope next year will be better.”
Robert Schacht of Hunts Brook Farm in Waterford said his fields sit atop a deposit of sand and gravel not prone to flooding, but that doesn’t mean the land is safe from the diseases that thrive in humidity. He estimated that around 60% to 70% of the farm’s signature lettuce crop was damaged by bottom rot, a fungus he said could also have been affected by an unusually hot June followed by ‘cooler weather. He also lost a cucumber plantation due to illness.
According to Schacht, some crops, like melons, ripen more slowly and lack their typical sweetness due to weather conditions.
Hunts Brook Farm grows 50 different types of vegetables, he said. A farmer at the site since the mid-1990s, he married his wife, Teresa, in 2001 and together they began to operate the farm as a business. The farm now includes an ASC option, wholesale offerings, an on-site market and a presence at the Chester Farmers Market on Sundays.
Dawn Bruckner, owner of Niantic’s La Belle Aurore restaurant for over a decade and a half, said she has seen more extreme weather conditions in recent years, which has affected the performance of some local vendors like Tripp . But she found the farmers resilient.
She said her restaurant is small enough that she can get everything she needs from vendors in the area, even when the weather isn’t cooperating. As the owner of a farm-to-table restaurant, she simply designs her dishes based on what’s available.
“It was a little more mundane menu this season,” she said. “Those extra pops of color weren’t there.”
In a good season, shiny watermelon radishes and heirloom tomatoes are “an embarrassment of wealth” in her cooking, she said. But she understands that buying local produce means she can’t always get what she wants.
“They are making the most of what they can with everything they have,” she said of the farms she works with. “It’s quite remarkable.”
Ryan Quinn, who runs Long Table Farm in Lyme with his wife Baylee Drown, described an experience similar to Schacht’s when he said the disease was a bigger problem than the flooding.
He said winter squash and tomatoes were the main victims of the fungal disease which reduces the shelf life of produce or kills vegetables outright.
He said the use of elevated tunnels, purchased in part with state and federal grants, was one way to minimize damage from uncertain weather conditions. Also known as hoop houses, covered tunnels help protect crops from the elements and pests.
“State governments and the federal government have invested in this stuff, and for us it makes a huge difference in setting up a farm,” he said.
Drown, who has a master’s degree in sustainable agriculture and has been described by Quinn as the mastermind behind the operation, started the farm eight years ago. Quinn joined a few years later as a “key mending genre” with a master’s degree in education, he said.
Quinn said he and Drown have focused on diversifying their offerings to cope with upcoming storms, as well as widely varying temperatures and precipitation amounts. This means growing more types of vegetables, choosing varieties that are more resistant to disease, adding tall tunnels, and thinking more deeply about drainage.
“Climate change is coming,” he said. “We’re going to get wetter and we’re going to get drier; it’s going to be hotter when you don’t want it to be hot and cold when you don’t want it to be cold. Things are getting more and more and more unpredictable and you have to configure your farm to deal with it. “
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