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Trying times for farmers
ALANA TOULIN
07/09/2008

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A cold spring and the wettest June on record for the Thunder Bay area has meant a shorter growing season and lower yields for some fruit and vegetable growers.

“The dampness made fieldwork very difficult and a lack of heat wasn‘t very conducive in drying the conditions up,” said Rudy Buitenhuis with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. “Planting season was running late all spring.”

Boreal Edge Farm co-owner Matthew Baughman experienced the slow start first-hand.

“It‘s been pretty terrible, that‘s for sure,” he said Tuesday. “I‘ve never seen anything like it, not in the 25 years I‘ve lived here. . . . There‘s never been that much rain all at once since probably the ‘70s, and the spring was the coldest one we‘ve had in at least the last 10 years.”

Baughman, who runs the Nolalu-area farm with his wife April, grows about 40 different kinds of vegetables. He said the fine-seeded crops like spinach, lettuce, onions and carrots were hardest hit. He estimates that somewhere between 70 and 80 per cent of these crops were wiped out by the excessive water.

“We got more plantings in of them later on, but it took almost three weeks to pick up where we left off,” he said, noting that things were made even more difficult by the region‘s late planting season in general.

It didn‘t get any easier about three nights ago either, when a windstorm complete with some “pretty heavy hail” hit their crops, damaging the leaves on the spinach and romaine plants.

“There‘s places where the hail passed right through the leaves,” Baughman said, adding the plants have been fairly resilient. “They‘re still there and they‘re still growing, but I haven‘t seen hail do that before. This year has been kind of trial by fire.”

The Boreal Edge Farm participates in a community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiative, in which they deliver boxes of fresh produce, local eggs, and locally made bread weekly to about 20 families who pay for the service. Baughman compares it to the old-fashioned milk delivery system and said the weird weather has put them about two weeks behind schedule on deliveries.

“But we did start our first delivery last week and it wasn‘t anywhere near as good as we would have liked it to be,” he noted. “That‘s part of the CSA thing too – if there‘s a horrible flood or it‘s a really cold spring, those first couple of boxes will probably have less produce. We hope it balances out by the end of the year and extends into a longer fall growing season.”

Meanwhile, Belluz Farms on Candy Mountain Drive is gearing up for a successful strawberry season (pick-your-own starts today), but co-owner Jodi Belluz said the crops that take a longer time to ripen are a little behind schedule.

“Perennials – like strawberries – have really benefited from all the rain we had,” she said, predicting they are going to have a typical three- to four-week berry season. “We were in drought conditions last spring.”

However, she suspects it will be a little more difficult for the annual crops on the farm – including sweet corn, beans, cucumbers and garden vegetables.

“Those were really late going into the field – that was not really due to the cold, but due to the fact it was so wet,” she said, adding they were about two weeks behind schedule when planting.

“Things like sweet corn – the yields will be down significantly. We didn‘t get all of it planted. We just ran out of time, basically because we were starting so late.”

But while yields on some crops may be lower, consumers don‘t have much else to worry about when shopping for local produce.

“In terms of the quality of the fruits and vegetables you‘re going to see around the area this year, they‘re still going to be really good,” Belluz said.
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