End of season outlook

The fog cleared out and we have a beautiful day with unlimited visibility.  I wish I could say the same for the rest of the growing season.  The warm weather crops such as peppers, cukes and eggplant are in demand, but they are pretty much done for.  The lettuces are overrun with various weather related problems and the cilantro has run out of fertility and is turning yellow.  Carrots are rotting in place and the spring mix deal died 2 weeks ago.  About the only things that seem to take this weather in stride are leeks and celery.   Potatoes are holding at the moment, but more rain in the forecast makes that an uncertain deal in the short run.  This is the kind of weather that makes me glad I'm not a full time farmer.

Foggy outlook

The fog is really dense here this morning.   It is supposed to blow out later and be partly sunny.  Could be the pricing report here also.  Supplies for most of the stuff we offer are spotty and without regular offerings, it is very hard to make a market.  We wind up responding to offers for various products and chasing growers.  Very stressful.  The cauliflower should be at its peak right now, but we are rejecting product as fast as it comes in for various defects, and it won't get better.

Sloppy weather continuation

As nice as the weekend and Monday were, today and the rest of the week are promising to be the flip side of glorious autumn weather.  Rainy, drizzly and just warm enough to tease you into thinking your last crops will make before the inevitable freeze.  Without sunshine, the temp. is not enough.  Besides, the whole dreary depressing mess hurts my attitude.  Every grower is totalling their losses for the season and no one is happy at the moment.  Tempers are short and both customers and brokers spar over pricing.  Usually the grower will cave to make a sale, but at this point, some will go out and disc a field rather than compromise on the price.  From their point of view, they have bent double all year, trying to satisfy customers.  The other point of view is they failed more often than not and they need to suck it up and give a few dollars to the poor wholesaler who has not had the packages running through his warehouse all year and as a result won't be able to trade in his 2 year old Lexus for next year's model. 

Prices and demand

It's been another challenging day in the produce business.  The growers here in the North Country are loosing their collective shirts this season as the weather is harvesting far more of their crops than they are.  The problem is, Mother Nature doesn't pay for what she takes.  Some farmers may throw up their hands and say they'll get real jobs.  But are there any real jobs out there?   The seductive aspect of growing fresh produce, at least until recently, has been if you do your job of growing the crop and you harvest it, the worst case is you will make a living, and if the market is high due to someone else's misfortune, you may make a king's ransom.  The problem today is almost everyone is misfortunate, due to weather, foreign competition or government regulations which disregard market conditions.  The chance to make that big score gets more and more remote, and the idea that it takes the investment of a small fortune just to make a lower middle class income starts the head scratching at any gathering of practicing growers.   Add to those concerns the wild card of global climate change.   One third generation grower has already suggested his two sons find off farm employment unless they can come up with a viable business plan for increasing farm revenue.   This kind of thinking will lead to the off shoring of America and Canada's food supply, as surely as our industrial base has relocated to China.  Without a coherent national plan to preserve and protect our produce growers this might be the last generation of consumers to eat a diet of American grown fruits and veggies.  This is a bleak, but all to possible future.

Another rainy week forecast

At least it was a beautiful weekend.  No frost, so the warm season stuff will probably hang on for at least another couple of weeks.  Most of the tomatoes are eaten up by blight, so they will be slim pickings, but the lettuces still seem robust and the peppers  are still sizing.  Unfortunately, the rains will resume starting tonight.  Some of the gardens are so saturated at this point the carrots are starting to rot from excessive moisture.  The same heavy soil that helped keep them alive during the worst of the drought is now causing 10-15% of the carrots to start rotting from the tips.  The same soil is not bothering the broccoli and cauliflower and corn planted next to the carrots, so the longer root system of the carrots are their downfall.  Did not plant anything this past weekend for the first time since April!  Feels wierd, but at the same time cathartic.  Time to move on.

To frost or not to

Looks like we will dodge the frost bullet for the forseeable future.  It got to about 38 this morning at 6:20 as I was harvesting lettuce for the market.  A little white frost came down on the barn roof and I could feel it starting to form on the lettuce leaves, but I don't think it hurt anything.  I dragged some reemay cloth over the zucchini plants as a precaution.  We'll see later today and tomorrow if anything was touched.   Most of the tender stuff is on the way out anyway, but it is always a bummer to see frost damage this early.  The only consolation is the galinsoga will go down also.  At this point, the only planting left to do is the garlic.  Probably the first week of October.

Another week in the trenches

Well, another week is done, and it seems like the veg deal can't get out of its own way.  Lettuce is cheap and no one wants it.  People want romaine, but it is not good so we can't ship.  Peppers are dear in Canada and cheap in the US and no one seems to want them anyway.   The spring mix deal is ugly, and the harvest conditions are horrible for all crops.  The cilantro deal was hot and we had no volume.  Now we have it, but the color is gone due to heavy rains so no one is interested.  There are no happy faces in the office and it will only get worse until the weather puts this deal out of its misery.  The best thing about 2011 will be when it is over.  Let's go 2012 !