Since it started raining on Monday afternoon, we’ve received over an inch and half of rain here at Terra Firma and it’s still raining lightly. In combination with the previous April storm series, we are now sitting at almost 3 inches of rain for the month — more than double our average.
Unlike last week, we were able to get enough strawberries harvested for your boxes this week before the rain started. Almost everyone on the farm was out in the berry patch on Monday morning. But the rest of this week’s harvest — two more day’s since we pick every-other day — was lost to the very heavy rain that fell last night. As soon as the field dries out, we will once again have the grim task of harvesting that ruined fruit and dropping it on the ground.
But it’s not just the strawberries. There is nothing good about large amounts of April rain for agriculture in California. Most farming activities in our state are based on the principle that it doesn’t rain much after April 1st, because, well…it usually doesn’t. The crops farmers grow — almost all of them — don’t like rain during this time of year. Non-farmers say to me, “Well, at least you don’t have to irrigate!”. But the thing is, we are already irrigating. We can’t ever assume it’s going to rain enough in April to provide the water the crops need, because rain in April is usually light and showery. In fact, one of the biggest problems with heavy rain now is that it falls onto fields that have already been irrigated. The extra water is not beneficial for the plants, and it keeps the fields from drying out to get in to do critical tasks in a timely fashion. Once the current storm ends, it will be at least two days before anyone can get back into their fields to do anything, and probably a week before we can do any planting.
April is not a month that farmers have any down time. Everyone has a packed schedule of activities: planting, cultivating and spraying. Getting an inch or more of rain shuts everything down, causing delays and backups that are difficult if not impossible to catch up on. The only bright side of the weather this spring is that it was unusually dry and warm in March, which allowed us to get somewhat ahead of schedule. But since we were unable to predict the future, and most crops are planted on a fairly set schedule, it wasn’t possible to take full advantage of that anomaly. This is especially true of crops that are grown in the greenhouse and transplanted — they simply weren’t ready to put out, even if we had thought to do so.
If it had been just one storm this month, it would have been manageable. But with this second storm, it will cause gaps in harvest later in the summer and fall because of the duration of the wet period. It’s also going to cause a blowup of fungal diseases in many crops that we and other farmers grow, due to the continued cool and moist conditions. Already we have sprayed more fungicides (organic of course) then I ever remember having done this time of year. And we’ll have to do at least one more round, or more if the storms keep coming into May as current forecasts suggest.
Speaking of fungus: we’ve had some issues lately with folks reporting grey mold on their strawberries. Strawberries are not one of the crops we spray with fungicide. The mold and other quality issues you might have are essentially an avoidable consequence of the stormy weather, which doesn’t just wet the fruit but also beats it up. We leave the obviouusly damaged fruit in the field, but there is also microscopic damage that we can’t see during harvest or packing. We apologize in advance if you have to throw out a berry or two; if you get a basket where every berry is unusable, please let us know.
At this point, the entire state of California has recieved most of its annual average rainfall. We don’t need any more. So if you’re still praying for rain, doing rain dances, etc…please stop 🙂
Thanks,
Pablito