Hail, No!
/The last seven days were a rough week on the farm, starting off with five minutes of devastating hail last Sunday and ending with 4.5 inches of rain in 24 hours on Saturday. Let's all think sunny, warm thoughts for the weeks to come, New York farmers (and everyone else!) surely need it!
We are surviving, thank you to all who called and emailed. We will be short on veggies at market for the next 4 to 6 weeks, but should have plenty for our CSA boxes, though it might be a different mix than we planned for. Many crops are perking back up and we have a greenhouse full of new transplants germinating. When (if?) it stops raining, we are ready to jump into replanting. Our big concern on the farm right now is that all this rain combined with hail damage is a recipe for plant diseases--again, please think dry thoughts!
Frankly, we have a lot of thoughts about the weather this summer, but aren't in the a place yet to put them into words--I honestly can't describe what it felt like to see 20 years of hard work collapse under 5 minutes of precipitation. I still feel sick when I'm out in the fields. Let's all hope for a sunny and dry July through October for the state, your farmers need it!
...and now here's some photos of what serious hail can do in the fields (these are not happy photos, so you might want to skip them if vegetable massacres make you sad)...
The Offending Storm Cloud (it was supposed to miss us and continue going north, so I snapped this snazzy picture of it looking all pretty, not knowing it was about to hit winds off Lake Ontario and turn to jump us)
The Offending Hail, it almost looked like snow on the ground :(
Our flats that were hardening off to be planted last week took a hit--the storm came so fast there was no time to cover them (we barely got inside ourselves!). We lost 50 to 100% of these guys, but have already reseeded the lost flats.
Poor zucchini leaves, they took it hardest... however, they are vigorous plants and actually are producing a decent crop this week!
The damage on the ready-to-harvest summer squash was most extreme, with some fruits just exploded open on the ground!
Cucumbers not under row cover are toast. Fortunately, we have 2 more plantings under cover and 2 more in the greenhouse...
We thought the U-Pick flower garden was done for, but it has won the resiliency contest--these snapdragons are back up, growing leaves, and re-loaded with blooms!
All the peas on the vine got hit, and we lost about 50% of the plants. The survivors look to be producing okay but yields are obviously way down.
Surviving crops included anything under row cover. The row covers gave their lives up to the hail (in some fields, the hail went through the covers, still damaging crops beneath) but did their job, largely protecting plants
Onions had a rough time of it. This is five days after the storm and they aren't really doing much healing. They are one of a few crops that we aren't sure will come back :(
Field tomatoes were pretty hard hit, with lots of snapped stems. However, they are vigorous (and were healthy before the storm), so we think they will come back, but just be a few weeks behind...
Because Mother Nature likes to torment us with beauty after she destroys everything--this is the back side of the storm :/
Right now, we think that we can keep on trucking if we get several 5 day or longer breaks in the rain (okay, we'd even settle for 4 days!), so think dry thoughts!
Here's a few shots of the rain from Friday to Saturday afternoon (4.5 inches in total)... (The crazy thing here is that we are around 1480 feet in elevation, with only 100 feet or so above us, so you know when rivers start flowing over our road with so little above us in the watershed, it is going to get really crazy downstream--we hope you all and your houses stayed dry!
Our beleaguered farm road, which ducklings were using as white water runs. Fortunately, after 5 years here, we've figured out where to place our fields to minimize erosion in the vegetables. This storm was a test that showed we've successfully managed that, so that muddy runoff downstream didn't include any of our farm's soil (one bright ray of light this week)!
Chittenango Falls were creepy and terrifying--the water flow was so high that it reached over the level of the viewing platform, and actually created its own wind below the falls, blowing leaves off the trees!
And yet more rainbows, because Mother Nature tries to make up for things after raining so much that she floods homes by redecorating the sky...