Parched August batters crops

PITTSFIELD – Potato farmers, apple growers and vegetable harvesters will be watching the sky this weekend, hoping predictions of rain will ease the need for irrigation and save some late crops.

However, state officials are saying it is already too late for both the sweet corn and blueberry harvests. Corn silage and hay yields are also being adversely affected.

Anthony Lacroix, a forecaster at the National Weather Service in Gray, remarked understatedly on Thursday: “It is dry.”

Lacroix said Portland had received only thirty-five-hundredths of an inch of rain in August. The norm is 2.75 inches. In the Bangor area, only one-half inch has been received while the norm is usually 2.5 inches.

Even though weather forecasters see a chance of rain in the next few days, farmers said they were waiting to see it before they turned off their irrigation.

“Plants can die on a chance of rain,” said Tom Roberts of Snakeroot Farm in Pittsfield. “We keep the water running until it begins to pour.”

Roberts grows a wide range of vegetables and herbs, offering them at area farmers markets and through contracts with customers. This summer’s lack of rain has him pumping 5 gallons a minute from his farm’s well to keep his crops watered.

Although he admits he is concerned, he said, “We have no choice.”

Linda Jesson of High Lonesome Acres in Harmony hasn’t a choice either. Most of her acreage is leased – with no nearby water supply. “I’m hauling water on the back of my truck in barrels,” she said. Although sporadic showers saved some crops from dying, Jesson said Thursday, “I have 3 inches of dust in my garden.” Anything that was growing over rock had died.

Although every grower in Maine would welcome a week of rain, some are in more desperate need than others.

David Bell of the Wild Blueberry Commission said recent hot weather pushed the harvest ahead of schedule. “It was really short and there weren’t a lot of berries,” said Bell. “Our situation is worse because growers can experience a yield loss for one or both years of the two-year growing cycle.”

Last year was also dry, said Bell, with some growers experiencing a 100 percent crop loss. Although final harvest figures will not be computed until the end of the year, Bell said this year’s results “will be well below average.”

Hay and corn silage to feed the state’s dairy farm herds are also suffering, said Richard Kersbergen of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. “The first cutting of hay [last spring] was very large, but the second and third cuttings are greatly reduced. The third cutting could be 50 percent less than usual.”

Kersbergen said the corn silage harvest, which will begin in about two weeks, is of great concern. “Definitely the volume of feed will be reduced, but what is even more dramatic is the quality could be poor. In extreme dry conditions, the silage could even become toxic by accumulating nitrates.”

Don Flannery of the Maine Potato Board said Maine is not in as serious shape as New Brunswick, which announced that its potato crop could experience a loss of about one-third without rain.

“Our conditions are similar to last year,” said Flannery. “We were at 260 hundredweight per acre, down from an average of 280. It’s an 8 to 10 percent decrease.”

Flannery said the quality of this year’s harvest appears to be high. “Harvesting has begun in the southern part of the state and the quality looks excellent,” he said. “If we get some rain now, it could make a difference in the harvesting of late varieties.”

The one bright spot still remaining on the harvest horizon appears to be the apple crop. Both in northern and southern Maine, the apple crop appears to be doing well, especially where the orchards are irrigated.

“Apple trees are deep-rooted,” said Judy Dimmock of North Star Orchards in Madison. “What happens with apples at harvest depends a lot on what happens in early summer. We are looking at a really nice crop. Our trees are not showing any signs of stress, which would cause them to drop early.”

Ellen McAdam of McDougal Orchards in Springvale said, “So far, so fine. The early varieties are all coming in good-sized. If we don’t have any significant rain soon, there might be a slight reduction in size but, if anything, the apples will be sweeter.”