Weather puts farmers in bind Producers weeks behind because of heavy rainfall, hot days

ORONO – Vegetable farmers and livestock producers who grow feed crops are starting to feel the effects of this spring’s wacky weather. First it was too wet – weeks of rain saturated fields, rotted seeds already in the ground and then turned fields into quagmires that couldn’t stand the weight of planting equipment.

Then it got too hot, frying young seedlings and pushing hay past its point of high quality.

Now it’s rainy and cool again.

“If we got on the fields today, we could go steady for the next three weeks and maybe we could get caught up to where we would only be two weeks behind,” Steve Wright of The Wright Place in Clinton said Wednesday.

The Wrights operate one of the largest dairy farms in the state, with more than 700 milking cows, and they rely on their ability to plant and harvest their own feed stocks.

Wright said the family has planted only one-third of its 400 acres of corn. “We haven’t even started cutting the grass,” he said.

Wright said the hay should have been cut last week. “We are still going to get the quantity, but the quality won’t be there,” he noted.

Farmers across the state are behind, and the deadline for planting is at hand.

“They are working right on the edge now,” Joseph Cannon, farm manager at the University of Maine’s Rogers Farm, said Wednesday. “They can still plant field corn, and it might make it, but it is certainly a gamble. We just need a little break in the weather.”

Cannon said that only about 45 percent of the crops at Rogers Farm have been planted, and some research projects may not be able to launch. Some of the trials include vegetable, corn and grass varieties, different farming systems, such as rotating crops, and organic trials.

“I’m glad I’m not making my living on the crops this year,” Cannon said.

James Cook of Skylandia Organic Farm in Grand Isle does make his living from growing vegetables, berries, barley and soybeans. He also represents eight other Aroostook County farmers who belong to the Crown of Maine organic cooperative. Aroostook County didn’t get as much rain as the southern part of the state, but farmers there are still two weeks behind.

“The last couple of years we have been spoiled with early springs,” Cook said. “We planted by the first of May last year. June 1st is the target date and we’ve already gone well beyond that.”

Cook said for those who managed to get their fields planted, cultivation is the next step. “But it’s going to be hard to get on those fields,” he said. “Everything is still too wet.”

Jason Kafka of Checkerberry Farm in Guilford said he is using some innovative methods to beat the weather at his organic vegetable farm. Tents, row covers, greenhouses and a half-acre of sci-fi looking plastic tubes all are providing environments to help his 16 acres of crops to grow.

But, he admitted, he and his workers also are using some old-fashioned cheerleading. “We give the plants pep talks and speak well to them,” he joked.

Kafka said it is amazing that Maine farmers “get away with as much as we do. All of this weather clogs up the soils and slows down the plants’ respiration. Everything will be slower.”

“But that is part of what makes Maine-grown foods delicious – the anticipation,” he added. “Before you know it, we will all be complaining that we have too many zucchini.”

David Marcinkowski is the hay, grass and silage specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

“The hay is growing like crazy. But it has already lost quality because it can’t be harvested,” he said. “The corn is either rotting in the ground or it hasn’t been planted yet. Now it is getting on the too-late side.”

Marcinkowski said that farmers aren’t panicking. “They are pretty much used to Mother Nature’s whims. What really will affect them is the weather for the rest of the summer. If it is cold like last year, that will be bad. If we get a lot of heat, that would be good.”

Paige Tyson of Two Loons Farm in South China said the farmers aren’t the only ones affected by the extended rain and heat.

“Lots of occupations are suffering, such as the construction industry, forestry. But the difference is, they will recover. If you can’t get a skidder into the woods, the trees will still be there.

“But if you can’t get your crops planted or harvested, you’re lost,” he said.