By Caroline Lanni, Reporter
Several consecutive days of heavy rain have flooded local farms this summer and the rain has affected the sizes, quality, and timeline of crops at many orchards, thus affecting the fall season as well.
The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report on August 9 explicitly stating for the first time that climate change is caused by human activity, and outlined how excess rainfall has increased and will continue to increase in the near future unless action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases.
Meadowbrook Orchards and Sunny Crest Orchards are working hard to produce their crops at their farms this season with the added stress of rain delaying and damaging their present and future crops.
Owner at Sunny Crest Orchards, Bill Broderick, fourth generation, said the rain made some of the individual fruits bigger making them “nice and juicy,” but sadly the rain still “has made things more difficult,” for the business.
Broderick said that they have apples, peaches, plums, nectarines, squash, and pumpkins at the orchard – they are a wholesale operation only.
He added that some crops have drowned, “especially with the pumpkins we’ve had areas [low areas] that were completely flooded – there will be no production from those areas, and the other areas are affected, but not as badly.”
Broderick said, “When we have a lot of rain then we need to use more fungicides than normal.”
He said that they are nervous about the hurricanes, so they are getting as much harvested as possible, and they have a lot of peaches this season.
Broderick added that farms are beneficial to communities because they grow locally for the public.
General Manager at Meadowbrook Orchards David Chandler said that at their orchard they have or will shortly have raspberries, blueberries, apples, pumpkins, gourds, and watermelons.
He said, “The rain has definitely affected our berry crop.”
Chandler added due to so much rain the plants are absorbing a lot of water, which is making the berries take on too much and that lowers the sweetness of them.
He added they “we’re ahead of it for a while,” and picked the berries before they got more wet.
“The last couple weeks or so when almost every day [it rained] – it’s been hard,” said Chandler.
The berries do go to waste when they have taken on too much water, so they can’t sell them, so it has been a “challenge” dealing with the overripe berries, he said.
Chandler said that raspberries don’t do well when they get too wet, so it’s making it harder to pick them.
“As far as the apples are concerned, we’ve had to spray more fungicides and stuff to kind of keep the trees from rotting – it’s definitely been a challenging year, and expensive,” said Chandler.
He said, “The weather has hurt the pick-your-own side of business at this point – it’s been interesting – not as many people [now] are coming out [to pick your own].”
He added that the weather has caused changes in the picking season this year compared to last year.
Chandler said that the apples are “mature enough” now so the rain won’t affect them as much as it did for other fruits and the rain will make the apple sizes a little bigger this year.
Other crops such as pumpkins and gourds have been affected by the rain but not as badly, he said.
He added that business has been “fairly strong” during COVID-19.
Chandler said that they have been working hard on giving the customers what they want during the pandemic and staying up to date with restrictions.
“My goal is to continue this farm moving forward into the next generation,” he added.
Chandler said that he is the fifth generation and has run the farm for two years since his father passed away.
“It’s a big labor of love, but also a big responsibility,” said Chandler.
He added that he believes it will be a good turnout this fall.
This season Chandler said they added an area of sunflowers opening in early September and luckily the rain didn’t affect them as much.
Chandler said as a farmer you should try and, “stay ahead of what’s happening.
“There are things you necessarily can’t control, and weather and rain are one of them, so you plant your crops where you feel they’ll do best and soil conditions are going to dictate how that goes,” he added.
Meadowbrook Orchards is open to the public Tuesday to Sunday 6: 30 a.m. to 5 p.m., 8 p.m. on Thursdays. They are located on 209 Chace Hill Road.
“The weather has hurt the pick-your-own side of business at this point,” said David Chandler, owner of Meadowbrook Orchards.
Left: Meadowbrook Orchards owner David Chandler’s son Nathan Chandler (L) and Miller Backus (R).
Right: Miller Backus (L); Nathan Chandler, and Silas Backus (R) at Meadowbrook Orchards.
COURTESY: David Chandler