South Frontenac farmers reeling from three months without rain

Jeff Green | Aug 17, 2016

Moderate rains last Saturday and sustained rains on Tuesday of this week have greened up the countryside in South Frontenac and brought some optimism to area farmers who have been watching their crops turn to dust and their pastures dwindle to nothing after a non-existent snow pack from last winter was followed by three months of hot dry weather.

But for the growing season of 2016, the rains, as welcome as they are for dry ponds and wells, are too lake to rescue most of the crops of 2016.

Dave Perry, from Perry Maine-Anjou Farm near Harrowsmith, was not particularly impressed when the Quinte and Cataraqui Region conservation authorities bumped up their drought designations from moderate to severe earlier this month.

“I don't know where they got the idea about a moderate drought,” he said over the phone on Monday evening (August 15). “Our first cut of hay was down by 50% in earlyJuneand my watering pond was down to the mud, for the first time in my lifetime, by July.”

In an industry as diverse as agriculture in South Frontenac, growers have faced different impacts from the drought of 2016, a summer that has been the driest in over 50 years, according to local farmers with long memories.

For Perry, who runs a beef cattle operation, the weather has had a large impact. He has been worrying about keeping his animals watered, a problem that he does not remember ever having to deal with.

“I don't even remember even hearing about my main watering pond dropping down so low from my grandparents when I was a kid,” he said. The Perrys have been on the same property for generations.

Rain last weekend brought the pond up about 4 inches, and the rain on Tuesday likely helped some more, but Perry said he has been moving his water pump around all summer, looking for pockets of water to fill watering troughs for his cattle.

He is only now starting to think about what he is going to do this winter, since not only was his first cut of hay diminished; the second cut still hasn't happened.

“Hay prices have doubled, and there isn't a lot available anyway because everyone who usually has some for sale needs everything they have for themselves.”

He could consider selling some cattle but is reluctant.

“We've been working on improving the genetics of our herd for a hundred years, and I don't really want to mess with that program by selling off animals I would normally want to breed. And even if I do, the price is down to $1.70 a pound, I hear, when it was $3.00 last spring.”

Perry said he is just now working to determine what he will do this winter, but doesn't really like any of the options.

Ron Sleeth, who runs Ellevale Farm near Battersea, a dairy operation with 30 milk cows in a herd of about 75 Holsteins, has been working the four-generation farm that he runs with his wife and children since 1962.

He also knew that this was going to be a difficult season by early June.

“Our first cut of hay, which we take off in June, was about 50% of the normal amount. Then we had no second cut at all. We might have a cut in a few weeks, in place of our normal third cut, but it will be about 50% as well, if not less,” he said.

Crops of barley and silage corn are all at about 50% as well. However, in the grand scheme of things, Sleeth considers himself to be lucky.

“Normally we grow all that we need to feed our cattle, and we have some left to sell. This year we will not have any to sell, and we will be buying some as well, but others are in much worse shape,” he said.

While Sleeth said he has sold off about 10 head of cattle that he might normally have kept as surrogates, the rest of the herd will remain intact, and milk production has remained high.

“I know some others who are not as lucky as I am, who are struggling and will be looking at serious consequences that will hurt them this year and into the future. It's not a good situation.”

Over at Sonset Farms near Inverary, Andrea Cumpson said they were “kind of basking in the rain right now” when contacted on Tuesday morning, as heavy rains were coming down just a couple of days after rains last Saturday.

As for the rest of the summer, she described it as “brutal; all summer we had only drops of rain. We felt like everyone around us was getting some rain and it was passing us by.”

She said that the drought has affected everything Sonset does on its mixed farm. Crops are all down about 50% or more, and some, such as corn, were so stilted and hard that it was harvested and will be fermented to produce silage.

Fortunately, their newly planted spelt crop fared pretty well, and their wells have all held up, so they have been able to water their cattle, pigs, and chickens.

“We decided to abandon watering our gardens to make sure there was enough water for the animals, so we have lost a lot of garden produce,” she said.

Sonset normally does a small Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) business, selling garden produce in advance and delivering it in season, but they have pulled out of those contracts this year.

With rain this week, though, perhaps some of the garden plants will recover in time to produce fruit. More than that, it has brought some life to the dry fields, and all the trees and vegetation on and around the farm.

“It's amazing how resilient the land is. The rain seems to have brought everything back to life,” she said.

Over in Verona, Pat and Kate Joslin run a small seed and market garden business, with a quarter of an acre in production.

Although they are able to water their gardens and have not felt the same impact from the drought as others, Pat said this week that they have lost their onions, winter squash and some of their tomatoes. Their seed business is the most vulnerable, as it takes two years to bring many of the plants to seed. The plants are brought in, kept over winter, then replanted and grown on until they go to seed.

“When you lose those because there isn't enough water, after all that labour, it is frustrating,” he said.