Farmers Hope for Dry Skies Following Wet Start to Summer

With over three times the monthly average rainfall battering the area this June, local growers are holding their breath that it stops sometime soon, as the recent rains have put a damper on early harvest season.

"We've never had to re-plant so much stuff as this year," said Linda Niggles, co-owner of Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton. "And you don't make that time up. You're always behind."

This time of year, strawberries are the name of the game; this weekend's Strawberry Festival on the North Fork kicked off Thursday night. And while much harvesting remains to be done, Mother Nature has wrung out a host of crops up to this point.

Ian Calder-Piedmont, co-owner of Balsam Farms in Amagansett, said he's looking at the glass half full. While strawberries are "a little bit tough," he said, the crops are looking a lot better than he would've thought, had he known this much rain was coming.

According to the National Weather Service – whose closest monitoring station to the South Fork is located in Islip – as of Thursday, nearly 7 inches had fallen in the month of June. The monthly average up to the 13th of the month is less than 2 inches, and for the entire month of June, around 4.25 inches is the norm. 

"It's been a strange year," Calder-Piedmont said. "April was about as dry as it's ever been. But June was about as wet as it's ever been. A little more consistency would be nice."

Joe Gergela, president of the Long Island Farm Bureau, said that retail operations have felt the pinch, as tourists are holding back their weekend day trips. However Calder-Piedmont noted that a loyal, local population has grown on the retail side with an increase in the popularity of farmers markets.

If weather is dry, farmers can always irrigate, Gergela added. And the good news at least for wineries, said Long Island Wine Council President Ron Goerler, is that the hard rains are coming early in the season for grape growers. Prior to June, 2013 on the whole hasn't been much of a soaker.

"We had a dry beginning to spring," said Goerler, owner of Jamesport Vineyards. "And a somewhat dry winter beside the big storm we had, so the ground wasn't oversaturated. We would rather have it now than later."

Niggles said seeding and fertilization will have to be re-done, particularly with more sensitive crops such as arugula, basil and cilantro.

"The rain just pounds them into the mud," she said.