August 8, 2024
Alright Mother Nature, the rain can stop for a bit now. We’ve had enough and would really like to dry out for a little bit.
The crops need a break from all the moisture. Most of all, our crews need a break from all of the mud they have had to wade through to pick sweet corn and other crops like melons. While the rain was needed to replenish the aquifers, lakes, rivers, and streams after a three-year drought, it’s done its job.
Now, the rain has become a challenge. When you have too much moisture, you start to deal with more diseases on plants, causing a whole new set of challenges.
Another challenge we are faced with this season is wildlife. Don’t get us wrong, we love all of the wildlife we see on and around our farms. We are blessed with many animals that make up a great ecosystem, but they are becoming your greatest competition as a consumer.
The animals are getting to the crops before we can get them to you! Sandhill cranes are feasting on cantaloupes in the field, but the frustrating part is that they enjoy taking one bite out of each melon and then they move along.
Sweet Corn too!
Many of you are in love with the sweet corn right now, because it’s some of the best of the season. But the raccoons think so too! They are abundant in the corn fields, and they are getting bigger by the day as they feast away on corn each evening. Unfortunately, they are causing damage like we haven’t experienced in years, but there isn’t too much we can do about their presence.
Do you know who else really loves our sweet corn? The geese! Our final planting of corn is only about 6-8 inches tall, and the geese love to come and just pull it out of the ground and gobble it right up! It’s so bad each morning that we’ve resorted to hiring a couple of local kids to run through the corn fields to chase the geese away. It doesn’t cure the issue, but it helps for a while.
We are also seeing more woodchucks, ground squirrels, and deer than we have in past seasons. We believe the reason for this might be that a lot of the river bottoms surrounding our farmland are flooded, so the animals have had to move to drier ground to find food and shelter! And what do they find when they come across our fields? Tasty food!
We’re all for local wildlife, but when they start decimating crops, it makes things a bit challenging. We’ll keep at it though, chasing the geese out, finding ways to move the sandhill cranes out of the melon fields so we can deliver some tasty cantaloupes to you without a sample missing, and hopefully reason with the raccoons to leave our sweet corn fields alone so you can enjoy the sweet corn instead of them.
