By Barth Anderson

The summer of 2005 is going down in the history books as a "doozy" for local vegetable farmers. "This was one of the most stressful seasons, physically and emotionally, that we've farmed," Atina Diffley of Gardens of Eagan said. "Drought, hot sun, hot winds," Rhys Williams of Featherstone Farm said, "it all really set us back." "So it goes in farming," Rufus Haucke of Keewaydin Farm said, "where we live or die by the weather." We may have finally rounded the corner into autumn, with crisp days and chilly nights, but this summer, our Minnesota and Wisconsin farmers were mano a mano with droughts, hot winds, tor nadoes, hail, and the inevitable state governmental bureaucracy.

Hail, Minnesota!

While lounging poolside sipping organic mint juleps, you city folk may not have noticed how volatile Minnesota's weather was this summer. But Dean Schladweiler, Wedge Co-op's Produce Manager, certainly noticed.

"It was a wild, wild summer." Schladweiler is responsible for writing pre-harvest contracts with our circle of farmers, coordinating deliveries, giving feedback on quality, and helping out the farmers wherever he can on the retail level. So he felt the weather, too.

"Weather played a big part for our farmers, unfortunately. Crazy weather cold one week and then a string of hot weather. July was ugly." For Schladweiler, it was ugly, in part, because California had rough weather, too, which meant that, there wasn't back-up for the local product. "[California] didn't have salad lettuces to save their lives."

July was ugly for Minnesota farmers because they had serious hail with heavy flooding, and, after an excessively cold, wet spring, farmers endured twenty hot days over 90 degrees with no rain in July. In his weekly newsletter, Greg Reynolds of Riverbend Farm compared the hot winds of July to a furnace wind.

"There was a period of panic," said Rhys, whose garlic crop was much smaller this year than he'd hoped. "But there always is."

Weather like July's could have seriously weakened the immune systems of local crops, but, according to Diffley, "[We had] very little disease considering how stressful the weather was." She attributes this to organic farming's compost and soil-building techniques. "[They] really shine on a year like this." Further more, Diffley claims that Gardens of Eagan's organic crops have similar yields and quality to their "chemical Minnesota neighbors," but in a year with such dramatic weather stresses, "the organic biological life comes through, and we tend to do much better than they do."

"Just like people," Diffley says, "healthy plants are better able to resist disease and recover from stress."

On, Wisconsin!

The Wedge is fortunate to have the largest concentration of organic farms in the country just off Minnesota's "east coast," in southwest Wisconsin. The majority of the Wedge's organic produce comes from this dynamic region, where Avalanche Farm, Har mony Valley, Keewaydin, Turkey Ridge Apple orchard, and CROPP/ Organic Valley are located.

Unfortunately, Wisconsin had one of the driest years in recent memory, and, consequently, on August 19th, Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle declared his state's drought conditions to be a natural disaster.

"It was the worst drought since 1988," according to the Wisconsin Farmers' Union.

Formally declaring a natural disaster is intended to expedite farmers' requests for temporary irrigation permits to divert stream or lake water to irrigate parched crops. But James Welch of Avalanche Organics in Viola, WI told us that, due to the drought, the state actually suspended Avalanche's permit to draw water off the pristine Kickapoo River. In fact, only three farms in the entire state received permits to irrigate from lakes and rivers -- and to be sure, the recipients weren't small, organic farms.

The effect of that irrigation permit suspension was felt all the way to the Twin Cities. Directly-seeded crops like salad greens don't have the root systems that transplanted crops have and need irrigation badly, as a result. "That's why customers at the Wedge didn't see Avalanche [salad mix] greens very consistently this summer," Welch explained. Then there was the tornado. On August 25th, the winds picked up, a dark thunderhead loomed in the west, and the sky over Keewaydin Farm near Viola, Wisconsin turned olive green -- none of which looked good to owner Rufus Haucke and his father. According to Rufus:

"As the storm bore down on us, we sought shelter in our basement, joined by the crew from Avalanche Organics who were har vesting tomatoes when the stor m struck. After a couple minutes of intense winds followed by heavy rain, the storm subsided, and we had our first opportunity to examine the damage. Surprisingly enough, we only received some minor nicks. My beloved greenhouse has some bent poles and we lost several trees, but nothing compared to some of our neighbors and the little town of Viola."

Don't Aggravate, Co-operate!

The neighborliness shown during the tornado incident is quite typical of our family of local farms, who really learned to cooperate this year more than any other.

For many local products, the Wedge has a "contracted grower," the farm who is given preferential consideration when that product is ready for harvest ­ for example, Avalanche Organics contracts for local salad mix, and Gardens of Eagan brought in the local corn. While the contracted grower has that product available, the other farms respectfully back off and stopped selling that item.

This actually opened up opportunities for the other non-contracted growers in our circle this year. Because these farms were cooperating instead of competing, Featherstone Farm planted their broccoli knowing when Gardens of Eagan's contracted season would begin and end, thereby extending the availability of local organic broccoli for our members. It worked the same way with tomatoes.

"Featherstone actually filled the tomato window until the contracted grower [Gardens of Eagan] came online," Schladweiler explained. "So Featherstone's tomatoes came in two weeks early. Same with broccoli. I don't think Featherstone could have planned it any better."

This cooperation among the farmers extended beyond planting, too. Avalanche and Keewaydin shared trucking all summer long, and on Thursdays, those two farms shared their truck with Featherstone, located just across the Mississippi on the highway into the Twin Cities.

"Our growers really stepped up and worked together," Schladweiler said.

Looks Good from Here

Back in early September, when this article was written, all the farmers were optimistic about the overall season, despite undergoing such rough summers.

"A pretty good year," Rhys of Featherstone told us. Greg Reynolds of Riverbend said, "It is too early to tell for sure, but [the fall] looks good from here. We still have a lot of tomatoes to sell and are selling 1500 pounds of muskmelon per week, which is a lot for our scale."

The hot, dry weather, which was too much for Greg's peppers and eggplant, was great for various vine-crops (like tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers), according to Schladweiler. Welch of Avalanche agreed, saying their heirloom tomatoes came on very strong at the end of the season.

Gardens of Eagan, the Wedge's longtime squash supplier, had a biennially appearing pest that they were trying to get rid of this year, so Featherstone stepped up to the plate and became the contracted grower this fall. Rhys is confident that the organic squash will turn 2005 into a winning year for him.

Atina Diffley said the warm weather was good for Gardens of Eagan's corn, kale, and broccoli, too. "We are just starting harvest on a broccoli crop of 60,000 plants which look absolutely stellar," she said. "We'll have beautiful broccoli all fall, until mid November."

To all our summer veggie farmers, we say thanks for sweating through the heat, dodging twisters, and hauling in the pure product. You're saints. Stay warm, and see you next spring, ok?