Wet weather and high costs bogging down area farmers

A good farming year is easy to recognize, says John Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes.

“My ancestors bought a pickup, built a barn or added on to the house,” he said. It’s all in the county register.

With record rainfall, late freezes, a cool spring and rising prices for diesel and fertilizer, 2022 looks like a no-pickup, no-addition year.

Many fields have been too wet to plant, like four of Jason Vander Kooy’s under the east side of Pleasant Ridge on Bradshaw Road.

Water from the Ridge “comes off faster now that the east side of Ridge is getting more and more developed,” explained Vander Kooy of Harmony Dairy. “Sullivan Slough can only handle so much and right now the water table there is two inches below the ground. On Monday, instead of flowing downhill toward La Conner, the water was flowing backwards to the fields.

“I was hoping to plant those fields later this week but it’s not looking too good.”

He has managed to get 85% of his corn into the ground. Friends in saturated Whatcom County haven’t been able to plant anything at all.

“Because La Conner is much drier than Edison, we got our crop in,” said Thulen, “but the four or five sheds I know that still have planting left to do will have to make some decisions soon.”

Seed potatoes die if they’re underwater, and Thulen expects to see empty spots in the lower parts of his fields. How many won’t be clear until the plants are up.

Next year may be problematic if the British Columbia farmers who supply his seed potatoes cannot plant in their very wet fields.

Spinach seed could also be in short supply. According to Todd Gordon of Gordon Skagit Farms, some spinach seed did not make it into the ground before the seed companies’ planting deadline.

Continuing cool weather also compromised pollination. “The blueberry guys are thinking pollination is 50%, and our cabbage is going out of bloom with a 50-60% yield, which is a 40% loss,” said La Conner farmer Dave Hedlin. “Trees bloomed too late for the pollinators they expected.”

Dean Swanson has no pears or Gravenstein apples. Strawberries were pollinated, but slugs and voles are chomping his berries. Many early-bearing Albion berries are rotting. Later Shuksan berries might make it. His raspberries are okay so far, but the end of February freeze nailed his blackberries.

Rain brings weeds, too. “With this much moisture, you gotta hoe twice,” Swanson complained.

Ordinarily, cultivating will dislodge weeds. This year, after a rain, “their roots start over again,” said Hedlin. “I’m going to have very weedy organic barley.”

On the other hand, pasture grass is doing well – if you can get into the field to cut it. Hedlin says cruciferous crops like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli also “look happy.”

Costs way up

Prices for diesel fuel and fertilizer have risen sharply. A gallon of diesel costs nearly twice what it did a year ago. Competition for fertilizer is keen now that nitrogen and potash producers in Russia and the Ukraine are offline. Not to mention that making fertilizer also requires natural gas, another resource whose price is skyrocketing.

Thulen says it’s normal to invest about $1,000 an acre in inputs like fuel, fertilizer and labor. “Since we don’t know when the sun will turn back on, we have to limit inputs. There’s no point putting $2,000 of inputs into an acre you can’t get out.”

Could this summer be like 2011, when the Swansons didn’t start picking berries until June 20, the Canoe Journey arrived at the Swinomish Reservation on July 25 under torrential rain, and the temperature never rose above 80 degrees?

“We are trying to be as frugal as we can be,” said Swanson. “I can’t start spending $400 a day and hope for a good August.”

While not having to irrigate has helped the bottom line, irrigating may be necessary if hot dry weather comes, since plants coddled by wet conditions set shallower roots.

If the sun does turn on, plants may be able to make up for lost time – “but we need a beautiful fall with a lot of warm days,” said Swanson.

Hedlin planted his barley too late for an August harvest. The September harvest window is less predictable in terms of weather “and the number of hours in the day after the dew burns off that you can harvest,” he said.

“If you’re dumb enough to be a farmer you have some optimism in you,” said Swanson. “We don’t have high hopes, just hopes.”