| JUNE 25, 2011 -- Most of the flowers and vegetable plants for sale at Maple Tree Farms in Milford have been carted off into the fields and dumped into a vegetative trash heap.
"They're just not selling," farmer Frank Camputaro said.
Computaro has hung a sign in front of the greenhouse advertising two hanging baskets for the price of one, in the hopes of enticing a sale. But hardly anyone is taking him up on the offer. The season's heavy rains have drenched most hanging basket plants, and no one is bothering to buy another one, Camputaro said.
He's not the only farmer in Fairfield County who is struggling this season. Many types of crops, from berries to honey, are doing poorly because of the heavy rains and the weather -- alternatively super hot or super wet -- is keeping pickers away as well.
"It's nothing for the record books, but it's been a wetter spring than normal," said Connecticut Weather Center meteorologist Bill Jacquemin.
The rain knocked most of the flowers off of strawberry plants at Glendale Farms in Milford, and more than three-fourths of the crop failed to fruit.
Bees are also staying in to avoid the rain and cold, which means Milford beekeeper Ralph Harrison is expecting a much smaller honey crop at the end of the season. The rainfall washed most of the nectar out of the flowers, leaving very little for the bees to collect, Harrison said and Connecticut already has a short spring nectar season; it lasts from April to the beginning of June.
"The major stuff that blooms has come and gone," Harrison said. "The major nectar flows are all over with."
Some of Harrison's hives aren't producing enough honey to even feed themselves. He has had to give some of his hives supplemental food to keep them alive.
But not all crops are suffering. Rhubarb, for example, thrives in rainy, chilly weather with little slivers of sun in between. Ralph Gorman has had a bumper crop of rhubarb at the White Silo Farm and Winery in Sherman.
"So far we've picked 2,000 pounds of rhubarb, 50 percent more than we normally get," Gorman said. Gorman uses the crop to make his rhubarb wine. He is normally able to produce about 400 gallons of wine a year, and is sold out by the end of the season. This year, he'll be able to manufacture well over 700 gallons of the wine, which he describes as a very smooth pinot grigio.
Still, he would like to see a break in the rainy weather, otherwise he is worried his grape vines might start growing mold. |
