Harvest 2019 a Goldilocks year

Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry – to hear farmers tell it, farming is a lot like Goldilocks and the three bears.

Let’s start with too cold. For Dean Swanson, Feb. 8 is where this year’s berry crop began.

In January, temperatures were mild and the buds on Swanson’s berry bushes on La Conner Whitney Road were plump and healthy. “I thought winter was over,” he said. “I was wrong.”

On Jan. 8 the temperature plummeted to 12 degrees. Tayberries, marionberries and boysenberries “got hammered.” Yields for these damaged plants were down about 70 percent this summer.

Cold weather put Beth Hailey of Dona Flora Farm at Best and Rudene Roads a month behind on weeding and planting. When it damaged her rosemary, she found orders from Nell Thorn and other restaurants tough to fill.

Cabbage seed was another casualty, said John Thulen of Pioneer Potatoes. “The crops that did make it through the winter did nicely because they were dry, but half didn’t live.”

Too dry! Too cool!

For most of the summer, Skagit County was short on rain. In August, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated the county a natural disaster area because it had been impacted by drought for eight or more consecutive weeks during the growing season.

Not every place was dry. More rain fell near Edison and Day Creek – less in west Mount Vernon and La Conner. “It’s a small valley and yet 10 miles one way or another, things can be very different,” said Alan Mesman of the Mesman Dairy at Chilberg and Dodge Valley Roads.

To Todd Gordon of Gordon Skagit Farms on McLean Road in greater La Conner, the summer was cool and “a little weird.” The Gordons’ hay and corn were about two weeks late. Pumpkins were right on schedule but the ones growing in tough-to-irrigate spots ended up small.

For dairy farmers, it was a great year for grass. Swanson said his sweet corn didn’t get quite enough rain – but with no rain to mold his surviving berries, the dry summer meant “a pretty good year, and for raspberries maybe the best ever.” Hailey’s statice flowers and basil flourished.

“Potato-wise, irrigation is a big thing, and if you weren’t able to keep water on them, the yields were kinda low,” said Thulen.

When river levels are high enough, Dike District 1 can pull water from the Skagit River at Kamb Road, six miles east of town. While irrigation ditches can carry all that water to La Conner-Whitney Road, farmers often turn to hydrants for water from La Conner, Anacortes, or the PUD.

“Irrigating a field two or three times in season is expensive if you’re using a hydrant,” Thulen explained. “We tried to irrigate at night when it’s cooler and the soil can absorb it better. Basically we were just trying to keep plants growing.”

Too wet!

The big electrical storm on Sept. 7 doused complaints about dry weather. Now beet and potato growers are struggling to bring in these crops.

“Mud is hard on equipment,” said Thulen. “You break transmissions.”

When fields are underwater, potatoes suffocate and rot. “You might think a potato is okay, but when you put it in storage, it passes away a month from now and affects everybody in the room. What’s nerve wracking about wet autumns is not knowing whether we are putting dry or wet material in storage, since we pack until February,” Thulen noted.

On Best Road, Hailey harvested dahlias as fast as she could before frost arrived Oct. 9. “I don’t want to be done with dahlias, but rain and frost probably will take most of them,” she said.

Aah … just right!

While Thulen says too little rain in the summer and too much in the fall “tests our mental fortitude,” Gordon calls it normal. “We’ve have had wet falls, cold summers, hot summers, dry falls. You’ve got to fine tune what you’re doing but you never know what’s next.”

“We’ve got a few issues but our nice fertile little valley has options,” said Thulen. “We are way better off than places in the Midwest where they only grow corn, sorghum, and soy.” Missouri River flooding prevented some farmers from planting at all this year. The tariffs affecting them and many eastern Washington farmers have less impact in this corner of the world. So far, there are no tariffs on potatoes. Fingers crossed!

A couple more weeks of sun would make it easier for growers to pull in more beets, potatoes, corn, hay, silage and dahlias. But if a potato truck tracks mud across your road, please give it a break.

“We choose dry days so we don’t make La Conner a mudball, but it’s like going on vacation,” said Thulen. “You hope for the best week ever…and it rains.”