Drowned crops leave Essex County veggie delivery companies scrambling

"It's been really challenging."

Dane Fader is reacting to his food subscription delivery service ever since heavy rainfall hit Essex County a few weeks ago saturating farm fields.

The business delivers boxes of produce to customers every week and has struggled to adjust to the weather extremes.

It's called GreenerFarms and sits in between Kingsville and Harrow, near Lake Erie.

"We're protected by a lot of trees in the front and the back of the property around the fields where we're growing," said Fader.

"So it's a really beautiful spot that normally keeps us protected from a lot of stuff. It's like a little nook and we're able to grow in."

That's until the area saw nearly 190 millimetres of rain in a relatively short period of time.

"Even before we got seven inches of rainfall at the farm in one night, it's been a really wet summer. You know, it was a very dry spring. But then we got into the summer and the rain just didn't stop. It's like rain after rain after rain."

And Fader says leaves you with a lot of topsoil erosion, so the soil that the veggies grow in washes away.

"We plant somewhere between 40 and 50 different types of vegetables. And the idea is, in one year, if everything is going well you might have 25, if you're lucky … and the rest not so much because conditions are always different. You can adjust kind of on the fly, but this year it's just been like, you know."

According to Fader, they've lost most root vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, beets, radishes, turnips and carrots.

"Virtually all of that was wrecked. So instead of those things that we've kind of been counting on squashes, onions and things like that."

High waters levels in a flooded Essex County field are shown from inside a tractor. (Kathy Mastronardi-Black)

Kathy Mastronardi-Black says she can't remember the last time she's seen that much rain or damage in her Kingsville fields.

She is one of the owners of Lee and Maria's — another food bin subscription service in Essex County, and farm market.

The water in certain parts of the field was up to a "foot and a half," says Mastronardi-Black, and that despite knowing the storm was coming it still caught them somewhat off guard.

"When something like that happens, I don't think there really is a way that we could have prevented the crops that drowned."

Mastronardi-Black says it's a stark reminder that outdoor farmers are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

"We haven't seen anything like this that we never would have thought we would have had this much water in the field. It was astonishing how much water was out there."

Kathy Mastronardi-Black is an owner at Lee and Maria's in Kingsville. A lot of their root vegetables and fall crops were lost due to heavy rainfall a few weeks ago across Essex County. (CBC)

All of their fall produce, like broccoli, pumpkins, beans and squash has been lost, she says, without anything left to really harvest.

"You've got months of growing, and your time and energy and then labour … and getting the product grown and harvested. It's quite a bit. So when you lose a lot like this, it's devastating."

Although potential dollar losses have yet to be totalled, Mastronardi-Black says she can confirm the rain also wiped out up to 20 per cent of their potato crop, all of their green and yellow summer beans, roughly 30 per cent of their roma tomatoes and "pretty much finished off" their beet crop.

Farmers helping farmers

Mastronardi-Black says Lee and Maria's are teaming up with local farmers to help each other out and substitute vegetables they no longer have or have coming later this year.

"I'd be able to grab some squash from them and include it into the bin. We do say that substitutions will be made if there is an error, so we will find something that will equal the value to that product to put back in the bin."

Mastronardi-Black stands in a flooded Kingsville field two weeks ago after a torrential downpour in the area. (Kathy Mastronardi-Black)

She says the heavy rainfall and damage is something that happened and can't be dwelled upon for too long.

"We just need to make it better. We have to fix it. We have got a great community that has supported us through the entire thing."

There will be straw, pumpkins, squash and gourds available this fall, she adds, because of these partnerships.

"We are going to make sure that you have all of it. So we kind of band together as a community, as farmers, and we're going to find the product and we are just going to move forward."

'It's kind of like a second spring we're in'

Fader says their farm and food delivery operation has pivoted to focus on crops that grow quickly.

"Salad greens that are ready in 24 days from seed, and radishes that are crisp come up quickly and ready to cook in like three or four weeks because it's now too late in the season to replant."

A lot of vegetables that were lost can't be replanted due to timing, like broccoli and carrots that take too long.

"It's just too late to plant. They won't be ready by the time the frosts start coming. So we've basically got this little window that's just getting smaller and smaller to replant with stuff so that people are getting something."