How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires

For farmers, planning for spring begins in the fall. This is when seeds go into the ground. Later, if all goes well, roots begin to grow, followed by shoots and leaves. But this only happens if there is enough water.

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of seeds that are planted in the fall, and without rain, they’re not going to germinate,” says Amy Hepworth, owner of Hepworth Farms, a seventh-generation family farm located just off the Hudson River. New York state. In the Hudson Valley, a corridor known for its agricultural productivity that stretches from just north of New York City to the state capital in Albany, several counties are currently under a drought watch. The region has experienced a particularly dry autumn, with local meteorologists predicting this was last month the driest October on record. “It even rained once or twice [in] September, October, you would see green fields out there now,” Hepworth said. “But now they are still bare.” Like many growers in her area, Hepworth coped with this setback by relying on her farm’s irrigation system while she waited for rain to fall.

Hudson Valley producers are part of a robust local food movement, selling their produce directly to consumers via farm stands, farmers markets and community supported agriculture programs (or CSAs), or to restaurants as far away as New York City. But the impact of climate change make their job more difficult. The historic lack of rainfall in New York is just one more sign of the increasingly erratic weather conditions under which food must grow.

“I’ve been farming for almost 50 years, and there is no normal,” says Guy Jones, who runs Blooming Hill Farms with his three sons in Orange County. These days, he said, “it’s either raining like a motherfucker or it’s dry as hell. Excuse my French.” He added: “The trend is not necessarily just dry or wet. It’s just extreme.”

New York is far from the only place experiencing a very dry, unseasonably warm fall: Abnormally high October temperatures, fueled by climate changewere seen in cities across the country, according to analysis from Climate Central. Those bumps in temperature were accompanied by very little rainfall: In the first few days of November, drought conditions had an impact 49 of the 50 statesaccording to the National Weather Service.

These trends are consistent with the way scientists expect climate change to occur drought risk worsens in the USA and around the world. Warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation – which means less moisture in the soil and less water in surface water sources such as lakes, rivers and streams. Warmer seasons can also affect snowpackwhich the western US depends on to replenish water sources throughout the spring and summer as snow melts in the mountains.

Shannon Roback, a science director at Riverkeeper, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the Hudson River and its tributaries, said this year’s drought conditions in the Hudson Valley are “not particularly surprising to me.” As New York’s climate changes, overall precipitation is expected to increaseshe remarked. “But it’s also possible that we’ll see more short-term seasonal drought lasting from weeks to months.”

This year’s particularly dry conditions also mean the Hudson Valley faces an increased risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jerseyand Connecticut all saw wildfires in early November, with a massive blaze on the New Jersey-New York state line still angry from Monday.

Amanda Dykeman, one of the owners of Dykeman Farm, a fourth-generation vegetable farm in Dutchess County, described seeing her first brush fire in the area, “literally on the other side” of the mountain next to her farm. The brush fire started in late October and continued for more than a week, according to Dykeman, as multiple fire departments worked to put it out.

Dykeman said she and her family watched as “big helicopters dumped water on it.” While it was interesting “to see something we’ve never seen before, we certainly hope we never see it here again in our lifetime,” she added.

The drought also affects her ability to grow healthy crops. Dykeman, who said she is “praying for rain,” reasons that some of the impact of a dry, warm fall will be felt throughout the winter and into the spring. That’s because a cool period after summer usually helps kill harmful pests that could hamper next year’s crops. “In the long run, with the warm weather, you don’t have any kind of mold spores or even any kind of pest die off,” she said. Until the weather cools, Dykeman’s squash, tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are vulnerable to bugs and rust.

The biggest problem she and other farms face is how dry the soil is, making it difficult to plant seeds. “I mean, the dirt is just powder — kind of, pretty deep in the ground,” Dykeman said. Recently, while organizing an autumn festival on the farm, she and the other people on the farm struggled to drive tent poles into the ground because of how dry and fine the soil is. “The ground is just dust.”

Hepworth, who grows apples, vegetables, marijuana and other crops on her farm, reported similar soil conditions – even though she is located outside the provinces under drought watch. And she warned that dry land can be particularly difficult to manage. “I would say the biggest negative impact is when it’s so dry, you can’t work your fields.” Typically, she said, the soil in the soil has some moisture in October, due to seasonal precipitation. But when the soil on a farm is super parched, the work of the fields will turn it into a powder, Hepworth said. Watering the soil under these conditions can leave you with “a crusty, hard soil,” she said. “And that’s the last thing you want. You want your soil to have a lot of air and balance.” The trick is to continuously monitor the soil’s moisture content and wait until conditions are right to irrigate properly.

Hepworth noted that the lack of rain has meant plenty of sunshine, which has actually helped the quality of some of her crops, such as apples, this year. “We are farmers, and we are used to every imaginable weather,” she said. “Part of our job is to be within the natural world. Farmers therefore adapt to their situation.”

Jones agreed, but also said he noticed the natural world was changing. Whenever it rains, it is not a moderate rain as the region was historically used to. “It’s not like ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ you know, walking out on a rainy day with your little umbrella,” Jones said. Instead, “the wind is blowing like crazy. You get three inches in an hour,” he said.

The drought watch under which his country is operating does not impose any restrictions on water use, although residents “strongly encouraged to voluntarily conserve water.” Jones noted that his farm is set up so that he can irrigate 100 percent of his fields, if he has to. Many farms, including Jones’s, rely on groundwater from wells driven on their farmland. Roback, the science director at Riverkeeper, notes that everyone who relies on groundwater — farmers and other private citizens who may have their own wells — “needs to be more aware of their water use during times of drought, because” without adequate rainfall, “there is nothing to to recharge those aquifers.”