Talk to any farmer and they will tell you that every year has its challenges when it comes to the weather. Suter Farms sees this firsthand.
Located in Pandora, Ohio, they have been growing produce for over four generations. On any given day you will see about 40 high school and college kids coming out dark and early before the sun rises to pick fresh produce, loading it up and handing it out to the seven red barn markets that are stationed around the area.
"We have fresh sweet corn that's picked fresh every day. We have melons that we just started picking the other day. Tomatoes and peaches, we have some good honey too and we focus on what we're good at," said Tom Suter, Suter Farms.
Timing is everything to get that seed in the ground, and needless to say, Mother Nature made that quite the challenge this year.
"It was certainly a challenge getting things planted on time this spring. There was a lot of rain, it was just kind of ill-timed rains. It was a challenge getting especially the sweet corn planted on time because you have to stagger it out so you have perfect sweet corn every single day, so that was a little bit challenging this spring," explained Suter.
As if planting season wasn't difficult enough, the weather would take a drastic turn come early summer. The rains shut off, and the area had the driest second half of June on record. That caused some stress for area crops.
"We had some times that were concerning with the extra heat and the lack of moisture, but we were able to irrigate. We were heavily irrigating in June. One nice thing about a lot of sunshine and heat is it does make nice sweet, sweet corn and melons. So that's kind of a plus side to having too dry and too sunny," said Suter.
Thankfully, the irrigation efforts sustained the crops at Suter Farms, and now things are looking up.
"It really does look nice. From here on out, we were able to hold off any major stress of the crop and it really looks fantastic going forward," added Suter.
Ohio State University's Ag Extension Educator Beth Scheckelhoff surveys crop conditions in the area. While crop yields are not likely to rival last year, there is still optimism.
"The latest planted crops that are coming up now, a little bit behind developmentally, but as long as we continue to get some moisture throughout the summer, they should be on track to have reasonable yields this year," explained Beth Scheckelhoff, OSU Putnam County Extension Educator.
