Hurrican Irene



The empty truck, an unusual sight on a Friday evening.

Seems like everyone is talking about the impending hurricane that is supposed to hit the Northeast sometime tomorrow or possibly Sunday.  For homeowners it means battening down the hatches: bringing deck furniture inside, cleaning out a space for the car in the garage, making sure there are no large branches hanging above the house.  For those who like to be prepared, hurricanes mean stocking up on staples like bread and such, collecting some water and making sure the matches are somewhere findable.  For farmers, it means a little more.

Because the vast majority of the produce we sell is grown outside, it’s all subject to the whims of the weather.  Even though some of our tomatoes , peppers and herbs are growing inside a high tunnel, it doesn’t mean they’re safe from violent storms either.  The tunnel could potentially blow away if it gets windy enough, or in the event of hail end up with holes in the plastic.  High winds could knock over trellised tomatoes, deer fences, and send fruits falling to the wet ground.  Hail could completely destroy any leafy greens like lettuces, kale, collards and many more, which are one of the biggest fall crops.  There’s a lot riding on the weather being, if not perfect, then at least not extreme.  Droughts are bad.  Floods are bad.  Hurricanes, almost always, are bad.

So far hurricane Irene has not been good to us and she hasn’t even headed up our way yet.  After we spent the entire morning harvesting lettuces, greens, beans and tomatoes, a memo was sent along saying that Mayor Bloomberg had decided to cancel all open air markets for Saturday.  What this means for us is a lot of produce that won’t have a buyer now.  While our potatoes, garlic, onions and some of the tomatoes will be fine hanging out in the cooler until the next market on Wednesday, there are a lot of green beans, leafy greens and tomatoes that will go bad by that time, meaning that they will probably go to waste.  While we will eat as many as we can in the next few days, the 10 people that work and eat food from this farm cannot possibly match the consumerism of the middle of Manhattan on a lovely Saturday. 

Looks like Irene is going to hit hard, even if she veers back into the ocean.