A damaging thunderstorm moved through the area Wednesday evening that knocked down trees and power lines, but the most of summer has been dryer than usual. Only about one in three summers are as dry as this year and co-owner of Delaney farms JoAnn Delaney said produce will suffer.
“The crops will slow up because the ground is extremely dry, so it’s going to make our vegetable crops late. Also the quality could be lower and yields could be lower due to lack of rain,” Delaney said.
There are methods to reduce this problem. Delaney said their farm will do their best with the irrigation methods they have.
“We have some areas we can irrigate which we are currently doing, but we don’t have enough water to irrigate the entire farm or all the parcels that we own so those parcels are left up to mother nature and the ones we can irrigate we’re adding water to," Delaney said.
Delaney farms owns 60 acres of farmland just for their sweet corn and uses greenhouses, but even smaller scale farms are dealing with water shortages. Jessi Lyons is the farm coordinator for Brady Farms, an urban agriculture site that provides produce and farming experience to Syracuse city residents. She said they’re resorting to methods they’d prefer not to use.
“We have to pull hoses long distances in order to get the areas that don’t have access to water and doing things like overhead spraying and sprinkling, which is not our preferred method, we prefer to use drip-irrigation,” Lyons said.
But luckily crops may be getting some relief in late July and August, when rainfall is expected to increase. Delaney said she thinks this will help.
“The crops that are kind of in a holding pattern, if they’re not damaged from lack of rain will probably recover, and they’ll jump right up,” Delaney said.
Some western New York regions are already classified as abnormally dry, the lowest level . But the U.S. drought monitor hasn’t yet classified Onondaga County in one of the five drought categories.