Farmers: It's Not Just Weather
"People who don't farm have all these conceptions about what bothers farmers and what doesn't."
Ralph Dayton, a Sagaponack farmer, was musing more about the social and economic climate on the South Fork than the weather on a rainy day last week. "You can't reason with Mother Nature; she does what she wants to," he said. "You can reason with landlords and neighbors - in theory, but it's just in theory. Those things bother me and, I think, most other farmers."
Mother Nature has laid out a test for local farmers this season. The cool, damp weather made growing and harvesting more challenging than at any time in the past three years, which were essentially drought years. Hands down, most farmers prefer to have it dry.
No Stringing In The Rain
"When it's damp, too many things can go wrong, and just about all of them did," said David Szczep an kow ski, speaking about his string bean crop. He also farms potatoes, sweet corn, and vegetables on land in Sagaponack and Water Mill.
Fungus and mildew are among the problems that can plague crops and slow harvesting. Both Mr. Szczepankow ski and Mr. Dayton had trouble with string beans, because they can't be harvested when it's wet. Even a morning dew can cause them to mildew in the box before long.
There were times this summer when Mr. Dayton couldn't bring in string beans for a week. Even though conditions were poor, however, prices for beans were great and he did very well, he said, with his 100 acres.
Problems With Corn
The market for corn, another of his main crops, was a different story. Last summer he was one of the only farmers on the South Fork, he said, to irrigate his sweet-corn fields. Where he was getting as high as $16 a bag for corn then, this year it was a mere $5 or $6 a bag.
With fields so wet, there were plenty of times Mr. Dayton couldn't get his harvester in to gather the corn. Instead, he hired workers to hand-pick 300 to 500 bags each day. When it turned dry enough to send the harvester out he kept the extra men on the payroll, for insurance when the rains came again.
"We're losing a few crops because of it," Larry Halsey said. "Some sections of the field have been underwater for two or three days." Crops on Mr. Halsey's Green Thumb organic farm in Water Mill are more susceptible to bugs and fungus in general, because he doesn't use chemical pesticides and fungicides and, as anyone who's spent time outside knows, bugs are faring well in the damp climate.
Ferocious Weeds
The Green Thumb has had one unintended bumper crop - weeds. "They've been ferocious," Mr. Halsey said. On the other hand, vine crops at many farms in the area haven't done well this summer. Mr. Halsey's late tomatoes aren't growing well and summer squash, pumpkins, cucumbers, and winter squash could have been better, too.
Jim Pike, a Sagaponack farmer, said much the same. His tomato plants got early blight. Caused by a fungus, the blight defoliates the plant. "It doesn't completely ruin the crop, but it shortens the season."
Grapes: No Pickings
The raspberry crop was "terrible." His sweet corn came in late, but did well. The warmer the season, the longer it is and the faster the vegetables grow. That translates into more money for the farmer. "Those two weeks can really make a difference," Mr. Pike said.
The season has been anything but ideal for local vineyards. After three outstanding dry summers, Roman Roth spent early September with his fingers crossed that the sun would shine for the next four or five weeks. It hasn't.
As cool and wet as it's been, the grapes will have to have 100-percent maturity or more for vineyards to have what qualifies as a good crop, reported Mr. Roth, the winemaker at SagPond Vineyards in Sagaponack.
It wasn't warm enough for an early harvest, so vineyardists are still waiting to pick their first grapes. The problem is, the longer they wait, the greater the chance of frost.
Last year and the two before it were excellent for SagPond, but this year will likely be just average. Attention will turn to finding an outlet for what they have. "In a year like this, we'll make a good sparkling rose," said Mr. Roth.
Quail Hill Farm
"Farmers are a pretty grumbly lot," Scott Chaskey chuckled. Mr. Chaskey is the executive director of the Quail Hill Farm, an organic community farm in Amagansett owned by the Peconic Land Trust.
Unlike other farms in the area, Quail Hill is not involved in producing crops for the market. "The whole thing we're doing is different from what other farms are doing, it's a different style," said Mr. Chaskey.
As he saw it last month, the growing was good. "It's a miracle that it happens every year." The farm had bumper years for eggplant, celery, and tomatoes, he said, and brought in its biggest harvest yet of potatoes.
In July potato farmers on the South Fork were afraid they might lose their crops altogether after hearing a few potato fields on the North Fork had been hit by late blight, a fungus that affects the whole plant from leaves to tuber. Late blight can spread from one plant to an entire field and beyond, or from one contaminated potato to a storage barn full of them.
Late Blight
"Once you find late blight, you can't drive anything in or out of your fields without the Government there to see you do it all by the book," Mr. Szczepankowski commented.
That means investing in a special fungicide to spray on the crops every two weeks, and hosing down trucks before and after they go into the field. One farmer whose fields were hit told Mr. Szczepankowski the extra costs meant he would not break even, even if he got twice per hundredweight what he did last year.
The specter of late blight passed over the South Fork, however, and most of the North Fork too.
"Everybody I know is digging big, beautiful potatoes," Mr. Szczepankowski said with more than a little relief.
"Ultimately it was a very odd year," Mr. Chaskey said. He paused, then added, "But what is normal when it comes to nature?"
Fewer Fresh Vegetables
Consumption of fresh vegetables was down this year, too, Mr. Dayton said. "Damp days, the Olympics, the plane crash. A lot of people weren't inclined to vacation here," he ventured. "Nobody was in the mood for fresh vegetables. Everybody I was dealing with said the same thing."
He sells his crops to farmers' markets, Schmidt's market in Southampton, and larger grocery stores like King Kullen and the I.G.A. Usually he has 40 big customers that take all his sweet corn. This year, said Mr. Dayton, he "had to really hustle to get 50 or 60 customers," and had to rely on the markets in New York City and Boston more.
"Usually when you have to rely on the market, it's when everybody else does, which is exactly when you don't want to," he said.
Farm Stand A Goner
Mr. Szczepankowski trucks most of his produce to the Bronx Terminal Market. The smaller vegetables go to his farm stand on the corner of Stephen Hand's Path and Montauk Highway in East Hampton.
'That's the most painful part of farming. You just don't know from year to year if you'll be able to lease the same land again.'
Ralph Dayton
But business there was down this summer, said his wife, Susan. "People won't stop if it's raining."
This summer was the last in that spot for the familiar Szczepankowski stand. The State Department of Transportation plans to widen the road and make a turn lane onto Stephen Hand's Path, so the farm stand will be nudged out.
"I grew up running that farm stand," Mr. Szczepankowski said. He has been out there since he was 13.
Not So Friendly
The roads have changed a lot since then, the farmer said.
"Now maybe I'm more cynical, but people just aren't as friendly anymore," he lamented. "They don't care where the product comes from. As long as it's cheap and looks good, it doesn't matter if it's local."
People used to admire his produce and love that it was local, he said. That meant something. Now, he said, they ask the price, then say they can find it for less at the supermarket.
The Szczepankowskis haven't decided what they'll do for a farm stand next year, but in ways, this summer was the end of an era for them.
What About Next Year?
As Mr. Dayton said, the weather can get a farmer down, but that kind of uncertainty goes with the territory. The broader questions, like the one the Szczepankowskis are confronted with, weigh more on a farmer's mind than the weather report.
When harvesting is over for the year, South Fork farmers lose sleep wondering whether they'll be able to rent the same fields next year or see them subdivided and ready for development, and thinking about the future of farming in general.
Many of the farmers who spoke to The Star lease the land they farm on. "The problem right now," said Mr. Pike, sitting at the edge of one of his Sagaponack fields, "is that land is getting more scarce."
The Cost Of Land
He recalled that in the early 1980s the real estate market slacked off and at the same time potato growers were phasing out of potatoes. There was more usable land than there was demand. Not so today.
Mr. Pike counts himself among the lucky. He's only lost a couple of acres to development, but, he said, "it's difficult to expand; all the good farmland is spoken for."
With property values as high as they are, he said, it just doesn't make sense to buy land with the intention of farming it, unless it is reserved for agriculture, and even that is very expensive.
"Farming will never be that profitable that we'll be able to pay $100,000 for an acre of land," Mr. Pike said.
Babinski Farm
Mr. Szczepankowski rents the land he farms, including most of Anthony Babinski's old farm. Mr. Babinski, a long-time Water Mill farmer, left the South Fork for Missouri last year and is in the process of selling the property that his family farmed for generations.
It's in contract now, and Mr. Szczepankowski isn't sure if he'll be able to use it next year.
"Obviously it's a problem for me. If it does get sold, I'll have to find another place."
Mr. Dayton knows the worry well. "That's the most painful part of farming. You just don't know from year to year if you'll be able to lease the same land again or if you'll have to farm the funny-shaped little pieces. Nobody wants to give you a long-term lease. They say, 'Whoa, no way, I don't know what I'm going to do with it next year.' "
The American Way
Mr. Dayton trained as a lawyer and practiced law briefly before quitting to become a farmer. For the past five years he has been learning the lessons of farming head-first, and despite its worries, he said he wouldn't trade the farming life for anything.
He worries through the winter and it isn't until spring that there is some certainty. "This year I was saying, 'I can't wait until the plow is set in the ground.' Then everything is spoken for, it's static."
Still, he doesn't blame somebody if they develop a piece of land. "That's their right, it's private property, that's the American way."
He asks the new owner if he or she would be good enough to rent him the land that is "ag reserved." What gets him is when houses are built next door and the new owners complain about dust, noise, and spray, or pump their pools out onto his fields.
Future Looks Grim
Larry Halsey is numb to a lot of that, now. It's frustrating when he can't get the tractor through the traffic to his fields north of the highway, but he has come to expect that kind of reception.
"Farming? It's almost finished here, isn't it?" he asks rhetorically. He has been farming all his life and his ancestors have been farming on the South Fork since the 1600s, but he has grown cynical about the future of the industry.
Wall Street prices are up so high, even the land that is reserved for agriculture goes into horse farms, he said. "Time is moving on for the farmland situation. When you go to Town Hall and see what's being developed and then see what's slated for development, it's even more scary."
He would like to see more wealthy private individuals taking a hand in preserving farm land. "They could buy it and take the tax deduction, but they don't, and we're losing a lot of our land to developers."
Landscapers
The return is just too low on farmland. Nevertheless, it commands more rent these days than it used to, and there is more competition for the land, too; not just from farmers but from landscapers or nurseries.
Landscapers, Mr. Szczepankowski said, can get a long-term lease and grow trees on the land, which yields a pretty good profit. "They can pay $200, $300, or $400 an acre for rent; for a farmer, that's exorbitant," he said.
The going rate per acre is around $150 a month. Mr. Szczepankowski said he knew someone in landscaping who's paying $500 a month for acreage on Long Lane. A farmer in competition for the land offered $200 per month.
The landowner took the higher offer. Who wouldn't?
The Sharper Edge
"The thing about farming that's most difficult to learn is, you can be friendly with your neighbor who's a farmer, but you have to accept they can be your competition as well. You're competing in the same arena all the time, so there's always that edge," said Mr. Szczepankowski.
The edge is sharper when the clamor for land and the pressure for development is as intense as it is on Long Island. It's hard to ignore the changes turning the South Fork from rural enclave to suburban hotspot.
With traffic to a minimum and fall crops still to be picked in his fields, the pulse that seems to drive the Hamptons in the summer didn't seem so far away to Jim Pike.
"It's not as though we're out in Kansas," he said. "We're in the Hamptons and we happen to be farming."