Photo by Eric Myers.

Cross-posted from Gilt Taste.

There’s an old Bob Dylan line: “He not busy being born is busy dying.” It’s one to keep in mind when looking at farms in winter, at the brown fields, skeletal orchards, and vineyards waiting for a shot of green. Despite appearances, winter is a surprisingly important time on a farm. There’s a lot going on, biologically, below the surface, much that can influence what we see on market tables for the rest of the year. And much that can go wrong if the winter is warm, as this one has been in the Northeast.

First, the deep, killing, subfreezing cold of winter typically eliminated many damaging insects and pathogens. As Cornell University Fruit Integrated Pest Management Coordinator Dr. Juliet Carroll explains, “A classic example is Stewart’s Wilt of corn. For Stewart’s Wilt, the bacterium that causes the disease overwinters in the flea beetle that feeds on corn. If winter temperatures are low enough, the risk of Stewart’s Wilt may be completely eliminated for a region.” But if that deep cold doesn’t come, an outbreak of Stewart’s Wilt can mean smaller harvests, higher prices, and frustrated farmers.

Beyond killing the baddies, proper cold serves another important purpose: For perennial crops, shorter days and sustained low temperatures bring a cycle of dormancy, a deep, almost anesthetized sleep, during which growth is temporarily halted. Measured in “chilling hours,” this is the time when plants’ energy is held in reserve, building up for new growth, and farmers can prune and transplant without fear of sprouting. Without sufficient chilling time, a fruit tree will generate fewer, weaker buds, limiting fruit production from day one. Growers monitor chilling hours in a season with a wary eye.

And it’s not just produce that’s affected by warm winter weather. Steve Vilnit, Director of Fisheries Marketing for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, has seen this season’s haul of yellow perch come in unusually quickly, because “normally the waters where the perch are caught are frozen over for most of January … this year that wasn’t the case.” And while this may lead to more comfortable working conditions and easier money for fishermen, hitting catch limits early can lead to an earlier end for the season, “mess[ing] up the promotion of the fishery, as restaurants can no longer plan ahead to have it on the menu.”

Of course, some growers don’t really mind the warmth. Richie Pisacano, vineyard manager for Wölffer Estate winery in Sagaponack, N.Y., says, “A mild winter like we are having is welcome in the vineyard … with temperatures still mostly dipping into the 30s and low 40s, keeping the vines completely dormant. Pruning is much more pleasant.” Winemaker Roman Roth adds, “It is a wonderful relief not have a tough winter after last year’s snowstorms.”

But a winter that warms up too much for too long, causing plants to “think” it’s spring, could be truly disastrous if temperatures revert and freeze again. In the Wölffer vineyards, Pisacano worries about his vines’ fragility as they come out of dormancy; if a freeze hits then, their trunks could split, causing fatal damage. As Dr. Carroll explains, “A spring freeze event is very bad because plants have begun to grow, or their buds have started to swell and are less cold hardy.” The line between “rough” and “disaster” on those days is razor thin. In apples, the difference between a frost that causes a 10 percent bud loss and one that loses 90 percent can be under 10 degrees’ difference, held for just a half-hour.

On Feb. 1^st, temperatures in New York got up to 62 degrees F. In Washington, D.C., 72. Wild swings of the pendulum like these — suddenly balmy winter days or unseasonal April frosts — are not unknown in history, but their increasing frequency is at least partly the product of climate change. Beyond warming, this may be the most troubling aspect of the new weather regime we live under — that chaos is the new normal.

Mother Nature is becoming a deeply mercurial ally. The little boost she may give with a January thaw, she can take back tenfold with an April freeze. The cold that may keep Stewart’s Wilt at bay for another season can also make for harder working conditions for vineyard workers. The one thing you can say for her, though, is that even in winter, as feeble as this year’s, everything under her domain is busy either being born or dying.

Photo: Matthew Kronsberg

For many small farmers, the time from late August until the first frost is like the stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas for retailers: It’s when the year is made or broken. It’s when all the expenses of the spring and summer — paying the workers who plant and pick and weed, purchasing seed and feed and fuel — are finally paid for with those flats of tomatoes and bushels of zucchini you see piled high on market tables. That late summer crop is damn near the whole ballgame.

This is the great risk of farming: It all hangs on the harvest. Without that, calamity.

Calamity came to Kira Kinney, Ray Bradley, and thousands of other northeastern farmers flooded by Hurricane Irene late this August. Their stories are quickly becoming well known through pieces in The New York Times, and wrenching videos from Food Curated and The Perennial Plate. They remind us not only of the vulnerability of small farms, but also of how critical it is that the communities that support them in good times remain there in bad, and that these bad times go on long after we’ve forgotten this latest tragedy.

Kinney and Bradley both have stands at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza Farmers’ Market; they farm in New Paltz, N.Y., about 90 miles north of New York City. It was there that the Wallkill river overflowed its banks, rapidly inundating both farms. What was ripe, or nearly so, was hastily picked. Of the crops left in the fields, more than 90 percent drowned.

Photo: Matthew KronsbergThe Saturday after the storm, both growers set up at the market as usual, bringing what they could rescue from the rising water. There were heirloom tomatoes of every shape, size, and color, along with squash, beans, and okra. Kira had eggs and Ray had pork. Were it not for the donation jar on Ray’s table and the note on Kira’s, it would have been easy to think that they’d weathered the storm without incident.

But if you took a moment to read Kira’s note, this is what you would have learned: ” … The farm is fine in terms of people, animals, and structures. That is good to be able to say, considering how much some other people I know have lost. The real problem is that 19 out of 22 acres that were planted all went under water — really under water … Ray Bradley told me that he had canoed over that field and that the water was up to the eaves on the old barn that sits at the edge of the field … There are a lot of tough decisions that I am faced with making right now — I have to cut staffing or at least pull back severely on everyone’s hours, I cancelled my cover crop seed order for the fall, I will be switching my chickens off of organic feed when we run out of what I currently have on hand. I will till under a season’s worth of hard work and hope.”

Photo: Matthew Kronsberg As the depth of the crisis sunk in, customers and fellow vendors mobilized. What started as chitchat at the market about the flood — ironically, at the fish stand — turned into an email list of concerned customers looking for a way to help. By the afternoon, Blue Moon Fish was organizing a benefit concert for its neighboring farm vendors, to be held in November. Greg Lebak, a flower farmer who lost over $100,000 worth of peonies to the storm, gave broccoli to Kinney and Bradley to sell at their produce stands to help offset their losses in some small way. Some customers at the market blurred the line between shopping and donating, offering up the occasional “I’ll give you $20 for this cabbage,” and maintaining a veneer of business as usual.

This veneer is important. Farmers are providers; justifiably proud people. This is not the sort of attention or support they crave. They’ll survive this year by looking to the next, trying to keep the appearance of normalcy in a situation that is anything but normal.

Ray still had his eighth annual Farm Fest one recent Sunday; there was more barbeque and beer and banana pudding than the assembled guests could ever have consumed. A bluegrass band jammed under a battered maple tree, but the hayride took kids along paths still ankle deep with mud, past brown, sodden fields. The summer vegetables that had filled platters in years past were largely absent this year. It was, in a small way, like the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina; simultaneously a distraction from, and a display of, all that had befallen the area.

Thankfully, Bradley’s farm will survive, but it will take him years to make up for these losses. He will continue to go to the market through the winter, selling pork, honey, and his peerless paprika.

Photo: Matthew KronsbergKira is less certain about her winter plans, but has tried to be creative, and hopefully effective, in finding ways to generate enough cash to get her through the season and into shape for spring planting.

She’s offering a “Market CSA,” basically allowing customers to buy $110 worth of produce in the future for $100 now. Laying bare the details of her business, she also created a registry that itemizes her main expenses and offers opportunities for donations. It’s full of things most consumers never think about: $4,000 in fuel to heat her greenhouses through the winter; $10,000 for soil and planters to start the spring crops, and another $1,200 for nitrogen-building rye and vetch cover crops. (For the home gardener, her list of seed providers is bound to bring a new source or three into the mix.) 

Kinney’s request for $4,500 worth of organic chicken feed caught the attention of Francine Stephens, an owner of Brooklyn’s always-thronged restaurant Franny’s. “We rely very heavily on Kira,” she says. “She has the best eggs in the world.” And so regular restaurant customers of Kinney’s, like Franny’s and Rose Water, have bought in. But so, too, have some restaurants outside of her usual client base, like Jimmy’s No. 43.  Jimmy buys his produce at a different market. His path and Kira’s don’t cross. But they met at a greenmarket association meeting after the storm, and Jimmy pulled out his checkbook, taking a serious chunk of cash out of circulation for the better part of a year. It’ll help buy Kira supplies, but this sense of pulling together also provides a morale-boosting shot of faith.

Next summer, assuming they’re spared further catastrophe,
Ray and Kira’s tables may be brimming again with greens and eggplant and squash. They will banter and joke with customers and their fellow farmers. People will complain about the prices of eggs and of tomatoes, and then buy them anyway because they know they’re worth it.

But these farmers, and many like them, will have known calamity. They will be walking wounded for a very long time, carrying debt and fear. If — when — we see them come back with their trucks full, we should not, even for a second, mistake the resiliency we see in them for the good fortune they deserve. We know their risks. Let them know someone is there for them.

How you can help

• Visit Kira’s registry or Ray’s donation page and make a direct contribution.
• GrowNYC is collecting money for affected farms throughout New York State.
• Vermont farms can be helped through the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s relief page.