From the Fields - James Birch

By James Birch, Tulare County farmer 

We’re way behind in getting our summer vegetables in the ground. The transplants are getting really big. I have squash that wants to get planted. There’s a lot of transplants I can’t get in the ground—cucumbers, tomatoes.

Things that we planted back in January all drowned in the field. They were lettuces and arugula, different types of greens. In February, after all those rains, we thought we’d be able to get back in the fields and at least replant. We haven’t been able to plant potatoes yet. We would’ve planted potatoes mid-February, end of February, and they would be up by now. I’m glad I don’t have them in the ground because they would have rotted.

I’m still going to farmers markets. I usually go to two a week. We only have enough product to go to one. We’ll stop in two weeks. We won’t go back probably until May. I still have a little in my fields, but I’ll probably have a gap for about a month, and then I’ll start picking out of my high-tunnel houses. I have cherry tomatoes in them, and they’re doing OK. I was able to keep the water off them because they’re covered.

I’m not the only farmer that’s experiencing a gap. I’ve talked to other farmers, and they’re just going to be out of product, which isn’t good. That means there’s no income. My wife was talking to a stone fruit farmer, and he isn’t going to have any crop because the bees weren’t flying. I think a lot of the stone fruit and the plums are going to be short this year between the wind, the hail and all the rain.

But at the end of the day, it’s a blessing getting all this snow and rain. All I did was complain for the last three or four years about not having any water. Come this summer, we’ll have all the water we can use. Hopefully, it’s going to fill up all the reservoirs, maybe even put some water back into the aquifer.