Ohio’s fruit crops suffer

By Yaneek Smith

Cor­re­spon­dent

Ottawa County Exponent

For res­i­dents of Ottawa County, the hail storm the area expe­ri­enced on July 1 is some­thing of a dis­tant memory.

Since the inclement weather tore through the com­mu­nity, most peo­ple have moved on with their lives and have put the event behind them.

Area farm­ers and grow­ers, how­ever, specif­i­cally those liv­ing in Port Clin­ton, Catawba Island and Mar­ble­head, who sus­tained sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to their crops because of the hail and strong winds, which reached as high as 75 mph, are cur­rently deal­ing with the after effects of the storm. (Sig­nif­i­cant dam­age is con­sid­ered to have occurred when there has been at least 35 per­cent crop loss.)

A num­ber of orchards in Catawba Island felt the brunt of the storm.

“A lot of it depends on how badly (the crops) were hit with the hail,” said Jodi Bolen, the co-director of the Farm Ser­vice Agency in Ottawa County. “A num­ber of the peaches were ready to be har­vested and they were dam­aged — the peaches that the hail hit are pretty much gone. There were some green crops like corn and soy­beans that were dam­aged, too. Some farm­ers lost a cou­ple hun­dred acres or so.”

Bee­haven Farms, which is owned by Bob Schraidt, was dev­as­tated by the hail as fruit grow­ing on its approx­i­mately 500 trees suf­fered exten­sive damage.

“We pretty much lost the whole crop,” Schraidt said. “If you try and find a peach that hasn’t been hit, it’s almost impossible.”

He placed a sign, “No peaches due to hail,” out front of the farm shortly after the storm.

Schwan Orchards, which is owned by Brad and Diana Schwan, sus­tained its share of dam­age because of the hail but was much more for­tu­nate than Bee­haven Farms. Schwan Orchards saw approx­i­mately half of its peach crop dam­aged by the hail, but it is not believed to be too severe.

“You can see they’ve got holes in them and tears,” Diana said, “but we’re sell­ing them at half-price and a lot of peo­ple are buy­ing them. (The peo­ple) want to make cob­blers and jams.”

Quintin Smith, who owns an orchard located just off State Route 53, was luck­ier than some of the area farmers.

“I had a cou­ple of aprium (a cross between an apri­cot and a plum) trees that got uprooted and there were some nicks on some of the fruit,” Smith said. “We were prob­a­bly 500 yards away from where it was really bad. We had a near miss. We had a lit­tle bit of dam­age, I’d say five per­cent. It could’ve been worse. Some apples. I was expect­ing the gar­den to be ripped up, but it wasn’t that bad. A cou­ple of apri­cot trees, but noth­ing major.”

Hail dam­age peaches at Bee­haven Farm in Port Clinton/Catawba area. As you can see, some peaches are almost ready to pick while oth­ers would be ready through­out the months of July and August.

Accord­ing to Bolen, Bergman’s Orchards sus­tained dam­age to some of its crops and she notes that some of the grain farm­ers suf­fered siz­able losses as well.

To put it mildly, the weather has not been kind to farm­ers and grow­ers this sum­mer. Aside from the few storms of the last sev­eral weeks, it has been quite hot and it hasn’t helped that there has been lit­tle rain in the past few weeks. Accord­ing to the National Oceano­graphic and Atmos­pheric Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA), this past June was the fourth warmest June on record.

“America’s Bread­bas­ket” has been hit par­tic­u­larly hard this sum­mer as siz­able por­tions of the Mid­west have dealt with a drought.

“The epi­cen­ter (for the drought) is right in the heart of the Mid­west,” said cli­ma­tol­o­gist Mark Svo­boda of the National Drought Mit­i­ga­tion Cen­ter, located in Lin­coln, Neb., accord­ing to a press release.

In addi­tion to the detri­ment sus­tained to the crops, there was severe dam­age caused to the area by a num­ber of downed trees and dam­aged power lines. In fact, the Sal­va­tion Army sent peo­ple and sup­plies to Port Clin­ton to help the com­mu­nity deal with the after­math of the storm. Peo­ple from the orga­ni­za­tion passed out bot­tles of Gatorade and water to a num­ber of res­i­dents to make sure that those with­out power and water could guard against dehydration.

Other parts of the state sus­tained their share of dam­age because of the hail and strong winds. The storms, which moved across the Buck­eye State around 6 p.m. on that July 1 Sun­day evening, left roughly 415,000 peo­ple with­out power, accord­ing to Amer­i­can Elec­tric Power. Other cities that were affected by the storm included Find­lay, Lima, Colum­bus and Athens and their sur­round­ing areas.

With some of the crops per­ma­nently dam­aged due to the hail, the fate of the remain­ing healthy crops will likely come down to how much rain they receive in the com­ing weeks.

“The prob­lem now, though, is that, on top of the hail (dam­age), we are com­pet­ing with this heat and the drought,” said Bolen. “We haven’t had any rain to keep the water tables up. The county as a whole, even the areas that didn’t sus­tain much dam­age from the hail, have suf­fered from the drought, Some crops, like the corn and beans are com­ing into a crit­i­cal stage — if the mois­ture doesn’t come it will affect (the process).”

And while irri­gat­ing the crops is an option for some farm­ers, there is noth­ing like the real thing.

“There are some guys who use irri­ga­tion,” Bolen said, “but noth­ing is the same as rain. You can irri­gate some of the veg­etable crops, but basi­cally you’re just keep­ing the plant alive (and) you’re not allow­ing it to pro­duce (nor­mally). It all depends on the rain if we can get some rain this week.

“If we don’t get some rain, we’re going to suffer.”

Posted by Acres Admin on Sep 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.