Bramblings: Water

By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson

Despite the rain this week, last year’s drought is showing some lasting effects on this year’s crops in a couple of places on the farm. This year’s almost-drought (meteorologists are describing our area as “abnormally dry”) isn’t helping much. The little spring that feeds our wells is down to a trickle. Our retired farm pond is growing in from the sides with maples and brush as there is very little water in it and even the frogs have grown silent or moved on. Most noticeable to us is the raspberry patch.

Raspberries need plenty of water during the growing season to support new suckers that will turn into next year’s berries. They have a fairly shallow root system, so need plenty of rain. We had very little rain at the right times last summer, and the sucker growth in sections with sandy soil in the patch was stunted and weak. That led to some vascular damage in the plants and we suffered a bit of “winter kill.” We don’t see all of the damage to the plants until they try to bear a berry crop. If the vascular system of the plant was badly damaged by freeze and thaw cycles they were too weak to handle, the foliage comes out normally but when the plant sets berries, the canes are not strong enough to support the growth and the stalk withers and dies.

The winter kill damage is not a major factor for our crop this year, but the small stature of last year’s growth will be a challenge to production. In a quick assessment, I am thinking our production will be about two-thirds of last year’s. Water is essential and sometimes scarce, and we have absolutely no control over it here at our farm. Though we installed drip irrigation in the patch a few years ago, we don’t own the well we use for watering the plants and try not to use too much of the neighbor’s water when not absolutely essential. Being reliant on groundwater when it doesn’t “belong” to you is a Catch-22. It can be a real problem, and one we rarely encounter around here, unlike other parts of our nation.

We are fortunate here in the Northeast that the annual rainfall usually covers most of our crop production. Though several large farms in the state have used irrigation for many years, we in this area, to the best of my knowledge, have not used it much. I know that some farms bigger than ours have are using irrigation as an essential tool in their production, somehow the practice makes me a bit nervous. How long can our groundwater last when we pump from wells? How much can local rivers, ponds and lakes afford to have taken before we start running into unanticipated problems or shortages downstream?

I read an article in The New York Times recently that said that “California’s $50 billion agricultural sector supplies two-thirds of the country’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of America’s vegetables.” The west is suffering year three of severe drought and some farmers are now selling their water rights to folks downstream and not planting some of their crops to try to preserve their livelihoods and conserve water, our most precious resource.

Some environmentalists and farmers are trying to get water back into aquifers that have been depleted in our irrigation madness, but we may be too late. With these big farmers not raising as many vegetables and food staples, the entire country is soon to suffer. If every farmer is planting a third less, that’s a third of the two-thirds of our produce California grows that won’t make it to the store shelves, our tables and our bellies.

I see a whole bunch of problems and mistakes we have made in this scenario. Allowing a single region to grow two-thirds of our produce is error number one. We have allowed cheap food to beat out common local sense, and lots of our local farmers have found it impossible to compete, allowing the near monopoly of produce held by California to occur. We have remained ignorant of the problems that farmers face and have turned away from pleas for help in trade for cheap food. We have also been so eager to take advantage of the bounty of nature, as in the water below the soil, that our greed is catching up to us. We cannot blame “corporate farms” or greedy growers. Corporations, factories, computer data storage facilities, cities and towns…all of us use more and more and more water. It is our habits, our needs, our excesses that have fed the need for more water. And we are now about to pay the piper…maybe with shortages, maybe with higher prices, maybe with environmental changes, maybe with loss of agricultural land, maybe with wildfires, maybe with population shift…but most certainly, with angst and pain as we try to repair what has been damaged.

Take care of your water. Take care of your land. Be conservative and try not to “live” in excess and to the detriment of others. Try to look forward to those unseen consequences for our actions that lurk around every corner. Learn and know and care where your food and water come from and help heal our world into a place that works and grows for all of us, not at the expense of “us.”

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You may reach her at [email protected].