Let’s start with the bad news: Farmers in and around New Paltz are in a sorry state these days, and in dire need of help. Final statistics on the impact of Hurricane Irene and subsequent Tropical Storm Lee on farm production are still being compiled by New York State’s Department of Agriculture and Markets, with help from local Soil and Water Districts, but it’s not too soon for phrases like “truly catastrophic” to be thrown around by state officials. The consensus seems to be that the hardest-hit farms in the state were those along the Wallkill River in Orange and Ulster Counties. Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County is estimating 3,000 acres of vegetable production ruined countywide. Wilklow Orchards in Highland reports losing their entire tomato crop, while the New Paltz-based organic producer Conuco Farm had to terminate all deliveries to New York City greenmarkets for the remainder of the season. Taliaferro Farms on Plains Road lost 80 percent of its fall harvest, and another local Community Supported Agriculture project, Huguenot Street Farm, also sustained major damage.
Some of the destruction was immediately obvious to passersby. Anyone who attempted to cross the Wallkill via Route 299 in the days following the two storms knows how badly the Ferrante family’s pumpkin, sunflower and cornfields on “the Flats” were decimated. One of the first YouTube videos posted as Hurricane Irene was winding down showed great tangled mats of pumpkins bobbing down the swollen river. Wherever the Great Pumpkin is going to make his ritual appearance this Halloween, it certainly won’t be at Wallkill View Farm’s pumpkin patch.
Making a living as a family farmer in these times is a dicey proposition even in years of gentle weather, so we may expect the negative impact of this natural disaster on the economy of largely agricultural Ulster County to be great. Congressman Maurice Hinchey and senator Kirsten Gillibrand are going to bat for our local farmers down in Washington, DC, seeking disaster area funds from the Federal Emergency Management Administration, and New York State is also setting aside aid from its emergency coffers. But you can bet that it won’t be enough, and some farmers who were already working on the edge of profitability may be forced to sell off their land to developers — unless the community turns out big-time to help them.
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