(La Porte County, IN) - U-pick season is underway for many locally-grown farm products.  Recent heavy rains had mixed effects on local growers.

 

Dean Ott operates three blueberry farms in northern La Porte County.  He said recent rains were the least of his problems, after dealing with an early frost and a dry spring. "We don't really have any standing water," he said after the skies cleared last week. "So the ground needed it. You know, we run five wells out here, so I'm happy to get anything I can down there." Ott said his farm also avoided serious flooding thanks to some recent ditch cleaning done by the county nearby. As for the weather, Ott is a realist. "As a farmer, and I've been doing this 23 years, you count your blessings, and you don't worry about the things you can't control. And the weather is not one of those things that I can control."   His primary u-pick farm opened as hoped late last week.

 

Another small farm, however, wasn’t so lucky.  Melissa Ripley owns Field to Vase Farm on Tulip Road east of La Porte County.  She grows flowers and other annuals.  Heavy rains a week ago wiped out 1,800 plants, despite some last-minute trenching and help from the local fire department. "The damage was already done," she said. "By the time we realized how bad it was, digging the trenches didn't really help. They [the flowers] were already so water-logged, they just couldn't-- they're babies right now. If this would have happened in August, it would have been okay, but happening now was too soon."

 

Ripley said her strawflower crop went from being her best ever to 90% wiped out.  After expanding her planting, she was hoping for her biggest year yet. Now it will just be average.

But the flooded flowers haven’t dampened her spirits. Field to Vase opened this weekend and will be open every weekend until October.  Ripley said that next year she plans to relocate some of her flowerbeds to areas not as prone to flooding.