Due to heavy, early season rains, regulars to the Fulton Farmers' Market may have noticed a drop in produce avail- ability this year. The result, in turn, is that growers are seeing a loss in profits.
"I've probably had a 50 per- cent reduction," said Jim Cun- ningham of Cunningham Farms. "Normally I have a lot of potatoes for sale, but they all rotted in the ground because of the rain, which was a loss of several hundred dollars to begin with."
Matt Herring, Agronomy Spe- cialist with the Missouri Exten- sion office agrees that it's been a trying year for some growers.
"We had lots of rain in May, June and July, which are our big growing months," he said. "Excess rain is a real challenge because plant roots need oxy- gen. When there is so much water in the soil, there's no room for oxygen." Likewise, it's hard to get crops planted when the ground is saturated and muddy.
"Things have been getting a little better lately," said Ste- phen Swartwood who has been selling at the market for about 8 years, but has seen a drop of
about 40 percent this year. "But now I'm afraid of an early frost." Swartwood also said that he had to rely heavily on selling breads and jellies throughout the sum- mer.
Regardless of a drop off in produce, Cunningham said his regular buyers came anyway. And even though he didn't have potatoes or sweet corn (another hot weather crop), he did well with anything he grew in raised beds such as spinach, lettuce, kale and carrots. Raised beds are where growing space is built up away from ground levels allow- ing for better water drainage.
"Anything that was above
ground or that could get good air circulation did well," he said. Crops such as wild raspberries, strawberries and blackberries that they used for jams and jel- lies were plentiful.
Which explains why it's been a good apple season so far.
Kristi DeForest who sells a wide variety of apples in her booth said it's been a good year for her in spite of a wet weather fungus that killed a few of her young trees early on.
"Dry years are harder on apples than wet ones," she said. "We also had a good year for peaches."
In spite of what may be con-
sidered a down year, people who go to the market can still expect to find tomatoes, beans, broccoli and several other pro- duce options, not to mention lots of apples. The market is held on Saturday mornings from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on 5th St. in front of the Court House and 3:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Wednesdays on Court St. in the Christian Church parking lot. The market should remain open through the month of October, and vendors are hoping it'll remain open until November 1. It all depends on when the first hard frost comes to the county.