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Community Comment: We need a little sunshine from Mother Nature

When the dry weather finally comes and the crops make it to our shelves, make sure you buy local. And at home, consider that backyard veggie garden.
Fruits and veggies
A little help from Mother Nature will go a long ways to ensure Delta farmers can get their crops to harvest and food to your table.

My Project Pickle kids have been asking me why our radishes aren’t ready.

Typically one of the first root vegetables we plant, we have yet to be able to enjoy their spicy crunchiness. Mother Nature has been toying and teasing us this spring. We have lots of veggies in the ground, but germination has been slow due to an unusually cool and wet spring.

Last year and the year before that were fantastic. This year, not so much.

I was speaking with local farmer Peter Guichon earlier this week. He and others in the local farming community that grow root crops are having a tough time getting their equipment into the fields. Some fields are better than others and I recall last year that potato seed, for the most part, made it in to tilled rows at the end of March.

The bumper crops of the past couple of years may yet come to fruition, but we need some consistently dry weather to make that happen. This year is another example of how Mother Nature always wins.

Guichon recalled that in 1981, potatoes didn’t make it into the ground until May 26. Let's hope that they make it in sooner than that this year.

Delta South MLA and Liberal Party agriculture critic Ian Paton addressed the Legislature on Monday to talk about inflation and its effects on the public and on the farming community. Throw a little pandemic and war into the mix and you can see how supply chain issues, fuel costs, and other chaotic maladies can wreak havoc.

In his speech, Paton noted several not so fun facts that are worthy of reflection. Our inflation rate in B.C. is at six per cent up from 1.6 per cent in 2017. Gas is up 70 cents per litre in Vancouver then it was in 2017. The average price for a home in Vancouver is up over $600,000. Grocery prices are up 16 per cent in these five years. Beef prices are up 32 per cent and fresh vegetables are up 24 per cent.

Sadly, families are having to down grade some food choices to those that are considerably less healthy, just to ensure the food budget can be met.

On the larger front, farming families such as the Guichon’s will be facing massive fuel and fertilizer costs. When you operate 40 odd diesel and gas vehicles on 1,200 acres, things can get crazy fast.

When the dry weather finally comes and the crops make it to our shelves, make sure you buy local. And at home, consider that backyard veggie garden.

Mike Schneider is founder of Project Pickle and likes to write about growing, cooking and eating food.