On Monday afternoon, Joe Schirmer canceled deliveries to restaurants and farmers markets from his popular farm, Dirty Girl Produce, bracing for the latest atmospheric river to hit Northern California. He nervously monitored a dry creek on one of his four Watsonville properties. During intense storms earlier this year, it had already filled with water and jumped over the bank.
On Tuesday, it was exactly as Schirmer feared. Heavy rain and wind hit the region. The stream turned into a rushing river. It jumped into the bed in a new location, ate into rows of leeks and stuck an 8-foot gap in what is usually a path for the farm’s tractors. The damage will likely mean the loss of more than half an acre of land that can no longer be farmed, Schirmer said.
“It’s kind of irreparable,” he said. “I can’t imagine how we’re going to fix it.”
Many Northern California farms were hit hard by this week’s rainfall, which soaked crops and left flooded fields in its wake. The full extent of the damage remains to be seen, but it could have lasting effects on the farms that Bay Area eateries and restaurants depend on for fresh fruits and vegetables.
In Monterey County, for example, where the Pajaro River broke and caused widespread destruction this week, the flooding was even worse than earlier this year, according to the Monterey County Farm Bureau, which is still trying to explain the fallout. In January, flooding flooded more than 15,000 acres of farmland in Monterey County with more than $330 million in damage, according to the group, which works with farmers.
“Other than saying this week’s flood damage is more extensive than January’s, we currently have no estimates of acres or economic damage,” Monterey County Farm Bureau Director Norm Groot wrote in an email. “And there will be more rain next week.”
Dirty Girl Produce employees rush to harvest as many leeks as they can before storm damage causes further erosion at the Watsonville farm.
Brontë Wittpenn/The ChronicleThe storms may also delay the arrival of some farms’ long-awaited seasonal produce, such as strawberries and tomatoes.
On Wednesday, Poli Yerena of Watsonville’s Yerena Farms used a pump to drain water from her berry fields and hoped for the best. Usually at this time of year, workers pick strawberries there. But the rain means the farm is about a month behind schedule, and Yerena won’t know the full state of the strawberries until the fields dry out more. He hopes to have strawberries to bring to Bay Area farmers markets in about two weeks, but he’s not sure.
“But the weather is (still) changing,” he said. “I hope everything will be fine. Right now we have no income yet. It’s been a long season for us.”
For strawberry farms in Monterey County, “this disaster hit at the worst possible time,” said Jeff Cardinale, director of communications for the California Strawberry Commission. Farmers had borrowed money to prepare their fields and were getting ready to harvest in a few weeks.
“The farms are facing a massive clean-up. Once cleanup is complete, farmers will begin the process of preparing their fields and starting over, Cardinale said.
It’s also challenging financially for farm workers who can’t work during the storms, the farmers said.
Harvested leeks sit in a field damaged by flooding at Dirty Girl Produce in Watsonville.
Brontë Wittpenn/The ChronicleThe cold, wet weather has pushed back the strawberry season at Three Nunns Farm in Brentwood. This time last year, the Contra Costa County farm was open for its annual u-picking season, owner Sam Nunn said. He now hopes to open the farm stand in early April instead – something that could change if more rain comes, as predicted. The strawberry plants are healthy but need warmer, dry weather to start fruiting, he said. It has also been too wet to plant the other vegetables and fruit he sells at Three Nuns’ farm stand.
The delay is not devastating, but it is not ideal, especially for a farm that relies on seasonal operations.
“You’re waiting longer to start getting your money back, which is not good,” he said.
Oya Organics of Hollister (San Benito County), which sells produce at many Bay Area farmers markets, launched a GoFundMe campaign this week after Los Viboras Creek burst its banks, flooding the farm’s fields and packing area. The flood undid months of work, “washing away seedlings, supplies and equipment,” owner Marsha Habib wrote on the fundraising website. “Winter weather is unpredictable, but this winter has been the hardest since we started farming.” A video posted on Instagram shows dark, muddy water flowing through fields and plants swallowed by the rain. Habib did not respond to interview requests.
Dirty Girl Produce Director of Operations Stephen Carroll looks at a creek that jumped its bed and flowed through the Watsonville farm this week, causing damage.
Brontë Wittpenn/The ChronicleAt Green Thumb Farms in San Juan Bautista (San Benito County), the storm flooded some fields and damaged the farm’s greenhouse, according to a GoFundMe campaign seeking financial help.
The wet weather not only brings damage to farms, but also slow days at farmers markets. San Francisco’s popular Ferry Plaza Farmers Market estimates that traffic drops by about half on rainy days.
“With this particularly wet winter, that means a huge economic loss for our small farmers and food producers,” said Brie Mazurek, director of communications for Foodwise, which operates the Ferry Building farmers markets.
Dirty Girl Produce is facing a production backlog of nearly two months due to the weather, Schirmer said, with crops being moved from the greenhouse to the fields later than usual and needing time to mature. And the part of the field that was ripped out of the overflowing creek bed is where workers typically planted more than 3 acres of the farm’s popular dry-farmed tomatoes. They have to go somewhere else now, Schirmer said.
“It’s unbelievable, the erosion,” he said. “It’s not like anything we’ve had before.”
Reach Elena Kadvany: [email protected] Twitter: @ekadvany
