A Mother Nature taketh away year

We are Hubbard Brook Farm in Unity Maine, Diane and Kevin Weiser.

Mother Nature started in February with the polar vortex. Negative 22 the first night. Negative 18 the second night. That took out our peaches, plums and cherries.

Around the third week of May Mother Nature took the strawberries. All the king blossoms and any other blooms got killed by a 27 degree night. We have never lost four different fruit crops in the same year.

In June came the rain. Any seeds planted rotted in the ground or came up sparsely. We reseed and replanted. However the rain kept coming and the sun was hard to find all summer.

September finds it still raining. Tomatoes are splitting. The fall raspberries are rotting on the cane. The hurricane knocked over some of the corn and snapped off pepper plants. It has been a year of hit after hit. We have no crop insurance.

Out customers, Beth & Kevin, gave us a card before they returned home for the winter. They expressed how much they enjoyed buying our produce and seeing the dogs every summer here in Maine. They also included $200 in the card. They said they would have spent this money on fruit we did not have this summer. They wanted to give us the money anyways due to this difficult year. I was not surprised, we have the best customers. I was brought to tears by their generosity and understanding of the situation we face. It is the end of September and we are down 40,000 dollars for the year. We are not going to make that up by the end of October.

Then I thought if more of our customers could give us some portion of the money they would have spent on the fruit we lost it would help us pay taxes , insurance, buy more trees and make it through this.

Our customers are the ones who have made this farm work for so many year by showing up to market and supporting us. We try to keep our prices fair. We work hard and are proud of the product we bring to sell at market.

Please help us endure these extenuating circumstances and recover from the worst year that Mother Nature has ever dealt us. Every year is a gamble when you play with her. Hopefully next year we will get a better hand.

Thank you for your kindness and support.