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Have you noticed the heat this summer? Scuttling from air-conditioned house to car to climate-controlled workplace, most of us avoid exposing ourselves to the sun's baking rays. As city dwellers, weeks of hot dry weather create more concern about watering restrictions than heatstroke.
Ringing the city, however, is a strong network of workers responsible for bringing us something more important than replacement AC parts: food.
Even as the hot weather settled in last month, area farmers continued to show up at local markets with an admirable variety of beautiful produce. How is this possible, when just walking to my car makes me wilt like an under-watered pansy?
"You just have to work early and work late, and stay out of the heat of the day," Carl Wagner, owner of Millingport's Carlea Farm, says.
Wagner has been raising food on his family's land for about 15 years, and has seen droughts come and go. His biggest summer crops are potatoes and melons, but you'll also find tomatoes, beans and squash at his Matthews Community Farmers Market booth. When I spoke to him at the end of June, he was sanguine about his prospects for the season.
Even during a normal North Carolina summer, he says "to get any kind of production you have to irrigate." So, every year, he runs flat "drip tapes" down each planted row, ready to supplement irregular rainfall. For several years however, some crops like potatoes haven't needed the extra help.
Through the droughts, Wagner has counted on two wells tapped into a reliable aquifer that hasn't failed him yet. But heat alone can compromise production, regardless of the water supply. "Tomatoes won't set fruit," he says. And the hot sun still weakens plants, making them vulnerable to pests.
For chefs working with local farmers like Wagner, keeping tabs on field conditions is key. "Right now, they're kind of teetering on the edge," Adam Reed, chef/owner of Santé restaurant across the street from the market, says. "They're doing everything they can not to lose crops, but I think that they're all concerned."
In his 14 years of ownership, the chef has also seen droughts come and go. In fact, when Santé first opened, that's all he saw. "Every summer was another drought, another drought," Reed says, crediting them with his conversion to buying locally. When his national suppliers became unreliable and overpriced, "I started going across the street and realized it was actually costing me less to buy this stuff, and it was better quality."
Today, he knows that getting through a hot summer with his local suppliers means rolling with the punches. When dry conditions put an early end to the blackberry season a couple of weeks ago, he adjusted his desserts to incorporate blueberries instead. Cooking seasonally means last-minute menu changes are part of the deal. "I try to be as supportive as possible," he says.
Even for us regular shoppers, flexibility is key if we want the best from our local foodshed. Nothing beats the flavor of super-fresh fruit from a local farm. So if I have to suffer through some blueberry cheesecake to make it through this summer, bring it on.
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