Jennifer Harrell harvests okra in her half-acre garden in Apison. The abundance of rain this summer has caused Harrell to lose some of her usual crops.Rain is a tricky thing for a farmer – too little and the crops die. Too much and the crops die.
“I’ve lost a crop because things have been too wet,” said Jennifer Harrell, a small-scale farmer at Fresh Green Farm in Apison. “And then the cool weather seemed to slow down the corn, the okra and some of my beans because it just hasn’t been as sunny and warm as we typically have.”
But, she adds in almost the same breath, it’s better than a drought.
“The nice thing is you don’t have to water and you’re not worried about drought conditions,” she said.
As a Chattanooga summer with nearly 20 inches more rain than normal fades into harvest season, some Tennessee farmers are seeing high yields while others are fighting insects and disease to preserve the state’s $1.3 billion-a-year worth of crops.