‘Praying for rain’: How New York farmers are dealing with drought — and unexpected brush fires

For farmers, planning for spring begins in the fall. That’s when seeds go into the ground. Later, if all goes well, roots begin to grow, followed by shoots and leaves. But that only happens when there’s enough water. 

“Unfortunately, there’s a lot of seeds that get sown in the fall, and without rain, they’re not going to germinate,” said Amy Hepworth, owner of Hepworth Farms, a seventh-generation family farm located just off the Hudson River in New York state. In the Hudson Valley, a corridor known for its agricultural productivity that stretches from just north of New York City to the state’s capital in Albany, multiple counties are currently under a drought watch. The region has experienced an exceptionally dry autumn, with local meteorologists estimating that last month was the driest October on record. “Had it rained even once or twice [in] September, October, you would see green fields out there now,” said Hepworth. “But now they’re still bare.” Like many growers in her area, Hepworth has dealt with this setback by relying on her farm’s irrigation system while waiting for rain to fall.

Growers in the Hudson Valley are part of a robust local food movement, selling their produce directly to consumers via farm stands, farmers markets, and community-supported agriculture programs, or CSAs; or to restaurants as far as New York City. But the impacts of climate change are making their jobs harder. The historic lack of rainfall in New York is just another sign of the increasingly erratic weather conditions under which food must grow. 

“I’ve been farming for almost 50 years, and there’s no normal,” said Guy Jones, who runs Blooming Hill Farms with his three sons in Orange County. These days, he said, “it either rains like a motherf***er, or it’s dry as hell. Pardon my French.” He added: “The trend isn’t necessarily solely dry or wet. It’s just extreme.” 

New York is far from the only place experiencing a very dry, unseasonably warm autumn: Abnormally high October temperatures, fueled by climate change, were seen in cities across the country, according to analysis from Climate Central. Those bumps in temperature have been coupled with very little rainfall: In the first few days of November, drought conditions impacted 49 of the 50 states, according to the National Weather Service. 

These trends are in keeping with the way scientists expect climate change to worsen drought risk in the U.S. and around the world. Warmer temperatures lead to more evaporation — meaning less moisture in the soil and less water in surface-water sources like lakes, rivers, and streams. Warmer seasons can also affect snowpack, which the western U.S. depends on to replenish water sources throughout the spring and summer, as snow in the mountains melts. 

Shannon Roback, a science director at Riverkeeper, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the Hudson River and its tributaries, said this year’s drought conditions in the Hudson Valley were “not particularly surprising to me.” As New York’s climate changes, overall precipitation is expected to increase, she noted. “But it is also possible that we will see more short-term seasonal drought that lasts from weeks to months.”

This year, the especially dry conditions also mean that the Hudson Valley faces a heightened risk of wildfires — something typically unheard of in the area. Parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have all seen wildfires in early November, with a massive fire on the New Jersey-New York state border still raging as of Monday.

Amanda Dykeman, one of the owners of Dykeman Farm, a fourth-generation vegetable farm in Dutchess County, described seeing her first-ever brush fire in the area, “literally on the other side” of the mountain next to her farm. The brush fire started in late October and continued for more than a week, according to Dykeman, while multiple fire departments worked to put it out. 

Dykeman said she and her family watched “big helicopters dump water on it.” Although it was interesting “to see something that we’ve never seen before, we certainly hope we never see that again in our lifetime here,” she added. 

The drought is also affecting her ability to grow healthy crops. Dykeman, who said she is “praying for rain,” reasons that some of the impacts of a dry, warm fall will be felt throughout the winter and until the spring. That’s because after the summer, a cool period typically helps kill off harmful pests that can hamper next year’s crops. “In the long term, with the warm weather, you are not having any type of mold spores or even any sort of pests die,” she said. Until the weather cools off, Dykeman’s squash, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants are vulnerable to bugs and blight.

The biggest problem she and other farms are facing is just how dry the soil is, making it hard to plant seeds. “I mean, the dirt is just powder — quite, quite deep in the ground,” said Dykeman. Recently, while setting up for a fall festival on the farm, she and the other folks had a hard time driving tent stakes into the ground because of how dry and fine the soil is. “The ground is just dust.”

Hepworth, who grows apples, vegetables, cannabis, and other crops on her farm, reported similar soil conditions — even though she is located outside of the counties under drought watch. And she warned that dry soil can be particularly difficult to manage. “I would say that the biggest negative impact is when it’s this dry, you can’t work your fields.” Typically, she said, the soil in the ground has some moisture in it in October, due to seasonal precipitation. But when the soil on a farm is super dried out, working the fields will turn it into a powder, said Hepworth. Watering the soil under these conditions can leave you with “a crusty, hard soil,” she said. “And that’s the last thing you want. You want your soil to have a lot of air and balance.” The trick is to continuously monitor the soil’s moisture content and wait until conditions are right to properly irrigate.

Hepworth noted that the lack of rain has meant plenty of sunshine, which has actually helped the quality of some of her crops, like apples, this year. “We’re farmers, and we’re used to every imaginable weather,” she said. “Part of our job is being inside of the natural world. So farmers adapt to their situation.”

Jones agreed, but also said he’s noticed the natural world changing. Whenever it does rain, it isn’t a moderate rain like the region has been historically used to. “It’s not like ‘Singin’ in the Rain,’ you know, with your little umbrella, you’re walking out on a rainy day,” said Jones. Instead, “the wind’s blowing like crazy. You get 3 inches in an hour,” he said.

The drought watch his county is under does not carry any restrictions around water use, although residents are “strongly encouraged to voluntarily conserve water.” Jones noted that his farm is set up in such a way that he can irrigate 100 percent of his fields, if he has to. Many farms, including Jones’, rely on groundwater from wells driven on their farmland. Roback, the science director at Riverkeeper, notes that everyone who relies on groundwater — farmers and other private citizens who may have their own wells — “has to be more conscious of their water use during times of drought,” because without sufficient rainfall, “there’s nothing to recharge those aquifers.”