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Leominster’s Gove Farm is literally bursting at the seams with an early bumper crop of fresh produce, a welcome respite from the last two challenging growing seasons despite the current drought conditions. (DANIELLE RAY/SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE)
Leominster’s Gove Farm is literally bursting at the seams with an early bumper crop of fresh produce, a welcome respite from the last two challenging growing seasons despite the current drought conditions. (DANIELLE RAY/SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE)
Harper's Farm owner Dave Harper by part of the 40 acres of corn they grow at their fourth generation family farm in Lancaster.
David Dumaresq of Farmer Dave’s by an irrigation pond at the Dracut farm, which is getting low due to current drought conditions across the state. (COURTESY DAVID DUMARESQ)
David Dumaresq stands next to one of the irrigation reels at his Dracut Farm, Farmer Dave’s, which are in heavy rotation this year due to current drought conditions across the state. (COURTESY DAVID DUMARESQ)
Longtime Farmer Dave's employee Gilmar Maldonado (l.) and owner David Dumaresq (r.) next to one of the irrigation reels at the Dracut farm, which are in heavy rotation this year due to current drought conditions across the state. (COURTESY DAVID DUMARESQ)
Oscar Lopez, a worker at Farmer Dave's in Dracut. trellising tomatoes in a field recently irrigated. (COURTESY DAVID DUMARESQ)
In addition to their current fresh produce offerings including tomatoes, broccoli, cucumbers, zucchini, beets, green and yellow beans, cabbage, herbs, several types of greens, and more, Gove Farm in Leominster also has gorgeous blooms such as snapdragons, zinnias, and lisianthus at their Mechanic Street farmstand. (DANIELLE RAY/SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE)
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. Cows are bunching together in the shade in the hot weather. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. Cows are bunching together in the shade in the hot weather. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. He’s using sprinklers to water the grazing areas with well water, which they don’t usually do. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. What is normally a brook at left has dried up. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. He’s using sprinklers to water the grazing areas with well water, which they don’t usually do. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. Cows are bunching together in the shade in the hot weather. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. Cows are bunching together in the shade in the hot weather. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. Cows are bunching together in the shade in the hot weather. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. He’s using sprinklers to water the grazing areas with well water, which they don’t usually do. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
July 15, 2022 – Mark Shaw of Shaw Farm in Dracut shows effects of the hot dry weather and drought at the family’s dairy farm. He’s using sprinklers to water the grazing areas with well water, which they don’t usually do. JULIA MALAKIE/LOWELL SUN
Leominster’s Gove Farm is literally bursting at the seams with an early bumper crop of produce, farm-fresh goodness that despite the current drought is a welcome respite compared to the last two growing seasons, which were challenging.
Husband and wife owners Paul and Lisa Gove are thrilled with the turnaround from last year, which was plagued with unusually heavy rainfall.
Their farm stand at 930 Mechanic St. is currently overflowing with offerings, many of which came in early, including tomatoes, broccoli, English and regular cucumbers, zucchini, summer and eight ball squash, zapallitos, lettuce, radishes, beet greens and two types of beets, Swiss chard, green and yellow beans, cabbage, hot peppers, basil, Italian parsley and sage. They even offer gorgeous flowers, bouquets of colorful blooms grown in rows upon rows including snapdragons, zinnias and lisianthus.
“So far, it’s so much better than other years, at least the last couple,” Paul Gove said. “It was nice to have a little rain a few nights ago but I would certainly like more. We have been irrigating a lot, but the rain does a better job.”
Their 23-year-old son is pursuing a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina after getting an undergraduate degree in horticulture. He writes a blog on food security, and their 27-year-old daughter was importing bananas and avocados before changing career paths. The couple is proud of their kids’ involvement in their family’s agricultural legacy.
Paul Gove said they are “looking forward to a good summer” at the farm.
“It’s nice at this point of the year to be optimistic and to have great customers who appreciate fresh food,” he said. “It feels like such a long winter. When we can get fresh things, it is a sin not to capitalize on that.”
Rain, drought and just about every other issue related to agriculture besides biblical pestilence significantly affected farming across the region, state and country in 2020 and 2021, which unfortunately came in tandem with a worldwide pandemic.
Drought is once again an issue this year, with Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist at the Northeast Regional Climate Center located in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, stating that most of Massachusetts “had below-normal precipitation for May and June.”
“Part of Massachusetts is now in a severe drought, as defined by the U.S. Drought Monitor,” she said. “The dryness earlier in the growing season is helpful for planting, but now is causing some farmers to need irrigation, if they have it. The precipitation for the next week is forecast to be an inch or less, which won’t be enough to offer much relief.”
Although serious drought is a pressing issue, a lot of farms in the region are reporting early and abundant crops, including Gove and Harper’s Farm on Main Street in Lancaster.
“You get the dry years and things just produce like crazy, all the yields are high,” said Dave Harper, a fourth-generation farmer. “Last year was the complete opposite.”
Harper was referencing the unusually high amount of rain that fell during the 2021 growing and harvesting season, which led to a lot of crops lost due to root rot and basically drowning. This year is a completely different story, with Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Beth Card declaring a Level 2, or “significant,” drought, last month, in both the northeastern and southeastern parts of the state – the highest level any region of Massachusetts has reached this summer. The only sections of the state that still have “normal” conditions are Western Massachusetts and Cape Cod, according to the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.
Harper said that while drought can be a “huge challenge,” staying on top of moving the drip irrigation system around in the fields so the “water goes exactly where it needs to go” is a “better problem than last year.”
“Everything looks fantastic so far and is early this year,” he said. “We are just starting to pick tomatoes.”
The half-inch of rain the farm got overnight Wednesday into Thursday this past week was appreciated, as they “have to get about an inch a week or we have to put the irrigation on.” Harper said their “biggest challenge” is their corn, which covers 40 acres of their “just about a hundred total” and must be watered overhead. He likened a reel, which covers a couple acres at a time, to “a very big garden hose you roll out and back.”
Harper said that “pretty much everything you can grow we try to grow” at the farm his great grandfather started as a dairy farm in 1903 and transitioned to produce in the mid-1970s, including unique and “ethnic vegetables” such as okra and Brazilian eggplant. He said their farm stand at 1539 Main St. stays busy and that they also participate in farmers’ markets in the area and offer a Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA program, which has become even more popular over the last few years.
“Since the pandemic it has been really selling out pretty fast,” Harper said of their CSA. “People really started to be aware of where their food is grown and how it’s important to keep supporting farms.”
But for farmers like David Dumaresq of Farmer Dave’s of Dracut, dry weather is not a good thing simply because of the farm’s location and the type of soil he grows in.
“Our soils tend to be more sandy than heavier clay,” he said. “On the wet years we tend to be just fine, we don’t have to irrigate, and we don’t have disease problems. Drought years we have to spend a lot of time and money to irrigate.”
Dumaresq said this year they are having to put a lot of time and effort into making sure the plethora of crops grown over their 100 acres are properly watered.
“We have a team of four moving pipes and irrigation reels, it just never seems to end,” he said. “We are getting to the point of irrigation ponds getting low. … Getting through July and the first part of August is a lot of work. Everything is going well so far but if we don’t get rain in the next week, we may have some drought problems.”
On the flip side, he said they “tend to lose some vegetables if they get too much water,” crops that include six acres of apples and four acres of winter squash, apricots, asparagus, beans, beets, broccoli, blueberries, raspberries, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, greens such as Swiss chard, lettuce, and collards, herbs, sweet and regular potatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, and a variety of tomatoes including heirloom and plum.
Its “home farm” headquarters on Parker Road in Dracut includes a farm stand, commercial kitchen, and a packing house, where they prep their crops and send them to other farm stands in Tewksbury and Westford. They are in the process of freezing berries right now and are offering pick your own blueberries, with pick your own apples, potatoes and carrots coming up in September, with plans for pick your own early greenhouse yields of tomatoes and strawberries next season.
Drip irrigation waters about a quarter of its total acreage, which Dumaresq said “decreases the water needs, between 50 to 75% less water. We’re not wasting any water but it’s expensive to set up.”
In addition to that expense, he said the high price of fuel is also an issue as they are now spending over $1,000 a week in regular and diesel costs to run the irrigation pumps. And yet all of their efforts have paid off, as crops are producing “in part because of the drought because we can control the water,” Dumaresq said.
“People have commented that the flavors have been excellent.”
Warren Shaw of Shaw Farm on New Boston Road in Dracut said that if you’re a dairy farmer like him, “it is a really bad year.”
“They tend to grow crop for cows but there are not enough value in them to afford irrigation, they are subject to weather,” he said. “It is not a great year to be a dairy farmer, another difficult year, but there are farmers that have had a reasonably good year.”
While an abundance of rain is not helpful either, he said that if the drought continues dairy farmers in the state will lose crops and be forced to go down other avenues in order to feed their animals.
“That is what everybody is going to have to do,” Shaw said. “If your feeding program includes 40% corn, or silage, then you’re probably going to have to buy feed from an area that does not have drought.”
Shaw, who does talk radio on the weekends, perfectly summed up what it’s like to be a farmer of any type in New England and all the challenges that come along with that role.
“I would say it’s a never a perfect year to be a farmer.”
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