\u201cThis heat dome was the first time where I actually felt, holy crap, here it comes. We\u2019ve been talking about it, we\u2019ve been hearing the impact of the droughts in some of our southern neighbours. We\u2019re going to have to get a lot stronger about how we\u2019re doing things and how we\u2019re supporting each other as community members and how we can support the food producers,\u201d said farmer Tamara McPhail<\/a>.<\/p>\n She and\u00a0Adam Schick<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Linnaea Farm<\/a> gave their perspective on this 2021 summer season. The dryness of this summer means mitigating fire danger is paramount. The heat also dried the grass reducing its nutrition content. The 11 cows that also live at Linnaea were mooing continuously during the worst of the heat. McPhail can translate this as their discontent and was concerned that she would have to supplement their diet with hay, which would mean depleting their stockpile of winter provisions.<\/p>\n Some of the cows at Linnaea farm. Photo courtesy of the Linnaea Farm Facebook page.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Making hay is an important annual activity at Linnaea. The first step is cutting, then what\u2019s known as \u201ctedding\u201d or fluffing the hay so that it dries sufficiently to then be raked and baled. Tedding traditionally takes two days and farmers listen for the sound the hay makes when it\u2019s ready for the next step. This year \u201cit definitely had that sound on on the first day \u2026 and the bales were super light, too. We felt like \u00fcber strong humans by lifting up these bales. I\u2019ve never seen hay dry that fast or feel that light, and they were difficult to stack in our barn.\u201d<\/p>\n Linnaea growers are grateful for the community support they receive during their haying workbees: they said they never know who is going to show up but that they are never short-handed.<\/p>\n When asked about the dry spell, Schick replied that the weather has been erratic for decades. Agrarian instinct plays a big part in decision-making on the farm.<\/p>\n \u201cThe weather\u2019s been so up and down for a long time, I would say since the early 2000s. This is my 25th year of gardening. When you farm, you see these cycles and you adapt to it. So, it\u2019s not the weather\u00a0that happened today. It\u2019s\u00a0whether you and I can do things to change the outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n The conversation also touched upon climate change, local sustainability, shrinking our impact and the seed library starting up at Linnaea.<\/p>\n Noah Davidson and Izabelle Perry from the Whaletown Garden Centre. Photo courtesy of the Whaletown Gardening Centre.<\/p><\/div> CKTZ also heard about the challenges of dry weather from grower\u00a0Noah Davidson<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0Whaletown Garden Centre<\/a>, who emailed a few gardening tips:<\/p>\n \u201cI tend not to expect rain in the summer and rely solely upon thorough waterings to keep the garden happy. The small amounts of rain we get in the summer are rarely enough to penetrate the soil very deeply,\" he said.<\/p>\n Davidson added that there were difficulties with the latest heat wave but said that plants were adaptable.<\/p>\n \"The few days that we had with the extreme heat was a challenge but most plants will adapt with a little extra watering. A plant under stress from extreme heat will wilt to protect itself from the sun, which a deep and thorough watering in the early morning can help alleviate, as can misting plants with water midday, which lowers leaf temperatures,\" he said.<\/p>\n By Anastasia Avvakumova Closely observing and responding to weather fluctuations has always been key to a grower\u2019s success, but the recent extreme heat\u00a0in early July is forcing farmers to rethink plans for future resiliency. \u201cThis heat dome was the first time where I actually felt, holy crap, here it comes. We\u2019ve been talking about it,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":53765,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[217],"tags":[314,5825,8217,8302],"radio":[252],"origine":[280,266,231],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53763"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=53763"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=53763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Five](\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Linnaea-cows.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"A](\"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/seasoil2.jpg\")
<\/a>Links of Interest:<\/h3>\n
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