The owner of Zekveld's Garden Market is trying to focus on the positives, after experiencing flooding and some damaged crops in last week's storms.
John Zekveld tells Sarnia News Today the high winds and heavy rainfall knocked down some trees in their orchard.
"The newer types of apple trees, they don't have the thick trunks that the old trees do, so they're staked," said Zekveld. "Sometimes if the posts are a little bit weak, or we've had brand new posts in there, they snap from a gust of wind. The trees at this time of year are top heavy, and with the narrower trunk, the wind takes them and they topple over. So, we lost a few trees there."
Zekveld said the sweet corn at their farm, on London Line in Wyoming, also went down "at a 45 degree angle."
"Generally, if it does that it takes a lot longer to pick, and amazingly enough, I went out there today to have a look at it and it's standing pretty straight again," he said.
Zekveld said the increased moisture could result in a higher prevalence of crop disease, mould and fungus, this year. But, he added, they're trying new things to cope with the conditions.
"We've put up tunnels, so we can pick crops even during the rain and stay dry," Zekveld said. "We've had pick-your-own raspberries the last week and we could keep going on that. But, generally when it's raining, people don't feel like getting out to do those types of things."
Zekveld said the dry spring led to a good quality strawberry season (thanks to underground irrigation), the raspberry season has been good so far, and they've been pulling some beautiful produce from the fields.
"Things are looking lush, they're looking green," he said. "I think they were calling for quite a bit of rain on Saturday and on this farm we did not get it. But, if we had another inch or two, then we would have been in pretty bad shape. But, that missed us."
In fact, Zekveld said he's heard a variety of reports from Sarnia-Lambton farmers.
"There's some other farmers that say, 'Oh, you're getting that much rain? We only got two inches and things are going really well.' and there's other farmers saying, 'We just had a really big hail storm come through that's wrecking a lot of stuff,'" he said. "We're very, very thankful that there was no hail [here], tornadoes can do a lot of damage too. So these types of weather patterns, you know they are a reality every year, but, when they do hit... you think, 'oh, boy, this is a little nasty.'"
An investigation by the Northern Tornadoes Project (NTP) confirmed a total of three microbursts occurred in a storm that rolled through the region last Friday.
It was determined an EF0 (on the Enhanced Fujita Scale), with wind gusts reaching about 125 kilometres per hour, struck a property in Oil City.
The other two microbursts were reported in the Wallaceburg area.
