Extreme heat challenges Carroll County orchards and farms

This week’s relentless heatwave is challenging Carroll County farmers and orchard owners as they fight excessive temperatures and dry conditions to save their crops and livestock.

A wet spring, followed by a current shortage of rain, is only adding to the stress many are facing this summer.

“We need some rain, but Mother Nature won’t cooperate,” said Mark Savage, owner of Char-Lene Farm, a family-run beef and crop farm on approximately 400 acres in Mount Airy. “We’ve replanted the soybeans twice. In the spring from all the rain, and now the lack of rain.

“You know what they say, ‘if you want to gamble, become a farmer,'” he said.

Meanwhile, the 180 cows at the Char-Lene Farm are finding ways to keep cool. “They’re doing fine,” Savage said. “They stay in the barn where it’s well ventilated. They don’t graze in the fields.”

The National Weather Service on its website Tuesday called conditions in Carroll County “hazardous.” A heat advisory has been issued through Wednesday evening, and there is a chance of thunderstorms later this week.

At Baugher’s Orchard and Farm in Westminster, high temperatures are causing their fruit to ripen earlier than usual.

“It’s mostly pushing things early,” said William Jordan, an employee at the orchard’s market. “Strawberries started a week and a half early, and ended early. People have showed up to pick, and we’ve run out.”

Jordan said cherries ripened early, and peaches are ready to be picked now. Sweet cherries were ready to be picked in June, a few weeks earlier than usual.

Despite the temperatures and little rain, the orchard at Bupperts/Doran’s Chance Farm in Sykesville is “holding its own,” Deb Buppert said.

“Right now we’re doing OK,” she said. “Things are holding up pretty well. The sweet corn looks good, and the pumpkins we planted are also looking good.”

Buppert explained that the planted corn has the ability to protect itself when there is a lack of adequate rain. The corn plant protects itself by rolling its leaves upward, she said. Leaf rolling conserves water by decreasing the surface area of the leaf exposed to sunlight.

“Even if we have a drizzle of rain, the plant collects the water in the leaf and it goes down to the root,” she said.

The small family farm also uses water from an onsite pond for irrigating the orchard, which is also holding its own, Buppert said.