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Muck farming has its own unique problems from season to season

John Williams stands next to a load of giant onions from last year's harvest that has been sorted and bagged and is being shipped out for an east coast buyer.

It is perhaps the most fertile land to be found anywhere. Mucklands consist of soil made up primarily of humus from drained swamp land. To farmers in specialty crops such as onions, carrots, cabbage, celery, potatoes and sweet corn, the black soil can provide rich harvests.

There are nearly 6,000 acres of muckland devoted to vegetables or potatoes in Wayne , Yates and Ontario Counties . The value of this production is approximately $15 million annually.

The promise of rich harvests can be muted by a cruel Mother Nature. Since mucklands are the lowest level lands on the drainage scale, continual heavy rains can ruin an entire season within a 24 hour period.

Its not that muck farmers do not have and maintain a series of drainage ditches and massive pumps in place to drain field in heavy downpours, the problem rests in where the water can run, away from the farmer's lands.

Over the years, area development has caused more rain and melting snow run off. Simply put, all that extra run off has to end up somewhere. As mucklands settle, road culverts often become dams to farmer run off, creating backlogs of water. If water runoff cannot be allowed to flow, crops and a season's effort can rot under the pools of water.

Most growers are making progress improving their water management systems by tiling, ditching, installing new pumps, and taking political action to enlist the assistance of town and other government officials for road culvert and stream improvements.

Compaction of muck soils due to poor drainage and even a drought can also hinder crops. Compaction is the first impediment to good water management by slowing or stopping the percolation of water down through the soil profile. It also limits the depth of rooting and the area from which crops can pick up water and nutrients.

According to a 2007-2008 Muck Water Management Project conducted by Carol MacNeal and John Gibbons of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Vegetable Program, some on-farm ditches and especially the culverts and waterways which serve as major outlets for farm ditches, need to be deepened to reduce the risk from excess water and flooding. Diversion of water from adjacent upland through perimeter ditches could also be improved. It was discovered that the effective depth of on-farm ditches is limited by the level of culverts under roads, and the level of water in off-farm streams. Some streams are blocked with trees, slowing the movement of water during heavy rain events. Natural subsidence of the mucklands over the past 10 – 20 years has lowered their level compared to the surrounding landscape.

One of the culprits to stream blocking are beavers. Once hunted to almost extinction, beavers made more than a subtle comeback and are strictly protected by State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) rules. This can cause havoc in farm and downstream ditches and streams.

According to Marion muck farmer John Williams, the DEC has thrown roadblocks in the way of farmers. “They (the DEC) make it difficult to put a shovel in a ditch.” he stated that in one 100 acre field on Becker Road, there were so many beavers in seasons past, that even homeowners along the stream complained.

After disastrous seasons due to wet weather conditions in 2004 and especially 2006, some muck farmers lost over half their crops. Doug and John William supplement natural drainage with an 18 inch pipe hooked up to a 50 horsepower motor that can pull water from certain field ditches in a flash. “The trouble is that we do not own the land where the water runs,” said John.

Although low lying mucklands can take quite a bit of dryness, the extreme droughts in the off years requires muck farmers to irrigate onion crops.

If keeping an eye on the weather adds more tension for area muck farmers, another problem that sprouted up in a heavy fashion last season was disease in the potato fields.

As an adjunct to the Muck Water Management Project, 8 potato farms were surveyed for Phytophthora pink rot of stems and tubers in 2007. This disease caused significant yield and quality loss in 2007. This potentially devastating disease had previously been sporadic, but an inoculum build up in the wet 2004 and 2006 seasons has increased the risk.

Still, with all the potential downsides, the Williams, just as with the other muckland farmers know, the good outweighs the bad. In business since 1949, on old swampland cleared around the turn of the 1900s, the Williams family keeps busy year-round. Massive storage cold buildings were erected to store their crops for sale as markets demand. Averaging over 4000 tons of potatoes per season, buyers call on a regular basis as workers sort potatoes for shipping.

John said that muck farming, just as other forms of land food production, is getting tougher as fewer and fewer farms continue and the public, scampering for more development, becomes less tolerant of neighboring farms. “People go to the store and pick up their bag of potatoes and don't realize what goes into bringing that bag to market,” added John.

The Wayne County Board of Supervisors set a date for a public hearing on a proposed local law amending the right to farm legislation. In essence the law states it is a seller's responsibility to notify a buyer. “It is the policy of this state and Wayne County to conserve, protect and encourage the development and improvement of agriculture land for the production of food, and other products and also for its natural and ecological value.” This notice is to inform prospective residents that farming activities occur within Wayne County , such as applying fertilizers, including manure, spraying, operation of machinery and that one should expect such conditions as a normal and necessary aspect of living in an agricultural area.