Some Connecticut farmers are dealing with the effects of Sunday’s storm.
“A lot of us go hit,” said Joann DeSantis, who runs DeSantis Farm in Watertown alongside her husband. “We’ve never had rain down here like this. We’ve never had this much rain.”
DeSantis said her 40-acre farm lost thousands of dollars’ worth of crops weeks before harvest.
“Usually, we start harvesting at the beginning of September and now we lost it,” she said. “My prize-winning pumpkins were literally floating away.”
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Their pumpkin and squash harvests were ruined in knee-high floodwaters. The moisture also impacted the farm’s tomatoes and peppers.
“We’re trying to pick as much as we can, but they are already cracking because of the rain,” DeSantis said. “Within a day or two, they are going to start to yellow, because they are literally drowning.”
While much of the water receded by Monday, the fields remained muddy with crops soaking in the water.
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“They are soaked,” she said. “They are drowning, they are going to drown.”
She said the upcoming days will tell the extent of the damage as plants begin to die. The farm plans to take things day by day.
“We just keep trying to pick what we can,” DeSantis said. “In a few days will really be the telltale sign of how bad it is.”
