Area farmers’ yield didn’t come easy

Two months ago, P.J. Salerno wasn’t sure how his summer yield was going to turn out.

Salerno — like many other local farmers — was struggling to get crops in the ground, as rain poured down and made fields difficult to prepare. His 108-acre Mahoning Township farm, called Foothill Farm, fell behind on its planting schedule.

“We thought it was going to be a repeat of last year,” Salerno said, referencing turmoils caused by 2018’s excess rainfall.

The National Weather Service Forecast Office of Philadelphia and Mount Holly keeps an unofficial record of precipitation in various areas of Pennsylvania, including Lehighton.

Those records indicate that — based on a 19-year average — 4 inches of rain falls in Lehighton in the month of April. The borough received almost 6 inches in April of this year.

But last weekend, as he tended the Foothill Farm counter at the Lehighton Farmers Market, Salerno was all smiles — surrounded by heaps of freshly harvested fruits and vegetables. He said the season has really turned around since May.

“The weather’s been awesome,” Salerno said. “Perfect rain, perfect temperatures.”

But not all growers have been so lucky.

Nineteen-year-old Andy Fogel, who cultivates the fields of Fogel Farms alongside his brother, Jesse, said the rain “pretty much ruined” a number of their crops. The string beans they planted didn’t even come up from the ground. And the only produce for sale Saturday were peppers and watermelons.

“It’s still not coming in right,” Fogel said.

Thomas Teprovich’s table at the farmers market boasted a wide variety of produce, but that yield didn’t come easy.

“It was a struggle,” Teprovich said.

One of the crops Teprovich grows on his 12-acre farm in Germansville is sweet corn, which he was late in planting this year. He added that early on, the corn he was able to get in the ground didn’t grow properly. His sweet corn yield this summer was about 25% lower than previous years.

Teprovich noted that even though the weather has normalized, being a produce farmer, the fight to stay afloat remains. What was once a career for his father and grandfather, he said, is now more of a hobby for him. And when he’s not tending the soil, Teprovich works a full-time job.

“It’s the only way we can survive,” he said, “because you can’t live off of just this little produce farm.”