Local farm rebounds after rough summer weather
TOONE, Tenn. — Despite having 30 percent of their crop ruined this summer, Falcon Ridge Farm is getting ready to open their farm for fall festivities this Friday. The farm’s owner, Ray Gilmer, said each year presents its own set of problems and this year was the wet and cold weather. They are getting the farm ready for the public to come through, however Gilmer says the pumpkin patch had a lot of damage this year because of the heavy rain. “I’ve never seen this much rain probably not in 25 or 30 years,” Gilmer said. Ray Gilmer owns Falcon Ridge Farm in Toone. He and his family have been running the farm for 15 years. He said when you farm, you worry every day. “There were times when we didn’t know if we were going to have a crop at all, but that’s just the nature of farming.” Ray’s son, Bart Gilmer, also helps run the farm. “A lot of things were late to come in because it was cool, we had a cool spring and cool first of the summer,” Gilmer’s son Bart said. They say the unusual wet and cool weather this summer didn’t kill their crops completely, but did cut production way back. Last year they sold about 25,000 ears of sweet corn. This year only about 12,000, but they explained the good news for pumpkin lovers is there’s nothing to worry about. “The white pumpkins they did great they like cool wet weather,” Gilmer said. He said the orange pumpkins were hurt, but they will still have plenty. Last week Falcon Ridge Farm had a job fair that gave about 25 people new jobs. Gilmer explained, “we feel we help the community by giving those young people a chance to work.” While they had to overcome obstacles they said they never thought about pushing back the date of their opening day. Gilmer said people want certain things during certain times of the year and they have to be ready to supply it. “You got to be ready to sell those strawberries in may, you wouldn’t sell many strawberries in September, people have pumpkins on their mind,” Gilmer told WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News. Gilmer explained the biggest hit the orange pumpkins took from the weather was their size. He says last year they had some orange pumpkins around 100 pounds and the biggest ones this year are around 30 pounds.
