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Spring crops looking good, say farmers

Farmers say they’re optimistic that a tough winter for crops is giving way to good growing conditions.Bert Smith, of Windy Bank Farm, in Smith’s, said: “The banana crop looked really bad but it’s beginning to come back. I’ve never seen such small bananas, and I’ve been farming for 50 years. I think the wind had a lot to do with it, and we haven’t been getting enough rain.”Vegetable crops have begun to yield good returns, he said, and flowers are growing well.“We have a farmer’s market on Saturdays and it’s been doing very well. Our figures are a lot up over last year.”The economic recession is more of a concern than weather conditions, he said.“We get hit by price increases from abroad. As feed prices rise, it costs us more money to produce our eggs.”Devonshire farmer Roger Pacheco said: “Crops are looking good now. We had bad winds in December and severe wind at the end of January, plus a very dry February but compared with what it was like last year, it’s 100 percent better.”Bermudian farmers, he added, “lost a lot of money last year”.“There was a lot of wind and drought, with everybody taking losses,” Mr Pacheco said. “The March rains this year really helped us out a lot.”Bermuda’s bees, which plunged in numbers at the end of last summer, appear to have rebounded in time for the summer crops that need them for pollination, he said: cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkins and peppers.“It’s been good to hear of large numbers of bees turning up in Hamilton, and we’re starting to see them around the drip irrigation here at Locust Hall.”Getting ready to plant 14,000 peppers, he said, makes it “quite a relief to see bees around”.And, with an embargo on potatoes coming into effect today, next week will be occupied with potato harvesting.“There’s a lot of work for Easter, picking parsley and thyme, onions, leaf lettuces,” Mr Pacheco said.Southampton farmer Tom Wadson called it “a challenging winter” at the West End, with harsh winds out of the northwest.Rainfall was also low in the early part of this year, he said. “But we’re getting a good bit more rain now, which is great for crops.“We had a fair amount of potato blight, which we got under control, and our strawberries got hit very hard, but we’re using new crop shelters for them that are working very well. The tough times makes you think and adapt. But for us, it was definitely a bad winter.”At the moment, however, Wadson’s Farm has plenty of spring lambs.“We’ve had good luck with our lambs,” Mr Wadson said. “We weaned 40 of them the other day.“All in all, conditions right now are good. I’m the eternal optimist.”