Climate change is affecting all parts of our lives: including our farms. Photo: EcoPhotography.
This piece was originally published in the Concord Monitor.
We’ve been farming for nearly 40 years. We began seeing the changes about a dozen years ago: Frosts came later, we picked vegetables longer into the fall, droughts were more severe, but rainy periods were torrential and led to flooded fields and failed crops.
Thirty-eight years ago, I started working at Spring Ledge Farm in New London on the field crew for a summer job, and my family and I bought it from the Clough family 20 years ago. We grow vegetables, hanging baskets, flowers, strawberries, nursery plants, and corn on about 40 acres and sell directly to our customers from our farmstand on Main Street. It is a great way to make a living if you like working with soil, plants, and your community.
For years, we had a fairly…