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2012 drought may lead to problems years from now
by Gregory R. Norfleet · News · September 07, 2012
Dozens of high school students crest the hill on a winding path that takes them from Scattergood Friends School to the Scattergood farm.
Dressed in T-shirts and tank tops, they pull on work gloves and spread out, in groups, for the first of two Farm Work Days of the school year and the last day of a three-week orientation before classes start in earnest this week.
But this a classroom, too, Head of School Christine Ashley said, and one of the lessons this semester was unplanned and unwanted: How the private Quaker school will deal with the effects of the summer drought. The school usually sells excess crops to a grocery store.
“It will impact our income,” Ashley said, looking across the compound, circled by barns, sheds and a house, not to mention a dozen vehicles. “I don’t know how we’ll do.”
Ashley said they dragged thousands of feet of hose across the 10-acre, certified organic farm to water their crops. Mark Quee, who oversees the farming operation, said the watering system ran 12 hours a day every day over the four acres currently in production, but the school still lost cucumbers and green bean plantings.
“A couple of our minor crops didn’t survive,” he said. “But we keep planting, and we’ll have more in a couple of weeks.”
Since the vast majority of what the more than 50 students and 15 staff members eat comes from the farm, the school plants crops on a schedule to anticipate the number of people on campus at a certain time, as well as storing up food for winter.
“We lost the August green beans,” Quee said, “but not September.”
They still have a good amount of tomatoes, corn, pepper, basil and other crops, he said.
Ashley said that more than 99 percent of the meat the school consumes comes from their farm. And while the school has many unfarmed acres, between buildings and roads and such there is not nearly enough grass to feed the lamb, cows, steers and other cattle at the farm, Quee said.
So Scattergood must buy hay to keep them fed and at a healthy weight, he said. But the drought sent hay prices so high that they had to reduce their herds.
“The challenge is that (this year’s) meat is already in the freezer,” Quee said. “But (reducing the herd) could have effects seen in a few years.”
The school does keep enough cattle to give them a buffer, though.
“We’re overproducing,” he said, “so we can accommodate a shrinking herd size.”
By adjusting priorities and lot of hard work, the school “feels good” that it should still meet its food needs, Quee said.
Of the projects the students worked on Friday, one was demolishing an old barn to make way for a walk-in cooler that will allow the school to grow more and keep more for longer periods. Ashley said it will also serve as a vegetable packing facility.
“We want to emphasize that we’re Scattergood Friends School and Farm,” she said.
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