Daily Press file photo Pumpkins and squash are shown for sale at a stand in Escanaba. According to area farmers, corn, pumpkins, apples and beans produced good yields locally this growing season. The local hay crop suffered due to dry conditions, however.

ESCANABA — When compared to the agriculture of eras past, changes in technology, diet trends, politics, transportation and land management have all impacted the way farmers operate. In the Upper Peninsula, hay is widely grown, but this year’s yield suffered due to dry conditions. However, local farmers reported profitable turnouts of corn, pumpkins, apples and beans.

In an wide industry that can take many forms, farmers work to adapt where they can. Years ago, people grew a variety of crops during the growing season and kept livestock; both were canned to sustain families in the winter. While there has been a resurgence in canning, most people don’t grow their own food. Stores have made produce available year-round, but lots of consumers appreciate obtaining fruits, vegetables, and feed straight from the place they were grown.

“We do seem to do better marketing more to the public — or to the people — than what we do marketing through like, for example, a farmer co-op or something like that,” said Dan Hall, who owns and operates Hall Farms along with his wife. “I guess we’re trying to somewhat eliminate the middleman.”

Hall Farms, which is near St. Nicholas, also eliminated a whole portion of the business — an especially “demanding” one — in exchange for cash crop production.

“We used to milk cows,” said Hall. “We were a dairy farmer for 30 some years. We exited that business approximately 13 years ago.”

At present, they grow sunflowers, sweet corn, livestock corn, pumpkins and — for hay — timothy broomgrass and alfalfa.

“We’ve been very lucky in the effect that we’ve grown a reputation,” said Hall. “People come from all over the central part … and buy product from us.”

The sunflower fields are popular with tourists. And contrary to rumors that were floating around, Hall said they will be planted again next year; they’ve already ordered the seed.

“The main reason we plant (sunflowers) is to combine them,” said Hall. “They’re the high oil type, and we bag those seed for bird seed. And again, we sell them all right here off the farm.”

Paul Porath, whose family has been farming the same land in Bark River for over a century, also moved away from the dairy industry. The Poraths now grow barley, corn, soybeans and pumpkins.

“I sold the milk cows a year and a half ago, and now I’m just raising out the young stock,” Porath said. “With the price of milk, it was — they weren’t paying for themselves anymore. It was more profitable to sell the feed that was going into them than it was milking ’em.”

Forage crops — grasses that become hay and corn for silage/feed — dominate many U.P. farms.

“Living and farming on a peninsula just creates a lot of unique challenges of moving our traditionally bulky and heavy agricultural commodities to market,” said Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) Director Tim Boring. “The U.P. has seen the same kind of trends that we’ve seen downstate: a real focus on in-state processing and converting crops into higher value things before they’re transported away to greater population centres. (There is) a lot of focus on … growing hay and those sorts of things to be able to transform it into something more valuable like milk.”

Boring mentioned that “cropping system diversity” was important, and that achieving those goals should be attainable.

“We can grow a lot of different things (in Michigan),” Boring said. “We’re gonna have a long term supply of fresh water — which certainly most other areas of the country can’t say.”

A big priority for MDARD, Boring said, is building a system that is “resilient to the effects of climate change.”

Weather has always been a major, unavoidable force that must be reckoned with in the field.

When asked what the biggest challenges facing farmers today was, Hall said, “Certainly, Mother Nature still controls what we get. So of course the weather is a big factor. Some of the other factors are, of course, you know, prices and politics.”

Hall said that a lack of rain meant that the herbicide they had put on their roughly three acres of pumpkins was never activated or soaked into the soil, “so the herbicide kind of dissipated, and the pumpkin crop was overrun with weeds. And so that was a disaster.”

On other farms, pumpkins did well. Porath said their pumpkin crop struck a record; he got them in “early enough that they vined out before it got dry,” but grasses suffered without rain.

“Hay wasn’t worth a darn,” he said. He sells hay in small square bales, which he says is labor-intensive but profitable; horse farmers buy it. “Hay wasn’t very good, but the beans look alright, the corn was pretty good, and the barley was a little below average.”

On the Garden Peninsula, Kevin Klink of Klink Farms said, “We were extremely dry this year,” and that such conditions meant they only produced half the amount of hay when compared to last year’s crop. “But it’s funny, because the growing crops did okay. But our grass stuff did not. And everybody we talked to around here says the same thing — that their hay went about 50%.”

Klink reported a good yield for pumpkins and corn — “for as dry as this summer was.”

All the farmers polled said that corn did well this year.

The first frost in Garden came the night of Wednesday, Oct. 11, but Klink said that the pumpkins and corn were far enough along that they wouldn’t be damaged. On Thursday the 12th, he said that three-quarters of the pumpkins on his farm had been picked already.

“The last couple years we had no frost in September,” said Jim Gorzinski, who has a farm in Wilson. “It’s very unusual to go through September without a killing frost.” Gorzinski said that he’s been travelling to farmers’ markets for about 23 years. He takes a different approach from those who only sell at stands outside their own family farms.

“I grow some tomatoes and peppers, a lot of the squash, and zucchini,” said Gorzinski, gesturing to them at the marketplace in Escanaba — while surrounded by much more. He also sells potatoes, corn, apples, and other produce grown by other farmers near Menominee and in Wisconsin.

Several other vendors also sell apples — of which there was a “bumper crop” this year — at the farmers’ markets. One expressed concern the abundance of fruit was going to go to waste.

“Earlier in the year, I get blueberries and sweet cherries and stuff from lower Michigan,” Gorzinski added. He said he sells thousands of pounds of berries each year at U.P. markets “’cause there ain’t no large quantities up here. Just like peaches and all that stuff. They don’t grow them up here.”

But times have changed, and certain plants that never used to grow up north are able to proliferate now. Porath said that scientific developments in genetics have allowed him to grow different crops than his parents did.

“When I was a kid, you couldn’t plant beans up here,” said Porath. “We did not have a long enough growing season for soybeans … But with the advances in seeds, we get away with planting corn and beans now up here for cash crop.”

He said that he now plants 200 acres of soybeans and sells most of them out to Oconto Falls.

Potatoes are an example of one local crop that has historically done well in the U.P. and continues to. Porath said that Yukon Golds were popular with customers at his farm this year.

“It’s always been a really robust potato production area,” said Boring. “There’s a lot of seed production for potatoes that occurs in the U.P. just because it’s an isolated geographic region. So when you’re growing seed like that, you wanted it segregated and geographically isolated from the commercial production so you’re not introducing diseases. And so for that aspect, it’s worked great. It’s an area pretty well suited for that. You’re transporting seed, which is a lot less bulky than potatoes themselves.”

Regardless of what the product is, though, running a farm is no mean feat. Porath said that the cost of operation is such that farmers can’t afford to pay laborers, and all the work falls to the family. And in his case, With land that’s been in the family for 110 years, and using knowledge and machinery that has been passed down.

“For me to do, you know, an oil change on a tractor, it’s between six and $800. So it’s just the cost — the cost of maintenance and upkeep on equipment has just gotten ridiculous,” said Porath. “For somebody to jump into farming nowadays — that don’t matter if it’s crop farming, dairy farming, beef farming — it would be impossible to jump into farming from scratch and make a profit.”

Optimism was expressed from MDARD. Boring said that the climate and soils in the U.P. are well suited to both malt and barley, and that there have been efforts to establish those industries in the U.P. He believes the whole state has a lot of potential.

“There’s a call for … a robust and comprehensive view of how we best position those resources going into the future,” said Boring. “It’s a concerted effort on economic growth throughout the state. Agriculture is a driver of rural economies across the state. When we look at ensuring people are healthy and eating healthy food, have upward economic mobility options in front of them to grow their careers and lives here in Michigan — to just population declines for a lot of places in the state — agriculture is a driver of how we tackle those kinds of issues and and how we support rural economies.”