Ledyard -- Allyson Angelini at Full Heart Farm in Ledyard compares this growing season to a roller coaster.

First, there was a freeze in May. Then there were several days of extreme heat in June, interspersed with haze from wildfires in Canada that left southeastern Connecticut with poor air quality and cool weather for several days. And lately, it’s been excessive rain that in some areas of the state dropped as much as 5 inches in just a few hours last week.

“We've suffered crop loss from both freezes and heat waves, as well as droughts and floods,” Angelini said. ”Thankfully, our philosophy when it comes to farming has always been a ‘many egg baskets’ approach.“

Angelini, who farms about an acre and a half of her 6 acre property, believes in growing multiple successions of crops rather than relying on one planting, and placing vegetables and fruits at multiple locations on the farm to help mitigate risk of losses. But losses still happen, the biggest after the May 18 freeze that killed her blueberry and potato crops, which she won’t get another chance to grow this year.

She also was hit with a freeze in February that ruined her peach and apple trees.

“It pushes us to think creatively about how we can innovate given our small land area and tight planting calendar,” she said. “My philosophy is as much diversity as possible all the time.”

Angelini, wearing a ballcap with a carrot design as she oversaw operations Thursday, when it was finally hot and dry enough to weed, is among the growing chorus of farmers who have been facing weather extremes this year that scientists tie to climate change. And experts say the higher temperatures over the past few years, which can create flowering early in the spring or late in winter only to be negatively affected by a frost a few days later, has long-term implications for Connecticut agriculture.

Even with warm-weather crops such as eggplant, squash and cucumbers, heat above 90 degrees for an extended period can reduce yield as flowers wither and pollination comes to a stop.

“We’ve had five or six years worth of diverse weather events in just the first seven months, with a lot of growing ahead of us,” said Connecticut Agricultural Commission Bryan Hurlburt in a phone interview.

Hurlburt said the state is currently collecting data to support another disaster declaration based on flooding of farmers’ fields in the northwest part of the state. He is hopeful that the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the new farm bill will do a better job of addressing the needs of New England farmers by making the loss-adjustment process less cumbersome, among other ideas.

“It has been a really challenging year,” said Shuresh Ghimire, a vegetable specialist and assistant educator for the University of Connecticut Extension. “Farmers are adapting because they are the first ones to feel the impact of climate change.”

One of the issues, said Ghimire, is that Connecticut has many small farms. This makes it difficult to rotate crops, a key to sustainability, because there simply isn’t enough space to make it work. He suggests that farmers plant cover crops such as winter rye, oats, field peas and radishes to help protect the soil from erosion.

“Small farms are more susceptible to these extreme weather events because with their limited acreage they can’t rotate the fields,” Ghimire said.

For Full Heart Farm, the cold weather in May was a sustained freeze, said Angelini, because of the land’s low elevation. Despite using nine above-ground, plastic-wrapped tunnels to create almost 13,000 square feet of indoor growing space that is supposed to reduce the risk of frost in late spring, the damage was substantial.

“The plastic on those structures only buys us about three to four degrees,” she said in an email. “Much of our crops were also covered with fabric row cover inside to increase protection, but there was still damage indoors.”

For the most part, though, she was able to replant everything so that there were minimal delays in the harvest.

Statewide, said Ghimire, the frost’s biggest effect was on peach and apple crops, which in some areas were largely wiped out in May. This led the state to apply for federal disaster relief, which was approved earlier this month, allowing farmers to apply for emergency loans.

A late start for vegetables

But Russell Holmberg of Holmberg Orchards in Gales Ferry said his apple and peach crop did well, though he’s not sure the farm will be able to host pick-your-own peaches this year after a February frost that followed a stretch of warmer temperatures cut back on production.

“We’re well sited here,” he said. “We’re counting our blessings.”

Frank Himmelstein, who runs the 32-acre Himmelstein Farm in Lebanon, said the frost initially affected his potato crop ― something that had never happened before, and he is now about two to three weeks behind on his crops, partly due to the hazy and cool conditions through much of June.

“It was kind of a late start for a lot of vegetables,” said Rosemary Ostfeld, an environmental scientist at Wesleyan University who founded the website Healthy PlanEat that helps connect farmers to customers online.

In June, drought conditions were reported in some parts of Connecticut, but then the state saw a deluge early last week, causing many to report standing water in the fields. Ghimire said a Mansfield farm with crops in Glastonbury reported very bad flooding next to the Connecticut River, a problem since waterways can be polluted by toxins and heavy metals that could cause authorities to scrap any attempt to harvest vegetables in the fields.

Hannah Tripp, owner of Provider Farm in Salem, said she has been less affected by the weather fluctuation than others, but after the frost in May she had to spend a whole day trying to nurse sensitive crops back to health, leaving some damage that she characterized as “not too bad.”

“It was a definite cold end of spring,” she said. “We were late to get started.”

She also said the heat has been challenging, especially on employees during harvest time. This has necessitated a lot of water and popsicle breaks, she added, for herself and her two assistant managers, three full-time employees and other part-timers brought in during peak season.

“I think that we’re not going to go back to the predictable weather from our childhood,” she said in a phone interview.

The best she can do, Tripp said, is to invest in irrigation and other systems that can help make the farm as resilient as possible.

At Full Heart Farm, Angelini said, “Investments in infrastructure are prioritized by how much they help us reduce weather-related risk. We have limited water access on the farm, but enough overhead irrigation to use for frost protection as well as crop cooling during those extremely hot days.”

Everything, she said, is planted in raised beds to reduce the risk of disease and runoff during flash floods.

“This most recent storm in July was a doozy,” she added. “We are doing what we can to increase plant health with foliar fertilizers (a faster way of fertilizing directly on the leaves), but we won't fully understand the impacts of the flood for a couple of weeks.”

On the positive side, Angelini said smoke from the wildfires actually may have helped the farm during the June drought by allowing new plants to get established without fighting the heat.

“Something always thrives when something else is suffering,” she said. “In the vegetable world, our snap pea crop was the worst we've had, but our eggplants are on track to be one of our best harvests yet. In the flower world, we had our worst year of tulip growing ever (losing thousands of flowers), but our 3,000 dahlia plants are looking absolutely incredible.”

In all, the farm grows more than 300 different varieties of specialty vegetables and cut flowers.

“We always have plants ready to go in the ground when there is space available so that the harvest continues without any gaps, so we don't take time to grieve,” Angelini said.

Uphill challenge

Angelini said farmers are always complaining about the weather, but from her point of view the best thing is to just ignore the exigencies and physical discomforts and dream about the future.

“The wonderful thing about living and working seasonally is that there's always something new on the horizon,” she said. “Even though we were miserably hot earlier this month, when scientists calculated the global temperatures had broken a new record, we were busy seeding crops for fall.”

Angelini credited her farm crew for helping her keep on track.

“It's easier to slog through unfortunate situations when you're surrounded by great people who support you no matter what,” she said.

Still, she calls farming today an up-hill challenge. She said every year for the past five years there have been multiple weather events that have resulted in disaster declarations in Connecticut. Twenty years ago, she said, there were dates that farmers could live by for planting and harvesting crops, but not too much anymore.

“We’re constantly adjusting the dates,” she said. “It’s hard to see farms get wiped out one by one.”

After a period during college into her 20s, she felt small-scale agriculture could solve many of the country’s health problems, along with addressing climate change. Now, still only in her 30s, she’s not so sure.

“It feels like the systemic change that is needed right now cannot be made simply by setting a good example,” she said. “It's also hard to feel optimistic about climate change amidst such extreme weather patterns.”

She admitted that the pressures of farming are starting to feel overwhelming.

“But in many ways imagining how our life would be different if I stopped farming just makes me appreciate what we have even more,” Angelini said. “People ride roller coasters for a reason: the highs feel amazing, and at the end, when you're looking back on it all, it's just a blur. You can't farm without eternal optimism. ... we aren't going anywhere any time soon.”

l.howard@theday.com