 Throughout his fields, one can see a few healthy plants sporadically scattered in fields of dry, dusty dirt and surrounded by withered, struggling plants. Some of the soil is loose, yet dry, while most is so parched; it is hard and cracked. In one field the corn is of different heights, ranging from 5 to 6 feet tall to 1-foot stalks laying flat on the ground,  brown
and cracked. The zucchini fields have large sections of nothing but
dirt and rocks where the July 4th flash flood washed away many crops.
Directly across the street from their produce stand, there is a field of peas that suffered chemical burns after being fertilized and not getting the water they needed fast enough. Some crops, such as the tomatoes, suffered from an over abundance of insects. In the beginning of the season, Tripple and his son, Joe Jr., planted 5,000 tomato plants and a week later they were gone -- "Nothing left but stalks because the bugs got 'em and ate them all," the elder Tripple said. Tripple's new tomato crop in the ground now is growing slow. He said the plants and the tomatoes are smaller than normal and he has had to buy tomatoes to sell in his produce store on his farm. With his hands on his hips, Tripple looked out over a crop of short green tomato plants and said with a slight shake of his head, "By now, you should see a lot of yellow from the tomato buds." To make matters worse, in the middle of all this death and dying there are weeds, weeds, and more weeds. "Nothing is growing" the younger Tripple said. "The only thing that grows good this year is the weeds." Forty one-year-old Joe Jr., who works the farm with his father thought this year's problems might not be the worse he has seen, but "it's pretty close."  |
