THREE RIVERS, Calif. — Dawn Birch says she never thought she’d see the day the water ran out on her farm, but the crops on Flora Bella Farms weren’t watered in mid-July. One by one, the fields started dying.
“All of this should be going … our cucumbers, our tomatoes, our eggplants, our squash,” Birch said as she stood in the dying squash field. “Nothing, we have nothing we can salvage.”
Flora Bella is a 10-acre farm in a small town called Three Rivers in the Central Valley, owned by Birch and her husband, James. They have water rights to pull from the north fork of the Kaweah River, which depends on snowmelt coming off the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But this year, because of the extreme drought the West experienced, there was no snow. The river had run totally dry, and due to extreme heat this past summer, the trees in the mountains sucked up what was left of the underground spring water.
The farm has a holding pond, which usually serves as a backup in times of drought, but usually, what’s pulled from the pond can be replenished from the river. Birch said excessive summer heat forced them to pull more than usual from the pond, and at some point, they had to accept the reality that the pond couldn’t be pulled from anymore.
"What goes on here in Three Rivers affects your table in Los Angeles.”
Birch’s husband said he’s seen the rivers run dry before and anticipated a difficult summer. He had already cut back their water usage by 50% after the last mega-drought event from farming techniques pioneered in the Middle East.
“We had no snow this past winter, but I thought we’d make it at least until the end of July,” he said.
The summer should have been peak harvesting season for Flora Bella Farms, known primarily for their tomatoes and arugula. Birch said the losses from this drought alone amount to almost $100,000.
“We have four of these high tunnels,” Birch said in July from inside one of the tomato tents. “Each one has 3,000 square feet of tomatoes … and they’ve all been left to die.”
“The wake-up call is where there is no water, there is no food. What goes on here in Three Rivers affects your table in Los Angeles.”
But since Spectrum News first shot the story, Flora Bella Farms has discovered good news.
The Birches were able to dig a well on the property, which got them enough water that they were able to resume in the fall with winter crops. With the current spate of storms across California, the rains have replenished rivers and groundwater and brought snow to the mountains. Everyone in Three Rivers is in a better place today than six months ago.
But Dawn Birch said they can never get too comfortable because the memory of the drought is always in the forefront of everyone’s mind — and has forever changed the way we farm in California.