Frederick County is the leading dairy producer in the state, producing about 30 percent of its milk, said Stanley Fultz, an agent for the Frederick branch of the Maryland Cooperative Extension.
To produce that milk, the county is home to 125 dairy operations totaling 23,000 milk cows, not counting the replacement animals that are not producing milk, all of which, Fultz said, ‘‘eat a lot of roughage.”
‘‘Most farmers will produce their own forage for sure,” Fultz said.
He said farmers have not been able to store as much silage and other forage material, though some farmers who have retired from dairy farming have been using their land to grow corn that can be used by other farmers to feed their animals.
The hay shortage has also affected horse farmers, Beall said.
At Days End Farm and Horse Rescue in Lisbon, feed costs are predicted to be high, according to Brooke Vrany, director of programs and emergency services.
Though the drought hasn’t affected the farm’s immediate forage material since the nonprofit horse rescue farm doesn’t typically grow edible material to feed its 60-plus horses, it has had an indirect impact.
‘‘Our feed dealer has notified us that costs are going to double,” Vrany said. She said the hay bill already costs the nonprofit organization $75,000 each year.
She said contributing factors include the limited number of cuttings that feed suppliers have been able to harvest. Usually, four or five cuttings take place to harvest hay, but Vrany said because of the drought only two cuttings had taken place, and what had been stored for use in the winter ‘‘is almost depleted.”
The price of gas hasn’t helped either, she said.
Jane and Roger Wolfe of Sykesville, who own Pine Valley Farms in Sykesville, also were hit hard with gas prices at their Christmas tree farm.
‘‘The seedlings that we put in this year and last year, we had to irrigate to save them,” Roger Wolfe said. ‘‘It cost us about $1,200 a month in gas to save the trees.”
The Wolfes, who have owned the farm since 1977, had to rent an irrigation system because they do not have a permanent underground system, he said.
‘‘In the last two weeks, we had almost three inches of rain,” he said. ‘‘We really need an inch a week of water, and so right now we’re not irrigating and won’t irrigate for another week.”
Because of the increase in operating costs due to the drought, trees will cost more this season, he said, but he figured it wouldn’t be much of an increase.
The grain market has been hurt as well, but not as severely because crop insurance is available to grain farmers, Beall said. To his knowledge, there is no insurance for hay crops.
The federal government’s financial relief loan program is ‘‘nothing new,” as similar programs have been available to farmers in the past, he said.
In the past, farmers must be turned down by three lending institutions before they could qualify for the low-interest loan from the federal government, said Beall.
This requirement, Beall said, kept many farmers from being able to access that money.
This year, farmers must be turned down twice.
The Carroll County Farm Bureau is looking to get another kind of assistance for farmers who rely heavily on grazing, he said. A bureau member plans to explore requesting that land currently reserved for conservation be temporarily released to allow grazing.
Under the Conservation Reserve Easement Program, Beall said, parcels of land are set aside for conservation purposes and the land is not permitted to be mowed, grazed or farmed prior to Aug. 15.
He said they are ‘‘hoping to get an emergency situation” that would allow farmers to have access to specific areas of land to graze their animals. ‘‘If they could graze on that land, it would be helpful.”
The drought has caused field productivity to go down, and future crop yields could also be affected, Beall said. ‘‘The drought is going to affect everyone eventually.”
However, not everyone has been affected negatively by the drought.
‘‘Grapes really thrive in dry weather,” said Lois Loew, one of the owners of Loew Vineyards in Mount Airy.
So far, she said, 2007 has been a ‘‘banner year” for harvesting grapes.
Though the older, established vines with their roots trailing deep into the ground respond well to dryer conditions brought on by drought, Loew said they did have to hand water some of the younger vines.
‘‘For us, the worse summer is when we have a lot of rain and not much sun,” Loew said. ‘‘We’re kind of the exception.”
