Record rainfall this summer has rendered Saunders Farm's fields muddy, yellowing their pumpkin leaves and overwhelming underground drainage systems.
Saunders Farm is celebrating its half-century anniversary this year.
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But it’s a milestone that comes with an unexpected twist, according to Mark Saunders.
In all his years growing up there, since his parents opened the southwest Ottawa farm in 1976, Saunders says he had never seen a summer like this one.
“Normally this time of year (in August), there’s a little bit of a drought going on, but we have had near rainforest conditions here on the farm,” he says.
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When we visited the farm, my shoes sank into the soaked soil between the carefully planted rows of pumpkins, the mud squelching with every step.
Saunders says the “deluge” of rain on Canada Day was just one example of an “extremely wet summer.”
