BERKE: Morgan, normally I’d avoid opening with such a boring question but you’ve actually dug up some interesting information on this. What do you think of the weather we’re having this summer?

BEARD: Yeah, so I got some data from NOAA which is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. There’s a weather station out at New Bedford Regional Airport and based on the records that they have there there was only .14 inches of rain in July of this year. Comparing that to the average over the last 22 years, ‘cause the data goes back to 2000, this was by far the lowest rainfall they’ve gathered in the last 22 years.

BERKE: So that’s like, pretty cut and dry.

BEARD: Yeah, so when you look at it it’s very clear that we are in a historic drought.

BERKE: How are farmers coping with this historic drought? I’m still seeing fruits and vegetables for sale at the farmstands I go to.

BEARD: So a lot of farmers are putting in irrigation systems. You know, if you can’t get water naturally from the rain, you have to pump it in either from wells or town water.

BERKE: Is that unusual for independent farmers in southern New England?

BEARD: Usually they don’t have to. Most of the farmers I talk to prefer not to use it because it’s so time consuming and can cost so much. So if they can get away without using that, and in most years they can based on normal rainfall, then they won’t. But the trouble comes when you have a situation like this where it just stopped raining for a full month.

BERKE: You published a story this month in Dartmouth Week that mentioned another indirect problem that this drought is causing. Farmers are telling you that they’ve noticed more animals are eating their crops this summer. Why is that happening?

BEARD: Obviously the drought doesn’t just affect farmers. Wild animals rely on plants out in the wild to eat, and for their diets. So when those start drying up because they’re not being watered the way crops are, the animals have to go somewhere to look for food. And so you’re seeing a lot of deer, a lot of groundhogs, birds even — they’re finding their way to farms where there is nice, well-irrigated food.

BERKE: But deer stealing food is nothing new. Don’t farmers already protect themselves from that sort of intrusion?

BEARD: Usually a deer fence, a mesh fence, would be enough to keep deer away, and now sometimes they’re seeing deer go right through them, forcing their way in, because they’re desperate. … I spoke to one farmer — he has an orchard and he has an eight-foot electric fence and he said the deer go right over it.

BEARD: Yeah. It’s hard to keep them out.

BERKE: Are there any crops that are loving this unusually hot and dry summer?

BEARD: So I did speak to the owner of Running Brook Vineyard in Dartmouth, and he said he actually wishes that the weather was like this every year, oddly enough. So he said that hotter summers, drier summers are good for grapes. How this was explained to me by another farmer was that too much water at the end of a grow cycle can be just absorbed by the plant and rather than helping it grow larger, it just waters down the flavor.

BERKE: Are there any other crops besides grapes that’ll be especially tasty this summer?

BEARD: Yeah, so, onions are another one. Um, melon.

BERKE: OK now I know what to get at the farmstand this weekend. I’ve been talking to Morgan Beard, a reporter for Dartmouth Week, who’s covering the effect of this summer’s drought on independent farms in southeastern Massachusetts. Morgan, that’s all the questions I have for now.

BEARD: Wonderful. Thanks for having me.