MISSOULA - It took just ten minutes worth of heavy rain and hail to undo months worth of work at Clark Fork Organics and it’s going to cost them thousands of dollars in sales.
“Yeah, it kind of messed us up. We harvest for restaurants on Tuesdays and Fridays so we had all of our orders ready to harvest this morning and this storm just came in and destroyed everything — or a whole bunch of things we were gonna harvest," Kim Murchison said about the impact the hailstorm had on the crops.
Not only does Clark Fork Organics sell produce to restaurants, but they run a country stand.
A hail storm earlier this week ruined entire fields worth of crops for these Missoula farmers. Clark Fork Organics assistant manager Lena Martin said their preventive measures of covering them before the storm rolled in were not enough for the hail that fell at such a high speed.
“I mean it just rips, not even just the impact on the salad mix but it just rips through charred leafs and kale leafs and collard leafs, so we have to wait for them to grow more leafs until we can start harvesting again.”
The workers at Clark Fork Organics estimate this storm will set them back at least three weeks for scheduled harvests.
While the workers believe they can recover from this damage, Murchinson says the storm took away something irreplaceable, "It’s hard to look at all of the work we put into this and to have it destroyed in ten minutes.”
No matter what, the Clark Fork farmers will work hard to keep delivering fresh produce to Missoula citizens and their businesses.
