The damaged crops at Johnson Fresh Farms near Taber (Photo courtesy James Johnson)

By Justin Goulet and David Opinko

Devastating hail, winds

Taber corn crops wiped out by storm

Aug 9, 2019 | 9:55 AM

BARNWELL, AB – Hail the size of golf balls this week wiped out nearly all crops at Molnar’s Taber Corn, a farm that includes a lot more than just corn.

Most significant among the losses, says owner James Molnar, is anywhere from 480,000-600,000 cobs of corn and around one million pounds of pumpkins. The farm also lost nearly all of their squash, cabbages, peppers, tomatoes, and onions.

He knows people were looking forward to Taber corn, but says the season has come to a premature end.

“It’s done. There won’t be another dozen picked,” he lamented. “What is still standing that you can find as a cob is bruised to the point that, if you pull the husk back, it looks like creamed corn on the cob.”

Prior to Tuesday’s storm, the family had picked around 80 bags of corn and brought it to their stand just outside of Barnwell Wednesday morning.

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“It was nice to see how many vehicles were parked there. There was probably a lineup of 40 people there waiting to buy what was left, and I actually started to cry at one moment because it’s pretty heartfelt,” says Molnar.

Environment Canada has confirmed that the winds in the Barnwell and Taber areas reached 146 km/hr on Tuesday.

Although we are just days into the Taber corn season, Molnar says it is already done. What has been harvested will likely be bought in the next couple of days.

Typically, Taber corn is available for around a 50 day period.

Molnar says the family is gearing up for a significant loss this year.

“Yeah, we have insurance, but it basically comes up probably 15-20 per cent short of our costs.”

Molnar Taber Corn supplies corn and pumpkins for Lethbridge’s Safeway and Sobeys stores, as well as 20 grocery stores in Calgary.

A squash, decimated by hail, at the Molnar Taber Corn farm. (Lethbridge News Now)

Nearby Johnson Fresh Farms lost about 90 percent of its crops Tuesday night.

“About the same stuff that hit them hit us,” said owner/operator James Johnson.

“We’re right next to Molnar’s, so our corn is in about as good as shape as theirs. It was a very rough storm and decimated a lot of our crops.”

Johnson told Lethbridge News Now that they’re still working to fully assess the damage done, adding a bit of corn on their river bottom went untouched.

“There’s not much of it left, but we’ll probably harvest that,” he said.

Johnson noted it’s particularly tough to take because the corn season itself started later than planned.

“We were just kind of starting to get into some really nice corn. Our early stuff wasn’t the greatest this year, it kind of had a rough start to it. We had a very cold spring, some negative nine and 10 nights where we had corn that was exposed.”

(Lethbridge News Now)