Saturday mornings at Haile Farmers Market, Eric Bjerregaard arranges peppers, eggplant and okra on a small table at his booth.
The produce comes from Boondox Tropicals, his farm southwest of Newberry, where he grows much of it in greenhouses. But this year, even those greenhouses have not been able to escape the heat.
Bjerregaard said temperatures have been worse than normal, causing some of his plants to stop producing. His sweet peppers, jalapeños and cayenne peppers stopped bearing fruit, while his habaneros continued to produce.
To manage the heat, he cut vents in the roofs of his greenhouses.
“It actually gets too hot in there, even for pineapples and tropical fruit,” he said.
Bjerregaard is one of several local farmers dealing with a growing season marked by extreme and unpredictable weather.
Across three farms in north central Florida, farmers described a year of frost, drought, heat and heavy rain. The unpredictable weather has affected which crops can be grown, how much farmers can harvest and how much it costs to grow them.
At Siembra Farm in southeast Gainesville, co-owner Cody Galligan said the combination of heat and unusual rainfall has brought more insects and pests that can damage crops, forcing the farm to change when it plants certain crops.
The weather has also affected the output Siembra Farm gets from its crops, increasing the cost of production.
“We’re putting the same inputs in and we’re getting less back because we have more things that are just not suitable,” Galligan said.
Farmers are also working in more difficult conditions. When temperatures reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Galligan said workers cannot work as long or efficiently, increasing labor costs.
At Frog Song Organics in Hawthorne, co-owner John Bitter said the challenges started well before the summer heat.
The farm experienced one of its worst frosts in years during January and February. That was followed by a drought that extended from a year ago, and many crops were affected by both.
Fruit trees experienced frost damage early in the season, while crops that depended on rain struggled with limited rain.
Okra was one example. Bitter said the farm’s first plantings were stunted by the dry conditions. Later plantings did better once the rainfall returned.
Then the weather swung in the other direction. By August, Bitter said the farm was getting so much rain that it stopped planting some of its fall crops.
“We’re not planting anything this week because it’s so freaking wet,” he said.
The Florida Automated Weather Network, or FAWN, recorded 0.08 inches of rain in April 2026 at its Alachua station. In May, rainfall jumped to 7.55 inches. This is more than double the average rainfall for May which is about 2.95 inches. August brought another 7.83 inches well within the norm.
The average temperature at the Alachua station reached 82.46 degrees in July, compared with a 2000-2025 average of 79.44 degrees, according to FAWN data.
Bitter said the rapid change made it harder to predict what would work from one season to the next.
“You can’t predict next year based off of this year,” he said.
For Frog Song Organics, that unpredictability has affected how much it can harvest.
The farm’s purple hull peas, which normally grow well during the summer, had their lowest yield ever this year. The farm planted the crop about six times, but it was never strong enough to save seed.
The farm is still harvesting produce, but Bitter said it’s selling almost everything it grows rather than the surplus it typically has in previous years. The reduced supply also brings higher costs.
“It affects availability more than anything,” Bitter said. “The prices are definitely more this year because we have less supply, and the costs are so much more per unit.”
Farmers are doing what they can to adjust. At Siembra Farm, Galligan said the farm has been improving its soil and adjusting its irrigation system to help crops withstand the changing conditions. At Frog Song Organics, Bitter said diversification has helped the farm absorb some of the losses.
Some crops have struggled, while others have done well.
“You just got to find the crops that really can thrive in this environment,” Bitter said. For shoppers at the farmers market, those changes show up at the checkout.
Miles Gottfried goes to Grove Street Farmers Market nearly every Monday while he is in Gainesville. He said he gets most of his groceries there because the food is fresh and local.
And Gottfried noted precisely the price change that Bitter was talking about.
“The one thing I have noticed is that in the three years I’ve been coming here, the prices just keep going up,” he said.
For farmers, higher prices can reflect the increased costs of producing crops. When a crop underperforms, the labor and resources that went into growing it stay the same, even as the harvest shrinks. That leaves farmers with hard choices about what to plant and when to plant it.
“The crazy weather makes it even more important to come out and support your local farms,” Galligan said.