When Mother Nature is your business partner, making a living is always a gamble.

Farmers in Baldwin County are salvaging what they can from the recent heavy rains — June rainfall in Robertsdale was 18.95 inches, and the 30-year average is only 6.37 inches.

And the July 11 deluge added several more inches to the count. In addition to causing traffic delays, the rain has ruined or damaged many Baldwin County farmers' crops.

Luckily for many farmers, their summer harvest was almost over anyway, but some have lost huge investments.

“Some farmers put money into one crop that is harvested one time a year, and if it fails, they have to round up enough money to make it to the next year,” says Alescia Forland, owner of the Loxley Farm Market. She says she has talked to many farmers who have lost low-growing summer crops like squash and watermelon. “It's really hard. So they will try to plant something in the fall to try to make it to the next year.”

Forland's daughter Michelle farms in Loxley, and she says she is fortunate she has many different crops in her fields. Most of the sweet corn she was about to harvest is ruined because heavy rains make the ears of corn more susceptible to bugs and birds. The rain also saturates the soil, causing a lack of oxygen to plants.

Michelle's okra wasn't ruined, but much of her pea crop is inedible because the rain soaked the peas, and then the heat rapidly dried them out.

Michelle is one of the dozens of farmers who supplies produce to the Windmill Market's Produce Club, and she says the club's customers, as well as visitors to local farmers markets, may see a decrease in the amount of local produce available during the next couple of weeks. Some crops may simply disappear for the rest of the summer — she had hoped to have corn to harvest until the end of July, but now, she says she probably won't have any more to sell this season.

But U-pick farmers like Todd and Hope Cassebaum in Lillian say they are facing a different problem — people assume they are not open because it has been raining.

“When it rains hard like this, it's hard to get out there in the field to pick everything, but we're still going,” Hope says.

Tynes Stringfellow of L.A. Berry Farms in Fairhope says about five percent of the berries on his bushes were split, but he isn't suffering huge losses.