Claire Bryan reports in the Times Union that it has been a good growing season so far for most local farmers. Steve Ammerman, spokesperson for New York Farm Bureau, says most crops are growing ahead of schedule, and corn, tomatoes, cabbage, and berries are thriving. “This year everything has been a lot easier [than last year] in terms of the rainfall,” said Alicia Brown, a farmer at Edible Uprising Farm in Troy. “Between the heat and the rain it’s made the crops grow a lot faster.” Chris Carballeira, the Farm Manager at Indian Ladder Farms, reports the apple crops are good. “So far so good, we haven’t had late frost, it has been rainy, there haven’t been any crazy conditions,” Carballeira said. And evidence of global warming may be emerging locally. Ben Atwood, an agricultural educator at Radix Ecological Sustainability Center in Albany, says he has noticed that the last frost is usually around May 20, but the past three years it has come in April. And the pandemic interest in local food may be continuing, as Edible Uprising Farm reports sales are up 12 percent from last year. “There were a lot of people who started supporting small local farms last year and many of them have stuck and are our customers this year even though the food shortages aren’t still around,” Troy farmer Brown said. Read more about this story in the Times Union.