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Hurricane Pain
This is undoubtedly the worst year in history for the caladium industry. In the days following the final hurricane, we watched impatiently as the water subsided. As our fields began to dry, we knew our crop did not look well. We would not realize the storms' impact until we began harvesting in late Novemeber. We were dumbfounded.
We can only hope and pray that in 2006 we can start to recover and restore seed levels to what they were in past years. We thank you for your patience and understanding in this year's shortage. We will do our best to fill your orders.
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As many of you know, Florida was hit hard in the 2004 Hurricane season. Four major hurricanes made landfall in Florida within 7 weeks. Three of the four hurricanes passed through our area. 
There were several varieties in which we dug back fewer bulbs than we planted. Overall, the larger sizes are nonexistent this year. We have harvested only #1, #2 & #3 size bulbs to date. We were not alone in our low crop yields. Other caladium farms that looked "OK" topside are reporting their yields are very low. 
Our story begins with Charley. He arrived the August afternoon of Friday the 13th. It was forecasted to make landfall around the Tampa Bay area, but it took a surprisingly hard eastern turn. It came in around the Ft. Myers area as a category 4 hurricane (5 being the top rating for a hurricane) with top winds clocked at 180 MPH. The best thing about Charlie (if there is a "good thing" about a hurricane) was that is was a very compact storm, less than 100 miles in diameter. Its small size also meant there was not a lot of rainfall associated with it, which was good for us. Charley tracked just to the north of our town, but it was the most damaging of the three storms. A ride around our farm the next day revealed that we had a fair amount damage to our barns. We cleaned up all of the debris and made preparations to fix our barns never imagining another storm would strike.
We were barely finished when Frances came straigh for us. She arrived late Saturday night/early Sunday morning September 4th/5th, only 3 weeks after Charley. Frances arrived as a category 2 storm, but was twice as large as Charley. Frances, including it's outer bands, was the size of Texas. To make matters worse, it was an extremely slow moving storm(5-7 MPH) which meant it would dump a lot of water on us. We experienced the eye of the storm: so we got both the front and back end of the storms' rain. We felt like Noah. The combination of seasonal rain and Charleys deluge left our ground saturated and rivers flooded. Frances created lakes and ponds where there was nothing but dry ground previously. Many farms to our south were totally underwater (as much as 3-4 feet) for days. After the water receeded, we began to see the toll on our crop.
Jeanne was almost a carbon copy of Frances. Both made landfall around the West Palm Beach area as category 2 storms and tracked directly toward us. Jeanne like Frances was also a rain maker, but thankfully moved through a bit faster. What Jeanne left behind however, was more water than our area lakes and rivers could hold. Water levels rose to historic highs. Roads were washed out and houses flooded. Our fields that should have been seas of color were now just lakes.