CASS COUNTY — For nearly three decades, Mark Dussel of Dussel’s Farm Market & Greenhouse has been serving the Cass County community with fresh produce, colorful flowers and services such as landscaping.

Usually by this time of the year, Dussel’s business is humming along, with plants outside and plenty of yard work to do. But so far this year, Mother Nature has prevented those things from happening.

“It’s the coldest it’s been in about 120 years,” Dussel said. “It affects us on timing because you time your crop to come in at a certain time, and we’ve got stuff that’s ready to go outside that we can’t take outside.”

It has been so cold, in fact, that Dussel has not been able to move any flowers or plants from the greenhouse because they would not be able to handle the cold, which has caused extraordinarily high heating bills and has taken a serious hit to his bottom line.

The cold spring likely is not over. At the time of press, Weather.com predicts snow Monday and possibly on Thursday. Dussel says he is usually turning revenue by now but more cold weather will only delay things further.

“There is no ‘prepare for,’” he said. “You try to estimate. We have a calendar that we go by, but if Mother Nature doesn’t let us [move plants outside] we have to wait. It’s a waiting game — waiting for her to change her mind and let us get in the field and let us get out and start working in the yards and let customers start buying stuff. It’s a waiting game, for sure.”

The cold also prevented Dussel from doing any landscaping work, as the ground is too cold and hard to plant anything or even put mulch down.

“I know people are wanting to put mulch and stuff down, but with the ground being cold if they put mulch over the top of it they are actually sealing cold into the ground, so it delays their plants from coming up,” he said. “It’s not a great idea to just start because we got a couple of warm days to go ahead and put your mulch down. You need to let that ground warm up just a little bit.”

While the cold effects Dussel’s business and other local farms, he also says that it can impact the entire community, as farms are a significant part of the local economy.

“They provide a great service because when you employ local farmers they employ local merchants,” he said. “They employ local kids. I think the number is for every dollar generated on a farm, it goes through the local economy seven times.”

For as tough as a spring as it has been so far, Dussel is still optimistic that his business will be back in the swing of things in now time.

“I think we’re going to see a break in the weather,” he said. “Mother’s Day is usually a good kickoff for everyone to get started, so in about four weeks we should probably be having real good weather and everything should turn back to normal. I envision a hot summer. As cold as it’s been, it’s got to make it up somewhere.”