Lee Wayman of Seabeck laughed at the thought of his bad luck Tuesday as he peddled lavender and herbs at the Silverdale Farmers Market.

This is Wayman’s first year taking his Secret Garden stand to farmers markets and he admits it was a tough year to start. With unusually cold temperatures this spring and summer, he has suffered with the rest of the vendors, losing entire crops to bad weather and taking less produce to the market than usual.

Wayman takes it in stride.

“Everything has just been slow,” said Wayman, who lost his basil crop to a summer that may have never fully arrived. “We just have to work with the weather because there’s nothing we can really do.”

Not everyone could laugh it off.

Jean Schanen, owner of Start Now Gardens in Bremerton, said last week at the Bremerton Farmer’s Market that her harvest was down 30 to 50 percent this year. She lamented her shortage of tomatoes, a crop stunted by the short summer.

“This ought to be the most abundant time for tomatoes, but it’s been so slow,” she said.

Although the anticlimactic growing season has dampened crops and farmers’ profits, many local farmers who sell their produce at local farmers’ markets said they weren’t going to give up.

This summer brought lower-than-average temperatures in the Puget Sound area, with June’s especially colder temperatures and higher rainfall delaying the arrival of this year’s harvest. While July and August’s temperatures and rainfalls were close to the region’s average, June brought an inch more of rain than usual with 2.49 inches. The month was also 2.4 degrees cooler than normal, with an average temperature of 58.3 degrees, according Danny Mercer at the National Weather Service.

“We lost seven weeks. We had no spring,” said Nikki Johanson, whose Pheasant Fields Farm in Silverdale sells produce at both the Bremerton and Silverdale markets. “We went from winter to summer.”

Donna Mow, manager of the Belfair-based Sunshine’s Fruit Stand, which sold peaches, rhubarb and melons in Silverdale this week, said this was the worst harvest she has seen, making half as much money as usual. The company gets much of its produce from farmers in Yakima, but quality has been hard to come by.

“The weather has just ruined everything. We’ve gotten massive bad produce from our companies,” Mow said, adding that the bad harvest has led to tremendous waste. “I’ve never had this much product be tossed out, ever. Or sent back.”

Customers also notice a difference, she said, adding that Sunshine’s Fruit Stand has often had to replace bad fruit for dissatisfied shoppers.

Sharon Nordberg, who shopped at the Belfair-based Davis Farm stand at the Silverdale market, said the difference has not deterred her dedication to eating local. There may not be as much produce available this year and much of it comes later than it’s supposed to, but prices have remained stable and she still has faith in local farmers.

“They still put out the best,” she said. “I try to support our local farmers.”

Ken VanBuskirk of Davis Farm brought his corn crop to the market for the first time this week – it is usually ready in August, he said, and much of what he does have is stunted. On top of that, his berries and tomatoes fared poorly this year.

As a farmer who grows a range of produce, from potatoes to flowers, he said farmers who grow a diversity of crops survive hardship the best. And when difficult years such as this one hit, farmers cannot do much more than take the weather as it comes.

“It’s been very strange,” VanBuskirk said. “We’re just trying to make the best of it we can.”