Rain

[Andy Carson]

It’s still muddy it’s supposed to rain again tomorrow. The forecast says rain for a solid week. When will I ever get my field work done??? I had so much time on paper! 😮 A very rainy spring…

[Tim Harrigan]

Poor weather can make 5 acres look pretty big.

[Andy Carson]

Yeah, on the bright side, my pea plot has been disced so many times it’s almost a fine seedbed. Not really in the plans, but I suppose rolling with the punchs is part of the art of farming. I just can’t seem to get 2 days in a row that don’t rain. Are you getting all this rain in Michigan too?

[Tim Harrigan]

wet and cold. Pastures have greened up a little but almost no growth.

[goodcompanion]

Agreed that it’s been rough. Work is not done and the cattle are hungry.

[Marshall]

A whole lot of rain in Michigan. Even the tiled ground is to wet to work.

[TBigLug]

Still way to wet. I only managed to sneak one field into getting completely plowed but we haven’t even gotten our oates in yet.

[OldKat]

It can be a little discouraging when it is so wet that you can’t get in your fields, but don’t complain. We use to have that problem now and then, but about 10 or 12 years ago the weather changed and we virtually don’t get any rain anymore other than a couple of brief periods a year when it will rain like heck for a week or so then stop for several months. Right now our only period of significant rain since last August was on Christmas eve and through the first couple of weeks of January.

Since our “normal” rainy period of October 1st through March 1st only yielded about 7.0″ (should have been 22.0 to 25.0″, as that is typically our main rainfall period of the year) we are in big trouble as we are heading into the “dry season” when rain is very spotty at best. We are already in the “Exceptional Drought” part of the state.

It has been like this probably 60 to 70% of the time since about 1998 to 2000 or so. I am sick of it. In fact I have been selling cows off for two years, and will sell out as soon as the last of my hay is gone, if we don’t get substantial rain first. Creeks are dry, rivers are drying up fast, spring flush of green grass lasted about 3 weeks and now it is gone, too. It looks like August out there in late April.

If we can get our house and property sold, which isn’t likely in this economy, we are going to relocate to another area somewhere around NE Oklahoma, NW Arkansas, SE Kansas or SW Missouri. Ain’t easy pulling up and moving when your family has roots in the area going back to the 1840’s, but we have no choice … we can’t handle anymore of this. Don’t complain about the rain … the extreme alternative is far worse. Trust me, I have experienced both and too much rain is far better than what we are dealing with.

[goodcompanion]

At least the extra rain produces grass….

Up here in the champlain clay plain the summers are almost never dry enough for me…most crops suffer from it in the heavy soil. So I am switching to rice. No joke. Seems like with climate change that heavy rains are likely to become more normal–hell, who knows, but seems that way at the moment.

[OldKat]

@goodcompanion 26549 wrote:

At least the extra rain produces grass….

Up here in the champlain clay plain the summers are almost never dry enough for me…most crops suffer from it in the heavy soil. So I am switching to rice. No joke. Seems like with climate change that heavy rains are likely to become more normal–hell, who knows, but seems that way at the moment.

It certainly seems that way here. Our county agent says that it doesn’t rain here anymore; we have continuous drought interrupted by occasional flooding. Maybe that is an attempt at humor, but it sure seems to be true.

Want to hear something interesting? When I was in college I had a friend named Ricardo who was a graduate student from Uruguay. He grew up in the rice producing region of that nation. His research project and the topic of his thesis was germinating rice in temperatures that were expected to be 1.5 to 2.0 degrees colder on an average annual basis globally. The question was could varieties of rice be developed through selective breeding that would germinate and grow in the colder temperatures? That seems almost funny now.

BTW: He did his research in some greenhouses that belonged to one of the timber companies, but which were not being used at that time. By setting his flats during the winter months and carefully managing the temperatures he was able to model the conditions he was trying to study. The answer turned out to be yes and in fact he succeeded in germinating some varieties at temperatures up to 3 degrees below what was previously believed to be possible. I forget how many generations of rice it took to achieve this, but it wasn’t many. It was nowhere near as difficult to accomplish this as he had expected. I exchanged emails with him a year or so ago and he now heads up the South American operations of an international rice trading organization. He was what I call a focused individual.

[goodcompanion]

My rice is germinating just fine in the hoop house. I guess the folks in northern Japan were doing their own work along similar lines and now there are several strains of cold-tolerant rice out there.

May 17th we’ll have 100 high school kids transplanting seedlings–should be interesting. And with the weather shaping up this way, maybe rice will be my only cereal crop this year…..arrgh…

[Andy Carson]

Rain forecast again tonight, then it’s supposed to clear up a little over the next three days and only one day forecast to have “AM rain”. I can’t believe I am excited by the forecast, but I am. Maybe I can get my peas in… 7 inches of rain this month, and the month isn’t over yet. That’s more than twice the monthly average!

[mitchmaine]

all we are saying is give peas a chance.

[goodcompanion]

Let there be peas in earth

[Tim Harrigan]

Take a pea.

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