The Earth is Squishy
July 4th, 2013 · No Comments · Posted in farming
Clover doesn’t seem to mind the rain
An eerie silence has descended over our part of the world. That would be the sound of farm equipment not operating because the ground is too wet.
Yesterday might have been the first in the last month when it did not rain. Records are being set up and down the East Coast. Combined with a high pressure system parked over the Atlantic, the Jet Stream is channeling what meteorologists are calling a “river of moisture” from the Gulf Coast north. May and June together were the wettest two-month period ever in Burlington, VT, an hour’s drive north of here.
“We’ve never seen anything like it,” said the woman at the farm where we bought our compost.
“Hay is terribly delayed this year because of the weather–the worst year for hay that I can remember,” said Karen Weinberg at Three Corner Field Farm, where we purchased our sheep.
We were supposed to be digging trenches for water and electrical lines out to our pastures. But when I asked our well driller where he might have an opening on his calendar, he replied: “We don’t have much of a calendar these days. It’s hard to get anything done with all this rain and storms.”
Our 900-foot gravel driveway has a whole new set of ruts and gullies where the rain water has sliced through it.
Farmers dare not venture into the fields with their heavy machinery when the ground is so wet. But the rain has not slowed down my scything around our property. In fact, grass is a bit easier to cut when it’s wet.
Yes, these past few weeks have been one long tale of woe here in farm country. But on this Independence Day, it’s good to remember that our revolutionary army had it much worse. Sometimes they fought without shoes or food.
I wonder what they’d think of the way their country turned out.
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