By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson
I was pretty excited to see the rain coming down on Thursday and Friday. The drought in our region was really beginning to affect crops, and the downpours and later steady showers in the evening were a welcome gift. Rain, beautiful rain.
With our own bodies 99% water and the necessity to take in water to survive, we should all be a bit more interested in changing weather patterns, the effects of whatever climate change has and is coming our way and the ways we use and manage our most important of resources, especially water. Here in the Northeastern edge of the United States, we are pretty fortunate when it comes to water. The rocky ledges of granite beneath us hold water in the cracks and fissures, and the groundwater in the hills and mountains around us tend to make dug and drilled wells pretty successful all over the New England states. With numerous lakes, rivers, streams and ponds, water is a resource we take for granted.
Other areas around the nation and around the planet have a much harder time finding enough water to keep animals alive, let alone irrigate crops. Rainfall is sometimes hard to come by, even in our area, and this lack of moisture can have a devastating effect on us farmers. We are very lucky here at the farm that the spring that has fed the farm well has never run dry. We pull a lot more from the well than my ancestors ever thought of using, to irrigate hoophouses and high tunnels. The gravity-feed system runs to the farm with no pumps or interventions needed, with a steady stream filling the watering trough built by my father and grandmother to replace an older version that was probably in the same place many of my ancestors had water running to their farm animals. It is amazing that the spring has supplied wash and drinking water for seven generations before me.
I am sure the folks that worked the soil and tended the animals before me had droughts and dry spells, praying for rain and watching crops wither in the hot summer sun, just as we have. This year is especially dry, and the half or three-quarters of an inch of rain we just got, though a blessing, does little in the grand scheme of growing. We need about an inch or so every week to keep things moist enough to grow, so I hope the pattern continues.
We have a couple of wells around the farm that we use in extreme droughts to irrigate some of the crops, but they tend to go dry before the main well at the farm so sometimes do little to help in the dry times. Those of you with dug wells that have experienced losing water in the dry times may want to be a little cautious as we go forward. One of the worst things I can think of is losing water.
Here at the farm, we have noticed the most drought damage in cucumbers and raspberries. We had some winter kill and some winter damage in the berries, and the struggle for water was more than some of the plants could bear. Full loads of berries began to develop, but then the plants succumbed to thirst and dried up before the berries became pickable. With the cucumbers, it has created some stunted and curled cukes, but I am hopeful that with this bit of rain and the relatively shallow root systems of the cukes they will recover and provide a decent crop. With the raspberry crop on its natural downswing, I am less concerned with the berries, though the new growth suckers need a steady supply of moisture to continue to mature. Some of the later plantings of corn were also affected, staying short and barely growing for about a week. I can almost hear the crops singing for joy in the rain.
With hot weather in the forecast and the potential for some water shortfalls in rainwater coming our way, I urge all to be a bit cautious in their lawn watering and irrigation attempts over the next month or so or until a more dependable weather pattern swings through and brings us some decent rains on a more regular basis.
Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You can contact her through the farm page on Facebook and Instagram, visit the retail store or email her at [email protected].
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