By Becky Nelson
Bramblings
Just last year, I was praying for rain. We were in a pretty significant drought. Our raspberry plants were pushing up suckers that have become this year’s berry crop, but they ended up pretty short as they struggled for water. We had lots of crops wither in the fields in the heat and dry weather. It’s hard to believe or to remember just how dry we were just 12 months ago. Just as I was praying for rain to start last year, I am praying for it to stop today. Other parts of the country are desperate for rain. The unrelenting heat in the breadbasket and southern regions of the U.S. is creating havoc in the farmlands while other regions are wading into the growing season. Water is essential for our survival, but excessive need for it and overabundance of it are a curse.
The world just saw its hottest day on record, with an average global temperature of over 62 degrees. The El Nino weather pattern with warmer Pacific water temperatures is affecting weather patterns everywhere, not just in the U.S. We celebrated our political independence this week, but we are not independent of what is happening around the globe, most notably with weather and water.
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 important resources, especially water. Here in the Northeast, we are pretty fortunate when it comes to water, even in our latest driest and wettest of times. 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, especially when our roads wash out or our crops dry up.
Other areas around the nation and around the planet have a much harder time finding enough water to keep crops and animals alive or are washed away in monsoon-like deluges. These extremes have a significant and sometimes devastating effect on us farmers. The need for water is nothing new. Our ancient ancestors followed the water and the resources provided by this life force. We now follow the water and irrigate arid landscapes to make them productive and channel excess water away from other areas to make them workable for agriculture or to build on soils that would never support structures if left to nature.
The folks that worked the soil and tended the animals before me had droughts and dry spells, floods and wet growing seasons, praying for rain and watching crops wither in the hot summer sun or agonizing over wet times with seeds rotting in the ground ungerminated, just as we do. History repeats itself, in weather and in human activity, and we seem slow to learn from it on both counts. We are trying to learn. 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. We are planning a new drilled well when we can tackle the cost so that we can irrigate during these arid times. As for excess water, we are planting more in hoophouses and tunnels than we ever did before, which helps us control the climate a little bit more and protect these crops from excess rain and from dry times with drip irrigation and are installing some drainage in other areas for wet weather. There isn’t much we can do about the weather other than try to adapt.
Weather affects absolutely everything we do. The late freeze this spring destroyed our apple crop. The cold weather in late spring has delayed most of our summer crops. The constant rain has demanded replanting of many crops and has delayed our hay harvest. The drought of last summer can be seen in the upcoming raspberry crop, luckily with lots of berries, but on much shorter-than-usual canes. With hot weather in the forecast and a couple of mainly dry days ahead, we are going to try to get in our first load of hay toward the winter and look forward to some crops starting to grow. We are looking for the rainbows and trying to enjoy the raindrops on the lilies.
As I have written before, the only predictability of farming and the weather is unpredictability. We have to take our blessings where we find them, and be prepared to navigate the speed bumps placed in our roadway to success and sustainability.
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