Drought

still nothing yet here. The most I've gotten is a little cloud cover one day but no rain. One good thing has come of it though. There are parts of the woods that I wanted to clear but haven't yet because it's so thick I can't even see into it. Now that all the weeds and grasses are dying, I can easily see where there are fallen trees and large branches and can walk in a little to pull them out and then mow. So I've been able to clear a little extra and I would had to do that by hand otherwise. I don't know if you've ever accidently run over something with your tractor that you shouldn't have, but it's a scarey sound. When you can't see at all it's really hard to use the tractor. I wouldn't have had this opportunity if it weren't for the drought. But, I'd still rather have rain!

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Here in central Ks. it was pretty dry; grass turning "roasty" before end of June not a good sign. Had a few rains lately though; some very wild and windy and accompanied with hail. Still, wet is wet! Had nearly 2" with bad storm over weekend, .10 last nite. Now I see moisture forecast for Ks. in July is above average - gotta be a first! Last year was soooo perfect here; that in itself is unusual. No matter how much rain you get, August can be so hot and dry it undoes everything you had going for you. I truly feel for Indiana and Illinois; folks that we bought this place from warned us to buy corn for feed if we thought we were going to need to this fall/winter; corn THAT BAD there. Yards all dried up and it's usually green up there in that part of the country. Changing weather patterns are gonna be the norm, I'm afraid. We use drip irrigation here; a pain but well worth the effort. Would like to use grey water can't sell husband on this; we have to drain ours every 3 days into a pit (I call it the burn pit of despair) and talk about lush growth the last 18-20 ft. from hose length!! It is located halfway to corn patch out back and sure would take care of a lot of the corn as it takes 7-8 hrs. to empty tank. I'm gonna keep working on him; it seems such a waste to me...I'll pray for all of you to have your raindreams come true!!

I dug out the sprinkler yesterday. They've called for rain at least once a week for over a month now. The rain hasn't come.

Of course I watered for almost two hours at dusk last night, so it rained at 1:00am.

Garden went 5 weeks with no water except for small amounts I carried to it.

I think we are coming out of a drought now.
Two years ago there wan't enough grass to keep a cow alive, and most ranchers sold way down to save grass, and a lot of the pastures looked like a beach.
But last year and this year it's been really good. We got 10 inches of rain in June, and night before last, we got 2 inches.
The grass in the pastures is handlebar high, and the cows are calling for reinforcements to help eat all the grass.
I'll take a too wet year any day over a too dry one.

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Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain
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Enforced tolerance is oppression

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

Last night, driving home from closing the fireworks warehouse, I saw LIGHTNING all the way home!!! The rain started about 5 am, and it rained, and rained.... I am proud to say we had a PUDDLE in our yard!!!! yeeehaw! Dont know yet how much rain, but we had several different downpours come through. More in the forecast. I am so happy to see it!
The only downside was a power outage for about 3 hours this a.m.... no problem, the kids all slept late! lol!

For those of you that live in generally high moisture areas.......what you are having is a dry spell not a drought. If you have 1/4 of the moisture that you are accustomed to in 5 years......that would be considered a drought.

That said, I surely do hope you get the rain you need. It took 5 years for it to come around here and we ain't out of the woods yet. It will probably take several years of good mountain snowfall and rains to get us up to par.

We truly did have some animals that were terrified of rain/thunder/lightning......they were born in the drought and hadn't experienced it.

We had a couple of weeks of rainy weather last part of May first part of June. I think we even made it .25 inches above normal for this time of year. Of course after 7 full years of drought one wet spring will not make a darned bit of difference excpet in our own minds! I was out thinning some my young fir trees this past week and they were so light I could pick them up with one hand and toss them into the slash pile! Never in all my life have trees that size been that light. The forestry dude says that is because their water level is so very low. It is very sad and I am sorry for all of you in places that are continually too wet too!

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www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

It has been somewhat dry here in S.E. Iowa. Kind of ironic when the river is almost out of it's banks yet we haven't had much rain. Just enough to keep things green. But the corn is doing well, some of it has to be 7 ft tall already.

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We have now officially entered the twilight zone.

Boy, we sure could send you some moisture from up here in Manitoba Canada, we've never seen as much flooding this time of year. Many of the crops around here will be lost because of standing water. The environmental experts were saying that they have never seen the flooding and moisture problems on such a wide spread scale, almost right across from East to West in Southern Manitoba.

Hopefully all you in the drought areas will get some rain soon, and all of us in the wet areas get some drying weather.