After eight long weeks, it finally rained at the farm. Sometimes when we’re down here, we see the gray clouds, and the rain looks like it might come. But more often than not the geography keeps the rain out of this little hollow. Thankfully, not this week. I think we got between three and four inches of rain. The grass is been growing and today it’s cool.
I never really paid much attention to weather, except for hurricanes, since I grew up in Florida. But here, working the land, where you have no control of the weather, and no control of the heat the sun or the clouds, you tend to start paying attention. I follow a number of Farms on Facebook, and I watch as their crops either cook with no water or freeze with snow early in the season. I begin to understand how little control we have in this life, even if you have heaters and irrigation and fancy tractors. You still can’t control the weather.
We are starting to make decisions based on the weather. Having a crop that needs a lot of water means that we have to be able to have water readily available and that our source doesn’t run dry.
The pond is dry. There is no water, and even the few inches of rain we have had barely moistened the dirt. The result of the visit from the engineer is that we have a crack in the bottom of the drain pipe. The old metal conduit that pushes down and out the side of the dam has significant erosion. While we should’ve lost a little water in the drought, we shouldn’t have lost all of the water. With the drain essentially open, however, that’s where we ended up.
We pray for rain, to fill the pond and get the critters back in there. But we also pray for not so much rain that we have to build an ark and can’t work. It’s funny how as people we are so picky . We want enough rain to have what we want, but not so much that it gives us what we don’t want. Adapting and overcoming seems to be the way of the Farmer and I hope that we can be successful at this venture!