When it rains it pours (or drips)

Hannah Alden, Reporter, The Record-Review Where was all this rain over the summer? I’m sure there’s plenty of people pondering this same question I’ve been coming back to over the past few weeks.

Even though the farming season is wrapping up, and I am grateful for the rain to replenish groundwater and other water sources, the inches of recent precipitation have made some things difficult to work around. The sloppy field conditions at the farm make it extra unpleasant to have to pull irrigation tape and weed block out of the ground. It’s also caused a lot of damage to my remaining crops like cabbage, carrots and radishes unfortunately.

Over the weekend, despite the imperfect field conditions, I opted to plant next year’s garlic once I saw the forecast for this week with another two to three inches of rain possible and then very cold temperatures. I felt a little bad for the garlic going into the wet ground like that, but I worried the conditions were only going to get worse and it’s best to get it planted before it gets too cold. Now at least it’s tucked away in mulched beds for the long winter.

At all of the farming conferences I have been at over the past few years there has been talk about how climate change will impact agriculture in many ways. Here in the Midwest, it seems the future climate models show more bouts of drought with periods of heavy rain. I’d say this year has been a testament to that.

In addition to the field problems caused by all the recent rain, we unfortunately had a roof leak a couple weeks ago. I noticed a drip from the ceiling one evening when one of our cats was staring ominously up at it. The drip became steadier over the next few hours. We’ve (hopefully) figured out the issue on the roof, but with the weather lately, we haven’t been able to have someone fix it yet. There will also be insulation and drywall to replace inside once the outer problem is taken care of. Oh, homeownership can be such a joy.