Never Normal
August 20th, 2007 by Jim VIn one of Joel Salatin’s books, he says that the weather is never “normalâ€. This idea has been driven home to me this summer. Spring was fairly dry and then beginning in June we had virtually no rain for weeks. Pastures stopped growing and hay crops were small. Corn yields will be lower than normal and in some spots corn silage will need to be made if anything is to be salvaged. The weather seems to have been unusually hot and dry for most of the summer. But in the last 10 days there has suddenly been a big turn-around in the weather. This weekend, from Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon, we received 5.5 inches of rain, with temperatures in the 50s. Even with this much rain, there are very few spots of standing water. The ground was so dry that most of the rain was actually absorbed by the ground. Areas to our southeast received 10+ inches of rain in the same time period – and they have had lots of flooding. The vegetation that was brown and withered a week or so ago is now suddenly very green. My area, on the average, gets around 30 inches of rain (including the water equivalent of the snow that falls) in a year. In the summer we supposedly get about 1 inch of rain per week. So this past weekend we received just about all of the rain that in a normal year would have been spread across a significant portion of the summer. This year will probably look like a fairly normal year when looking at the average rainfall, but in reality the summer was not “normalâ€. In my situation, I have increased cow numbers to the point where I have very little cushion in terms of pasture and I am going to have to either keep cow numbers a little lower, or find some more rental pastures – or suffer the added expense of feeding hay more months out of the year when it gets dry. The challenge will be that the increase in cow numbers has primarily been in heifers and once they freshen, they will need to stay at home where they can be easily milked. Yesterday, as I was helping a neighbor with chores in the pouring rain and wading through lots of mud in her cow pens, this neighbor talked about how the corn crop will be less than other years, that seed prices have already gone up due to the dry weather, and that as a result her son’s financial situation will be very tight. She was complaining that he had purchased too much equipment in the last couple of years and that as a result he has very little financial cushion to get him through this year. God seems to be sending me a clear message that it is not wise to have a farm operation without a cushion against the vagaries of the weather.
Jim V
August 20th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
“Old men sit and talk about the weather, old women sit and talk about old men” Randy Travis
Well, I’m not all that old, but I’ll talk some about the weather. We had two weeks of blistering HOT tempetures. Over 100 degrees much of the time. Then, what’s left of Tropical Storm Erin, came thru , dropped seven inches of rain, caused flooding, and is now heading east to repeat the same. Sometimes it’s better not to try and figure it all out. It just makes your head hurt. We get about 45 inches of rainfall here in the Ozarks. But getting it when you need it is the trick. It never comes on OUR time table. But it always comes, sooner or later. Usually later. No wonder farmers were traditionally such taciturn fellows. Nothing is going to happen the way you think it will anyhow. We moderns think we have it all figured out. Oh, Yea………..
August 20th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
“Old men sit and talk about the weather, old women sit and talk about old men” Randy Travis
Well, I’m not all that old, but I’ll talk some about the weather. We had two weeks of blistering HOT tempetures. Over 100 degrees much of the time. Then, what’s left of Tropical Storm Erin, came thru , dropped seven inches of rain, caused flooding, and is now heading east to repeat the same. Sometimes it’s better not to try and figure it all out. It just makes your head hurt. We get about 45 inches of rainfall here in the Ozarks. But getting it when you need it is the trick. It never comes on OUR time table. But it always comes, sooner or later. Usually later. No wonder farmers were traditionally such taciturn fellows. Nothing is going to happen the way you think it will anyhow. We moderns think we have it all figured out. Oh, Yea………..
August 20th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
OOPS! Don’t know what happened. I hit the “submit comment button” once, but got two comments. My opnions don’t matter THAT much….
August 21st, 2007 at 9:25 am
Mark,
You are right that we moderns think we know it all, can control all, and can totally insulate ourselves from the weather that God brings in His own time. He is definitely in control of the weather and we need to just adjust accordingly.
Jim V