Posted by: Cheryl Kimball in blog on Jun 30, 2009
My mom and I left her driveway yesterday and I said "at least it's not raining." And around two miles down the road I was turning on the windshield wipers. So at risk of causing more dampness, I'll say it again: Although the sky is grey and the air drapes around me like a washed blanket that was left in the dryer without turning it on, it currently is not raining. Yippee dippy doo.
For farmers, rain is usually good. Crops of all kinds need rain. It is easier to quench those thirsty plants with water from the sky than water from irrigation practices; for the backyard farmer, even reeling out the hose can be cumbersome so rain is welcome. Somebody, however, left the spigot open.
My rural life is impacted by excess rain in several ways. First off, I am constantly wet. My horses live an outdoor life (as, I believe, horses should, which is a topic for another time). They have shelter to get out of the elements if they want to but they are not locked in. To feed the horses, I am mostly outdoors. I don't have good rain gear since everything to do with the barn smells like horse after a while and so good rain gear is too expensive to keep up with. And so my feet get wet, my pants get wet, my shoulders get wet.
It's hard to run in the woods--my feet are soggy and uncomfortable almost from the get-go. I do almost everything else in Muck boots, I suppose I could try running in shorts and Muck boots. The dogs stink like wet dog, surprisingly enough, since they are almost always wet dogs these days. Mowing is impossible. Ropes for halters and lead ropes are so gummy that once you tie them you had better not want to untie them, they are stuck. Leather horse gear is getting moldy. For that matter, even horse manure is covered in mold.
The plants in the garden are saying, "Wait! What about that big yellow thing that provides warmth and encourages photosynthesis? We're drowning out here!" I saw a corn field yesterday in Kittery that will be lucky to be "ankle high by the 4th of July."
Hay is going to be impossible this year. The ground needs to dry out before anyone can even cut, since not only will tractors get stuck but laying it on wet ground just means it will go bad before it is even baled. Once the ground dries out, if the fields get cut the grass needs to dry in place for at least three days before baling. And baling needs dry hot weather. This means that it will have to be hot and sunny for around two weeks before a single bale gets moved out of a local field. And this means that first cut will be cut late (good for the wildlife that lives in the fields though!) and 2nd cut will not have much time to grow before the days are too short to bale. This all means top dollar for hay this year. Again.
And lastly, all this rain means the deer fly population is going to be almost unbearable. I have one horse that can't be ridden in the woods for all of July and into August since the deer flies drive him to distraction--he literally threatens to throw himself on the ground to get away from them. So I either ride around in circles in a ring for 6 weeks or take a riding break just about the time I just got riding again! (Horses in northern New England don't make a lot of sense...)
Ok, so now it's raining again. I'm going to go curl up and read a book. Or spend time looking at the Weather Channel website (www.weatherchannel.com) and wait for the sun to come out so I can write a blog entry complaining about how hot it is.
Cheryl Kimball is a freelance writer and editor who grew up on the Seacoast and now lives on a 90-acre tree farm in Middleton, New Hampshire. She has written several books on horses, including Mindful Horsemanship, Horse Wise, The Complete Horse, and Horse Showing for Kids.