A Drought Buster?

We finally had a soaking rain in the forecast.  It started Friday morning and lasted all night and half way through Saturday.

Frodo gets stuck out in the rain because he’s afraid of Xerxes. Poor boy.

Early morning rain.

I still haven’t gotten the second coat of sealer on the deck between weather and work.

After it was all done, we had about two and a half inches.

A lull in the rain ended. Pretzel and Joani hurrying back to the barn.

My hope is that this will be enough to bring us back up out of the severe drought category.

I am in the far southwest corner of the highlighted county

It will go a long way towards a successful crop next year.

Weather Woes

The temperatures have been a bit wild this month.

While I enjoy lots of sunshine and warm weather for spending time out in pasture, it’s really not good.

And we’ve still been really dry, and on those extra warm days, they came with high winds.

corn blowing in the wind, and that was before it really picked up.

I’m pretty sure it is hurting the quality of my corn crop at this point.

You get penalized at sale if it is too wet or too dry, and the ears are awfully small this year.

That makes for miserable conditions.  Everything is so dusty and dirty.

Dust coming from the gravel road.

The poor animals were just making winter coats after the cold, and poor Astra doesn’t like heat, so she was really not happy with the warm temperatures.

Astra

The llamas were awfully hot too.

Odie

The result of all of that is that last week’s drought monitor was not good.  The entire state is now in drought conditions, and my farm is back to severe drought conditions.

We did get a decent rain on Monday–about an inch, which also brought the cooler (normal) temperatures back.

taken through my rainy window

It made for some pretty pictures.  The ones below were taken Sunday evening when we got the first bands of sprinkles

It helped settle the dust, but I’m not sure it was enough to change the drought monitor.

More Rain

Yesterday, right after I finished my post, I went to the garden. I don’t know what I was thinking because I had just finished canning all the tomatoes. And I ended up picking a bunch more.

Then, in the evening the rain started again, driving everyone in the barn overnight.  I was surprised to see that Miss Goose joined everyone in the barn.  They all look so happy together.

Odie, Maybeline, Cinnamon and Miss Goose

Anyhow, this morning as I was checking on everyone after the rains, I nearly walked into a spider web.

I do not know how the spider managed to build such a big web from the gate clear up into the trees between last night’s chores and this morning.

I was rather impressed.

Sadly, I did have to go in to feed the goats, so I had to remove the web.  Hopefully, the spider picks a better location next time.

Sophia and Bumble on the Quonset hut

And with the extra rain, it was too muddy to do much outside, so I started canning those tomatoes again.