8/12/09 Vol. 6 #20

We’re back!  Almost all of us anyway, Betsy is still in Colombia (South America, everyone looks at me and says “South Carolina?”) until tomorrow and hopefully will be rested as she will have to hit the ground running on Friday to prepare for Saturday market.  A fairly typical break for the rest of us think.  I did get in a few days of hiking and camping up in the mountains before Betsy flew away.  Since then I have been puttering around the farm doing some small projects, reading, sleeping, eating and trying to keep things watered.

This drought is getting serious now.  The forecast for the end of the week is for several days with a chance of rain above 50 percent but I am not holding out much hope.  In the last two months we have had a scant two inches of rain.  All of the rains have gone either north or south of us.  The big creek is dry and we have been pulling water out of the upper, back up, pond for some weeks now.  The last few days of near 100 degree temperatures have applied a brush stroke across the farm of brown crinkly grass and weeds, the true colors of a drought that has been masked until now by the cooler temperatures of this unusual summer.

Fortunately we do have enough water to get us through the end of this season, mostly because we only have about seven weeks left and there are only so many crops left to water.  The little bit of fall planting we do has been going in on schedule, has been watered up with irrigation, and generally looks good.  More radishes seeded yesterday and some Swiss chard too.  The biggest potential loss is our summer cover crops, seeded six weeks ago they should be waist high by now but are at best ankle high, as our main source of organic matter to improve our soils this is never a good situation.  Hey it could rain a lot this week and things will take off, lets hope!

Picture of the Week
Cowpea and Sudangrass cover crop, looks good where there is small irrigation leak

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