The Odd Harvest

This is the harvest that everyone will tell their grandchildren about.

Normally, somewhere in June it stops raining. The farmers start cutting toward the end of June. The grass dries in the windrows. The combines roll in sometime between June 28 and July 4. Paul's has the warehouse running 24 hours a day.

Everyone works like crazy and is done combining by the last week in July or maybe a little into August.

Not this year.

June consisted of rain and clouds and chill and damp, interspersed with just enough nice weather to get our hopes up.

Finally, sporadically, people got their fields cut. A lucky field here and there got combined.

But mostly, all this long way into July the grass has been sitting there in windrows, waiting waiting waiting, for the crucial warm, sunny, nice weather that July always brings.

Except this year July just won't bring. It dries for a few days, then rains for a day, dries for one or two more, then more rain.

The danger is that if it's too wet, too long, the seed will sprout in the rows and be worthless.

We still keep looking at the thermometer every day, willing it to please get up to 70--or please pretty please, 75, or will we actually be so fortunate to hit 80!? Here's a calendar with the last month's high temperatures.

So now it's the 22nd of July. Paul has three able-bodied young men all raring to go make some money sacking seed, but there's no place to rare to and no seed coming in. So today they all weeded my garden, just to have some work to do.

So far this year 400,000 pounds has come in. Normally by this time it would be 3 to 5 million pounds.

Meanwhile the rest of the country has been baking in hideous heat. Mom and Dad in Minnesota are doing their best to cope but it wipes them out. In Kansas they're meeting to pray for rain. In Northern Ontario, where we used to live, the northern reserves are threatened by forest fires and they are evacuating the most vulnerable people.

As you can see on that Accuweather calendar, it looks like the lumbering weather ship in Oregon is finally turning. To the very great relief of the farmers.

I hope the ship turns in other places as well.

Quotes of the Day:
"If the farmers lose their crops, I wonder if they're gonna sue God."
--Emily

Tonight we ate supper outside.
Paul: [knocks Jazz off his lap with the back of his hand] If I brush the cat off my lap, is that like what's-his-name kicking the cat toward the fire?"
Me: Ha ha, no.
Me: (thinks) AAAHH, he actually read and somewhat paid attention to that story I wrote!!