Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures in The Good Land is largely a fish out of water tale about how I eventually found my footing on a small farm in an Amish town. We are a mostly organic, somewhat self sufficient, sustainable farm in Ohio. There's action and adventure and I'll always tell you the truth about farming.


Thursday, July 19, 2012

It's Hot. Real Hot. And Dry.

The Relentless Summer of 2012 continues. Mostly its just hot hot hot and more hot with additional heat on the side. And no rain. The lucky people got rain yesterday but we got nary a drop. Sure we saw the dark clouds and heard the thunder and... nothing.

The sunflowers are happy - winkin' and blinkin' in the hot summer of 2012.

At this point we are just scrambling to do what we can to keep everyone calm, cool, and fed. Its kind of a tough go. There is nothing in the goat yard for them to eat so I've been letting them graze on the hill. However this requires me to sit there with them. You can imagine how I feel about this. More on this later.

The hennies and ducks all just hang around where I run the sprinkler. The water attracts bugs and worms and stuff so the poultry are happy. The pigz are fine but have either trampled or eaten off every single leaf in their pen. We'll be working on a project to move them deeper into the woods like we did last year.

Potatoes destined for salad (thanks for all the great recipes!) and jalapenos to become goat cheese filled poppers.  Batter dipped and deep fried in lard, these are a taste sensation!

The garden is hanging in there but only because of constant watering. The problem is that once the soil gets this dry it can take hundred of gallons to rehydrate - so I'll be closing down some of the sections until we get some relief. But we continue to take up what's ripe and ready.

That's the update here, hope everyone is getting more rain than we are... but just to make sure, everyone get out there and do a rain dance - we can use a little relief!

Happy Thursday!

9 comments:

freemotion said...

Yikes. This was our summer last year. Maybe this year, too, but we got a quarter inch yesterday. I ran the sprinkler in the pasture last year and it had almost no impact, except on our water bill, so this year I'm only running it on the gardens. And to save the biggest trees in our pasture. We dump all water buckets where the water is needed most, nothing is wasted!

Jody said...

Our garden is only alive because of watering too. Thankfully the storm hit us yesterday. Hopefully you'll see some rain soon.

Head Farm Steward said...

Same issue in Illinois. Can't wait to see feed prices in 6 months...

Unknown said...

Hot here too, but we finally got out of the 100's! And it's water, water, water the garden to keep it from pooping out...

Vanessa said...

I hope you got rain today as it is raining in our neck of the Ohio woods today.

Dreaming of Chickens said...

"...jalapenos to become goat cheese filled poppers. Batter dipped and deep fried in lard..." O....M.....G!

For weeks we weren't getting any rain either. Well, now I'm having the opposite problem you're having. We are getting so much rain it's killing and rotting my garden. Wish I could share some of this with ya'll.

Sunnybrook Farm said...

We have been getting storms here in VA, without any damage since the big one a couple weeks ago. The hot and humid weather has messed up the beans but they will eventually start setting beans. Sounds like you have much worse drought than what we had.

Chai Chai said...

I would like to do a rain dance or pray for rain but I'm afraid we might get sued:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/atheists-obama-administration-out-of-line-to-pray

David said...

We fortunately got a few inches the other day and today is a break in the heat. I hope things break for you soon.

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