Our drought here in NW Illinois has been at the "extreme" level for about 4-5 months now. Yes, 4-5 MONTHS!
Last weekend, some rain finally... FINALLY!... began to fall. By my estimation (yep, estimation... my 3 young sons broke our rain gauge long ago, so now I leave a wheelbarrow & bucket parked in a special spot when rain is forecast... so I can monitor how much rainfall by checking in those.... yes, high tech I am here at Wishful Acres Farm!). So, in the past week, it has rained steadily. In my wheelbarrow & bucket, I'm estimating that our farm received between 4-6 inches of rain over the course of the past week.
Just to put that in perspective, we've received more rain in the past week than we have over the past 5 months combined.
I'm so grateful. The fall crops absolutely jumped up after the rain. My CSA members received some beautiful, frilly, fall head lettuces and a gorgeous salad mix with their shares this week, along with the other vegetables. At last, the fall greens are getting big enough to harvest... about 4-6 weeks behind schedule, but I'm just glad we have anything to harvest at all.
It's been a tough year here at the farm, we'll see where this drought ends up in the record books, but I think for our little region here it's probably the worst drought in at least 2 generations. If not 3 generations.
And our farm pulled through.
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