A Nice Spring Rain

We had a very much needed soaking rain over the past few days. My rain gauge said about 2.4” of rain and we needed every drop. It probably comes as no surprise that we’ve been busy planting and transplanting the past few weeks. We have a lot of seeds in the soil that were in very dry conditions and since seeds need water to germinate and spring to life we were eagerly anticipating the rain.

We do have irrigation but you may recall that last week we had a very, very windy week here on the farm. We had winds of 20MPH plus and some days as high as 45MPH which makes our overhead irrigation very ineffective. Most of the water evaporates or blows away before it hits the ground. So even though we have irrigation we could use to try to get our seeds to germinate we weren’t able to use it effectively. Further, we planted so many things in the last few weeks that we simply don’t have enough irrigation to water the entire farm. Thus, a rain was very welcome. Not to mention rainfall is always more uniform and seems to germinate our seeds much better than overhead irrigation.

Once things dry out we’ll have a flurry of tasks to complete that have been delayed because of the rain. We have a couple thousand transplants to get out into the soil, we have our next round of direct seeded crops to plant, we’ll need to make a cultivation pass across the entire farm to stay ahead of the weeds and we’ll need to continue hand weeding our crops. Luckily, we have a great farm crew this season and the weather is looking favorable for the next week or so!

Our overhead irrigation in action. You can see how a strong wind would make this very ineffective.