To have water is a blessing, but perhaps we've gone overboard

If anyone knows how to build an ark, please send the blueprints my way.

Hurricane Irene left us with five and a half inches of water two weekends ago, but that seems tame now compared to the 7+ inches of rain we've gotten between Sunday evening and Thursday morning of this week. Whatever had begun to dry out after the hurricane is now even more soggy than it was before. The carrots are rotting, the fields have standing water in places they've never had standing water before, and the cucumbers have all but stopped producing. There's something almost insensitive about wishing away rain while there are ongoing droughts in our country and around the world...but for goodness sake, whoever is in charge of the sprinklers up there, spread the love! We can't take it anymore!!!

Tragically, farms in the area are literally being swept away. At the peak of harvest-time, crops are going to mush. Carrots are rotting in the ground. Pumpkins are submerged in water. Newly-seeded fall crops will never germinate -- the seeds washed away. Rivers are soaking produce in water contaminated with coliform bacteria.

And all this only a week after farms around the region were devastated by Hurricane Irene. I heard of one farm in upstate New York losing all 5 feet of topsoil, the farmer being able to stand on bedrock. I heard of one CSA in Northwestern Massachusetts losing 100% of every crop they were growing. A farm just south of us had 6 acres under water. Another farm, just feet from a river, was completely submerged as well.

Because we're next to a wetland and not a river, we're very wet but thankfully okay. It is a blessing to have a diversity of crops and a CSA membership that invests in the farm at the beginning of the season, with an understanding of the risks.

I'll leave you with a link to a Grist.org article about how farms fared during Hurricane Irene. Click here