Complain About Rain

You know how I said I would never complain about the rain? Well, I will not complain about all the rain we have gotten in the last week but I will dang sure grumble about it. First, I know it was a real blessing in the beginning. It has all but stopped the fire danger (for now), filled our ponds up and the subsoil should be good and soaked up. All of that was very much needed and appreciated. However, you can have too much of a good thing.

It makes it awfully hard to go out and do chores in the morning when you know you will be fighting knee deep mud (or deeper) the entire time you are doing chores. I feel so bad for my animals as they fight the mud and muck too. I have been putting hay and other bedding out trying to create a dry place for them to lay down. I know I will really regret this when it does dry out and I must start cleaning all that nasty, muddy hay up, but right now it seems like the right thing to do.

It seems like there is not a dry place inside or outside of my barns and we have gone right past the sticky mud phase and right into the soupy, nasty watery stuff on top of the sticky mud. My coveralls are protected by a solid covering of mud and muck and I would wash them and dare the bad luck but I am not sure what the point in that would be.

Earlier this week I broke down and washed a whole load of sweatshirts (at least 3 apiece of all of us). I dried them and put a fresh clean sweatshirt on and went out to do chores. Less than an hour into chores we had a new calf that I had to carry across a ditch full of water to safety and there went the clean sweatshirt. I have started a glove rotation and have them placed in strategic places around the farm and in the pickup and tractor. When one pair gets muddy and wet I have another pair that is less muddy and just damp to change into.

I have spent more time in my Muck Boots than all my other footwear combined in the past week. I can’t tell you how much I miss going out to do chores in leather boots. Oh, I know that I should not be complaining because mud boot technology has come so far thanks to Muck Boots. Maybe, I ought to be soliciting a sponsorship from them. This farm sponsored by Muck Boots.

OK, I know enough of the whining and feeling sorry for yourself, we are all fighting this mud too. After all what good does it do to complain about it. Soon it will dry up and we will be complaining about the lack of rain again (we farmers and ranchers are funny that way, we are never happy with the current conditions). A friend of mine made the comment earlier this week that in Kansas we are always ten days away from a drought.

I am aware that in a few short days (maybe tomorrow) the sun will come out and things will warm up and eventually dry out. Then I will probably be on a rant about mowing my lawn and how fast the grass is growing. However, right now, that all sounds good, minus the mowing part. The worst time to talk about the weather is in the middle of any extended period of conditions. We know it will change at the drop of the hat but that does not stop us from grumping about it.

If I was going to be entirely honest with myself I would admit that this period of rainy weather did have some benefits. Things like making sure I did not go out too early to plant corn. I heard a lot of farmers talking about getting into the fields early and depending on the weather and temperatures this rain may have saved our corn crop. It has also ensured that we will probably have enough moisture to at least get the pastures started and growing and we could at least have a decent grazing and haying year. We are not safe yet, but this recent monsoon season does help the cause.

The bottom line is something that Dad is constantly reminding me of. It does no good to complain about the weather because in the end there is nothing you can do about it. I know it is true but I cannot stop myself from going down that road. Just watch I would guess that next week or for sure the week after that I will be complaining about how dry and hot it is. We farmers and ranchers are never truly happy.