The Drought of 2023. I still think about it even though we got 2.6 inches of rainfall in September. That helped, but the signs of the lack of rain are everywhere. I think we lost two magnolia trees and azaleas and other landscaping. The production in the garden took a big hit. Our water bills were a lot higher than normal just trying to keep a few things alive. Some of the things that lived, like our sweet potatoes are stunted. Normally we would have harvested by now, but I'm going to let them continue growing until the first frost kills them. Then I'll dig them up.
Enough belly-aching, though. All in all, things are good. Our friends to the north and west saw massive forest fires that swept through and burned 30,000 acres of southern yellow pine. That put a hurting on the timber industry. Just the other day I drove between DeQuincy and Merryville and observed the burned timber.
The wind pushed the wildfires through acres and acres. People scrambled to plow fire breaks to stop or slow the fires. In some areas it helped. In others, not so much. I wonder if that timber was covered by some sort of crop insurance?
As far as the eye can see, things are burned up.
We weren't affected by forest fires near where we live, but the biggest issue we have plaguing us is the lack of grass. The lack of rain meant the grass didn't grow. If the grass doesn't grow, you can't make hay. If you are grazing cows, goats and chickens on just a few acres like we are, you depend on hay to make it through the winter. Fortunately, we have 75 square bales up in the loft.
Unfortunately, we had to start feeding hay in August. Normally, we don't begin haying the cows until around Thanksgiving. We supplement with round bales and the animals will normally eat up a round bale in a week. I called up the friend that sells us the round bales and he said he still has some to sell and will deliver 10 bales to us. That was a relief. I think hay will be in short supply this winter and I hope we can make the hay last. Although, not for us, I noticed the fellow that purchased the land across from us was making hay last week. You can see his baler going in the background while I had the cows out eating in the front yard.
Once he finished baling and the sun was starting to set, I walked over to look at the bales of hay.
He had stacked them up in long, straight rows. The grass was trimmed neatly across the field. Everything was neat and tidy. The hay smelled nice and you could sense autumn in the air. The sun was setting and a haze was drifting across the landscape.
As I looked over the hay bales, it brought back memories of being a kid and I had a hankering to do what we used to do - jump up on top of the bales and run across the top of them all the way down!
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