The Comfort of Rain

Day 100 of 365

I can’t believe it’s been 100 days! When I first started this project, Ruby was just going broody, and I was so full of hope about another summer’s growing season. Ruby is now so far removed from her babies that she is fine being friends with them–at least sort of–and we are now just about on the other side of a summer’s growing season unlike any I have ever seen. I have never been so worried about our well going dry. I have never had my bare feet almost hurt from the dryness of the soil. I have never seen the chickens look like they felt the pain of the dryness too.

But, today, on day 100 of this blog project, it rained and rained and rained and rained.

It rained the kind of rain that was beautiful and cool and thirst quenching and comforting all the way to your bones. I was outside in it several times today, trying to teach the baby chickens that they didn’t have to stand in it quite so much. It was hard to teach them this though because the rest of the flock, who will usually go to the coop for big rain, stood out in the rain almost all day. Maybe they needed to just feel it too. Ron asked me why I wasn’t wearing a rain jacket, and I told him it was because I needed to be in this rain. My hair is still wet from my time in the rain this afternoon.

I don’t know how many inches we have had today, but it’s been steady–all day long. You can hear it from inside the house, a comforting reminder that the water table is getting help, that the corn is being watered by the sky, and that maybe, the corn and tomatoes and potatoes are going to finish out okay. I watched out the window off and on all day and felt joy and a gratefulness that is difficult to describe.

Finally, today, I saw in our national news references to the drought and the impact on crops and food prices. I read earlier this week that the Chinese government is trying to put rods in the sky to make it rain. It’s been a tough year all the way around for so many people. I know it’s too late for so many crops, for so many animals, for so many farmers, but I sure hope more people start to get real rain again soon.