At the beginning of July it seemed as if Reeger’s farm were about to entirely dry up. The pond we were using for irrigation was severely low and the field corn was beginning to turn for the worse. We needed rain. A few weeks ago we had a couple nights of good soaking rain that began to bring us up to speed and in the days since then there has been more than enough rain to keep the crops happy. In fact, at times it seems like we nearly had more than we can handle! The weather plays funny like that. I could insert any number of old farming saying about the fickle nature of rainfall, but instead let us continue.
Last Wednesday we had a huge storm roll through that made quite a scene.
This road goes up the hill beside our fields. We call it the gasline road because it provides access to natural gas wells on the hill. Of course, in this picture it is a rushing river.
This is the drainage ditch downhill from the fields behind our house. Had it not been for this ditch, there would have been loads more water in the yard, where there was already standing puddles.
This is our gravel driveway. As you can see, the creek that usually runs trickling through a pipe laid underneath the road is now roaring two feet high!
This wide stream made from the pond, across the yard, and down into the creek.
The pond we were worried about at the beginning of the month.
Most of our gravel roads are washed out to some degree, but there wasn’t any damage requiring urgent repair. The waters subsided soon after the rains ended. While this may seem obvious it is due largely to our location at the top of our watershed. In fact, considering that the highest hills were are perhaps only a few hundred feet above the farm, it is amazing that so much flooding occurred.
Swann's Way 