Oh, Jay, go ahead and count those eggs. I think it is going to be a great tomato harvest for you.. Now, I hope all that excess moisture doesn't make your maters crack and split.

It's been forever since you had flooding, so I am so thrilled for you.

The combination of cool, wet weather and no wind could be a little of a concern, but I don't think y'all will stay too wet or too cool for too long.

I have been watching the late blight reports and haven't seen any for KS, so at least there's that. : ) The last wet summer I can remember here that had some cool weather was 2009 and about the worst tomato problem I can remember was Septoria Leaf Spot.

Dawn

Jay, I didn't know that you knew the word "flood". LOL

Yesterday, Al went to Little Rock and I drove the old garden truck to take the dog to the groomer. It wasn't raining when I dropped off the dog, but by the time I drove back home (maybe 3 miles) the water was standing half way across the road in numerous places. Our road had been closed last week because of water across a bridge so I was trying to be very careful. I don't drive the truck very much and never in the rain. I was driving down the road and couldn't find the windshield wiper controls. I had to use the windshield washer a few times until I could get to a place to stop, and figure out how to turn them on full time. Talk about feeling stupid. LOL We are so saturated that even a light rain causes puddles. GRDA is releasing 15,800 cubic feet of water per second at the dam today, but I have seen the lake much higher than it is.

Al said it rained on him from Springdale to Little Rock, then he hit it again on the way home. Northeast Oklahoma has had plenty of rain. Our county Mesonet hasn't been reporting for several days, but the counties to our west and north are reporting over 14 inches in the last 30 days. Talk about growing web feet.....we need them.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Carol I've emptied 4.15 inches so far in August. After the last few years that seems like a lot. Several have had more than I have. Sure glad the center of the storm missed us by about six miles. Rainfall amounts were 2-3 inches around the center but there was also a lot of golf ball and larger hail. My sister came through it on her way home from teaching. She had to pull over and stop as she couldn't see to drive and got some hail damage to her Jeep. The hail damage last week was enough. We did have very high straight line winds again. It broke a few branches and twisted some of my sprawlers. One nice plant is split on the main stem where the two leaders split. Time will tell.
Dawn I have one plant with some septoria issues. Due to the rains and things staying so wet I haven't done anything. Noticed last evening that new blooms were coming out. Although we have chances for the next week after tomorrow evening they aren't as high. I'm taking off the next two days. Hope to get some weeds sprayed and some big ones knocked down. Have a few fallow areas I plan to start preparing for next year. I timed planting the buckwheat perfectly. I got a good stand and it is growing like a weed. I will address the plant issues when things dry up a little. I ate my first Brandyboy last week. It was set during the heat and was smaller. Most of the fruit set in the last month is showing good size. I will start having more ripen in about a week. Early Girl was the first this year. But nothing with much size yet. Glick's 18 in a container maybe my first large tomato. They are sizing up well. It usually does well for me. And till this year Amish Canner has never done well. I tried it again this year and it has set well the last two weeks. So will at least get to taste several. The Brandyboy plant didn't set well till lately but loading up now. The wind almost laid my okra all the way over. I feel it will straighten up. Last week the wind was out of the south. Today out of the north. The plants are sure taking some abuse. Jay

I've been out a little this morning. I ended up with almost an inch. Found out the heavy rain and hail was closer than I thought. A farmer about a mile and a half from me had 3 inches and large hail. Knocked out several windows and damaged his corn. I was very fortunate. They said the hail reached the SE corner of town. I'm on the NW corner. The SE corner got 2.25 inches or more. So quite a difference in a mile. Jay

Wow. Y'all are having some weather drama now, which is better than 180 straight days of "severe clear", which is clear, sunny weather with no rain. One of the radio DJ's down in Texas used that phrase for sunny days and Tim and I adopted it. Sometimes we have too much severe clear weather here, and I know you have far too much of it up there.

It would be frustrating to have the corn damaged this close to harvest time. Sometimes it seems like the farmers just can't catch a break.

I hate that your sister's Jeep was damaged by the hail. I was looking at the SPC's convective outlook this morning, and y'all are in the area where tornadoes, hail and strong winds are a possibility. It seems like rain does not come easily to y/all but instead seems to always bring a risk of severe stuff with it.

While you and Carol and Al were experiencing flooding in your locations, my son was at a work-related High Water Rescue training class during which, ironically, he rescued a guy who was struggling and in danger of drowning. Of course, I knew nothing about it until he sent a text that said "Don't worry." Now, you know that as a parent, when you get a text that starts out that way, the first thing you do is worry. His text went on to say, briefly, that he saw a co-worker struggling in the rushing water (forced through a concrete channel by high-pressure pumps to simulate flash flooding), pulled him out with the assistance of someone else, and injured himself so was en route to the ER. Chris hurt his shoulder, and may have torn his rotator cuff pulling a guy out of rushing water who weighs about 100 lbs. more than he does, so now is off-work with a job-related injury and is not happy about it. Also, since he had to leave to go to the hospital, he didn't finish the course and will have to take it again. It seems to me that everyone but me got to either play or work in the water yesterday. Maybe I'll go outside and make myself a mud puddle with the hose and watch the butterflies come puddle in it.That's the closest I'm going to get to having any meaningful "rain".

You may not have gotten the heaviest rain, Jay, but your August rainfall is approximately 3.8" more than we've had at our house and I am simultaneously thrilled for you and insanely envious all at the same time.

I need to get outside and get some more work done. I already worked for a while but then came inside to eat lunch The cooler temperatures are glorious and won't last very long, so I need to get as much work outdoors done as I can before the August heat returns.

If you get tired of the rain, you can send the excess rainfall down here and we'd be glad to have it.

Dawn

A few formed a Elkhart Famers Market this year. They created a Facebook page and so far that is where all the listings and sales have occurred. Although they were planning their first actual market tomorrow. I read this morning where a few of the growers got wiped out Wed evening. All of them within a mile and a quarter as the crow flies from my garden. I don't have any extra yet. Depending on what happens in the next 3 weeks I could have though. The largest grower of the group got totally wiped out by 3 inches of rain, high winds and hail. I'm thankful for every drop I've received. And even more thankful my garden got spared. I've heard of damage as close as a half mile to my house. Like I tell everyone sometimes when dealing with Mother Nature it can be a matter of inches and feet between feast and famine. The hail that wiped out a lot of my garden two years ago basically hit only my garden here in Elkhart. You take what you get in this country but again I'm happy with my inch and no hail. I just hope no one on this forum got hit hard. I have one tomato plant that after the hail last week I highly doubt if it will recover in time to mature fruit. But the rest although battered and tattered I feel will be fine. Jay

Jay, That is just sad about the largest farmer in the group getting totally wiped out by weather that otherwise would have been a blessing if only the rain could have fallen without doing all the damage.

I come from farming people. My mom's dad was a farmer and a rancher. When I was really young he lived on a farm and raised sheep and a wide variety of vegetable crops. I remember the barn, being chased into the stock tank by a cranky old ram and then getting leeches on my legs while in the stock tank....and I also remember riding the tractor, feeding the chickens, and riding to town with him in his old delapidated pickup truck. I also remember well the windmill, and listening to the farm reports on the local radio station very early every morning. My favorite thing that he grew was popcorn. I thought it was magical to have a grandpa who grew his own popcorn. He never really made enough money to consider himself prosperous....and just barely made enough in the good years to hang on and survive the bad years. When he sold the farm and moved to a city and got a regular job, it broke my heart. My mom always told me that my grandparents (her parents) were poor, but I thought they were rich because they always had a big, beautiful and highly productive garden, berries, and fruit trees. I couldn't imagine that anyone needed anything else, but then I was a child and understood nothing about the need to pay a mortgage, etc.

My dad's parents died when he was a child. They were subsidence farmers in the 1920s and 1930s who pretty much only had whatever they could raise to eat because they never got enough of a crop to sell anything for cash money during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression years. The kids stayed together on the farm and kept farming even after losing their folks because young, poor country folks didn't have many options in those days. World War II saved them all by giving them a reason to leave the farm, and leave it, they did. Most of his brothers and sisters always had gardens after they grew up and left the farm, moved to the city and had "real jobs". I think my dad longed to move back to the country and be a farmer but he told me "you can't make a living at it, and I have a family to feed". I always thought maybe they'd move to the country after he retired, but by then it was already becoming apparent he was developing Alzheimer's, so staying in the city was smarter.

I think the farmers and ranchers are the true unsung heroes in this land of ours. I just wish that there was a way that family farmers could do what they do and earn a good living at it. Most of the farmers and ranchers I know now have a regular "off the farm" job that pays the bills, and the farming and ranching they do is a sideline that sometimes doesn't even break even. It always seems like the weather can find one way or another to ruin a crop.

Until we moved here and got to know a lot of ranchers, I never realized how many cows a rancher can lose to lightning strikes, for example. Sometimes I wonder how anyone makes a living in agriculture.

The rain has been so spotty and erratic here that some folks have had a great garden and some haven't. It just depends on if your place has been hit by hail, high winds, flooding rain, or very little rain or whatever. We won't even talk about what a big grasshopper invasion can do. A lot of the Thackerville melon growers had their plants wiped out by late freezes in spring, but replanted and had a good harvest in July anyway. Melons are one of those crops that can be superb when rain falls at the right time but not so great if too much rain falls close to harvest and all the melons start splitting open and rotting.

It rained here last night---nearly a half-inch. I was thrilled. We had some winds gusting into the 40s, which really isn't high enough wind to damage much at this time of year, though some of the fall bean plants took a bit of a beating. They're very young and should bounce right back.

I've been fortunate to have a really great garden this year, but it comes at a pretty high price, in terms of the amount of time spent covering and uncovering everything in the spring for late frost protection and then in watering a lot in July and August. One of the frustrating things is that no matter how hard you work, a hail storm or flood waters can wipe out most of the entire season's work in minutes.

It is August, so that means peppers, peppers, peppers. I've been roasting jalapenos and freezing them this week, and also have been canning jalapenos. I canned a big batch last night and am about to do another big batch now. After I finish that, I will have processed about 9 of the 12 gallons I harvested earlier this week. As soon as I finish the last three gallons, it will be time to pick peppers again.The tomatoes have slowed down a lot in the July and August heat, but a lot of them are in bloom so ought to set some more fruit during this cool spell. It has been a reasonably good tomato year here. I was careful not to plant too many because I didn't want to preserve a lot, and I think we still had too many, but that's better than too few.

Maybe you'll get lucky and the first autumn frost this year will be late and even your hail-battered plant will get a chance to produce something. You never know. I remember very fondly the winter (might have been 2004? or 2002?) when we didn't have our first freeze until mid-December. It was an amazingly long tomato season that year.

Dawn