Tag: drought

When the water goes down…

I took a walk on the creek with the grandkids. It wasn’t quite what they expected. There wasn’t enough water to swim or skip rocks, but we spotted these interesting shapes in the bedrock.

These rock formations have always been covered with water.

Everyone had a theory. It made for some interesting conversation!

The guesses ranged from petrified trees to formations created by water currents to aliens.

After some internet searching Landon came back with an answer for our puzzle. These are called stromatolites. They are considered the world’s oldest fossil at 1.9 billion years old. The formation is created by colonies of bacteria that lived and died in an ancient ocean, leaving behind their petrified remains. They start out dome-shaped and erode over time to expose the rings.

Actual living stromatolites can be found in Australia, Florida and elsewhere. There is a lot of interesting information about stromatolites online.

So, we were standing on fossils 1.9 billion years old. How cool is that?

Until next time.

Don’t forget to shut the gate

D-R-O-U-G-H-T

This is the most terrifying word in a farmer/rancher’s vocabulary. Floods, storms with tornados, hail or lightning, blizzards, extreme cold, early frost or late frost; all these weather extremes happen routinely. They last from minutes to days, and then you deal with the aftermath.

But a drought, that is something else entirely. A drought starts slow. You watch the sky. You think it has to rain soon. You listen to the weatherman. Good chance of rain tomorrow, but it doesn’t happen. You look at the sky. You pray for rain. You check the radar. The grass crackles and crunches as you walk across it. You look at the sky. It gets drier and drier. The ponds get lower. The creeks run sluggishly. It rains, a little, it soaks into the hungry ground and disappears. Dust hangs in the air.

You watch the sky.

A true drought-not a dry spell – lasts for months and even years. This is a drought.

In 2023 the hay field made 28 bales. A two-digit number. Total.

In 2022 the hayfield made 212 bales.

Hang on to your hats. It’s going to be a rough year.

Until next time.

Don’t forget to shut the gate!