We seem to be having weird weather in Arkansas this summer, as usual.
The month of August has been one of the rainiest mid-summer months that I can recall. Most of my stories are about dry summers, not rainy summers.
For instance, when our family took a summer vacation trip to the west coast in 1947, we came home to brown lawns and dried up pastures. I don't think there was a green plant growing anywhere on the farm, other than possibly a few weeds. When I was a boy, I was accustomed to seeing Otter Creek go dry during July and August, and we would either have to haul water for the cows from the spring down the road on the Charles Day place or drive the herd into the properties south of us, closer to the Morrison Spring. Often farther up the creek there would be pools of water that the cattle could drink from. Those were the times before Pea Ridge became a bigger city, before Beaver Lake, before city water was available, and before our town had a waste water system. Today, in 2019, Otter Creek runs a nice stream year-round. I have never seen the creek go dry in all the time we have been back in the Pea Ridge area. We moved back in 2002, after 40 years of living and working elsewhere, mostly in central and eastern Arkansas.
The years 1953 and 1954 are seared into my memory, since both the summer of '53 and the summer of '54 were seriously dry seasons. There was no rain at all. Our pastures dried up. The crops failed. What few green plants survived the drought were eaten by grasshoppers. There were swarms of grasshoppers. During that time we had a fellow going around the country with a pickup load of potions, offering to seed the clouds, with a semi-promise of producing some rain. A number of people paid him to try it. We were skeptical, and I think most people were skeptical about him, but the times were desperate. We were really, really needing rain. I recall that we even received some emergency grain from a government program to help the farms survive the drought. We had to take a trailer to Rogers and unload our grain from the railroad boxcars. It was a lot of scoop shovels of grain to bag and load, but it was sure a fine thing to have feed for the cows and chickens in those tough times.
In a way, it is hard for those of us who have farming backgrounds to say that we wish the rains would let up. We are kind of life-long tuned to wish it would rain more. We expect to need more rain than we commonly see in summertime. For livestock farmers, the late spring and summer seasons are haying times. It is hard to overemphasize how important a good hay season is for a livestock operation. In a sense, the main purpose of summer is to put up hay. If you have a good hay season, it is a huge part of being a successful livestock farmer.
Normally, more rain means more hay. Two good cuttings can mean barns nearly full of hay bales, and the feeling is some growing security for the winter ahead. Three good cuttings of hay are like icing on the cake. There may be hay left over after the coming winter is done, and there may be hay to sell. However, rain and hay don't comfortably go together. While we need rain to make hay, rain can also royally mess up a hay crop. Rain when the hay has been mowed and drying may spell disaster. Rain at the wrong time can ruin a hay crop, or can leach out most of its nutrients. A farmer is working with a time window when hay is on the ground.
Today, farmers have some equipment available that speeds the hay drying process. We used to have to let our mown hay lay out in the sun for a couple of days in order for it to dry out enough for safe storage. The old fashioned hay mowers just whacked off the stems and put the hay down. These days, many farmers have these combination mower-conditioners, or "mo-cons," which not only mow the hay down but also put the stems through a crusher. With that, the hay dries much quicker and can be baled earlier. Also, today's variety of big round hay bales are much more resistant to rain than were the older rectangular hay bales, so the bales can be left in the field for some time without significant damage to the hay. In the farming days I remember, "getting that hay in before it rains" was a pressing necessity. You put aside nearly everything else to be sure and get that hay "into the dry."
Anyway, here I am, wishing it wouldn't rain quite so much. Here I am, wishing I could lay my lawn by for the rest of the season. But for now, we need to keep mowing. I used to suppose that climate change would mean more shortages of rain. It may be the other way around. Thinking back, though, Arkansas has just about any kind of weather that you might want. We have rainy seasons and dry seasons, cold, snowy, icy winters and winters that are barely cold. The old saying still seems true, that if you don't like the weather in Arkansas, just wait a bit and it'll be different.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and an award-winning columnist, is vice president of Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 08/14/2019