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southern MN | Dad would talk about the dry 30s.
Then we had a dry but tolerable 87, and the disaster 88 was, and dad said he never saw anything like that back in the 30's, 88 'won' hands down as the only really drought in my lifetime here.
The mid to late 1960's were miserably wet, I have images in my head of dad planting with the ditch over it's banks, and mom would always tell of her sitting on the edge of the field with a tracotr and chain, had to pull that helpless pulltype combine out _again_.
The late 1970's and early 1980's seemed very wet also, I remember planting in odd directions to try to get some corn planted, anywhere, and I remember dad pulling me out constanyly with the self propelled combine. Got so bad dad would walk the bean field ahead of the combine, any direction wherever it would carry him, so I could hrvest something. Then he's disk those areas, and the next day (if it didn't rain) I could get at lwast a 1/2 a header width around those areas again. And so on.
Early 1990's - I suppose it was 93 - was terrible wet as well, as bad as we've had, gave up planting corn on June 6th (it rained) and gave up planting beans on July 3rd (it rained). What a long, miserable,w orthless year that was. Rained so bad couldn;t make hay, the pasture was flooded out, in fall I was baling dried pidgen grass off the unplanted wet spots to feed the cattle. Terrible year, and the govt mandated we carry insurance that year, which was also worthless. Just really about the worst farming year of my life.
Got a little dry in - 09? and then last year, terribly wet spring, even more terribly dry fall.
This year, dry early in spring - no snow melt - and then terriblt wet May, 4x the nomal rainfall. Now it's actually getting a little dry, but I can wait a while, still replanting the low spots as they dry out.
--->Paul | |
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Past Droughts
