2003-05-21 - 4:59 p.m.
It's been a while since I last wrote, I've been too busy working on my ark. I haven't seen so many rainy days in I don't know when. In early fall (September 2002) I remember the weather men saying it would take years of normal rainfall to break the terrible drought we had been in for 5 years. Shows you how little men know. In october it started raining and with just a few exceptions we have seen well over the normal rainfall each month since. Lately the rain has gotten heavier and more frequent and the few non-rainy days have been cloudy. All this makes for a disease paradise. The sweet cherries all rotted and the strawberries have only fared slightly better. The corn thinks it's in heaven though and is already past knee high and growing fast. The tomatoes are hanging in there and some of the plants are already 4 feet tall but they have few if any tomatoes on them. The cool weather and lack of sun has kept them from blooming and setting fruit but hopefully that will turn around.
I have a friend who grows heirloom apple trees for sale. I called him yesterday to see how he was doing at his nursery which is about 30 miles north of us. He said all 4,000 trees he needed to put out in his nursery fields were still in his cooler. They should have been put out over a month ago. He can't get his tractor into the fields to get them ready to plant. I asked him how much longer he could keep them in the cooler and he told me he had no idea because he had never been this late in planting. It sure has been a wild year so far.
