Great Flood Cometh

-Posted by Isaac

Driving to the market this morning, we encountered problems.

No, not the "Check Engine" light or the busted windshield. That's normal.

The problem was water.

Too much water.

 Trouble getting in, trouble getting out.

And much trouble in between.

I left Maggie and Paige at the North Market and went north to help Jayne at Worthington.
On a normal day the line in front of Becky's produce booth looks like this:

And we often get a few stragglers interested in the honey next door.

Today it looked like this:

A soggy wet mess.
Notice not a soul in front of the lonely honey tent.
Rain is no good for business. Not at all.

When we got home, we found a Great River running through the yard.

Honeyrunssippi

And Lake Honeyrun in the driveway.

It was fun for a while. The cousins came over.

Git'm childerns to harr ground!

It was certainly a lackluster day for sales. Almost everyone with perishables was giving product away. Poor Steve Anderson was forced to become a flower fairy, sprinkling peonies like pixie dust on any beautiful girl walking by.

Maggie and Paige made out pretty well.

But a slow sales day is not the major problem. And maybe I'm getting ahead of myself calling this a problem just yet. I'm worried about our pending summer honey crop.

Yes, we have some clover.  

Yes, we have some thistle.

But what we need, what we really need are the soybeans.
Here's the waterlogged field in front of our home yard:

Funny thing about Ohio summer honey production. The great years are the dry years. Dry and hot. For some reason the soybeans really put out the nectar under drought-like conditions.
The beans are starting to bloom, and the last week has been anything but dry. Too bad. Thank you Hurricane Bill.
It's also funny that just a couple weeks ago things were shaping up perfectly. For a huge summer honey crop that is... 90 degrees and not a storm cloud in sight. My dad was starting to bellyache about the lack of rain and I was trying to figure out where I'd park my yacht on Lake Michigan.
Looks like the farmer prayers finally got through.

Farmers: Wahhh, wahhh, wahhh, wahhh.

God: A little dry, huh? Need a little rain do you? I'll show you some rain! Heh heh heh...

Beekeepers: Wahhh, wahhh, wahhh, wahhh.

Seems my prayers for oppressive heat and unrelenting drought went completely unnoticed.