CRAWFORD — Longtime farmer Glenn Mast noticed a duck swimming between rows in his soybean field this spring.
And amid his long, wide cornfield, he”s seen a few lonely bumps of stalks shooting up the way they should, but the rest are stunted, he said, topping out at a measly 2 feet. Most cobs he”ll yield later this year will be small.
To explain these occurrences, Mast cites the unusually wet climate as of late.
“We”ve had some really wet years before, but I”ll say that this is amongst the worst,” he said Wednesday, standing beside the stalks under a partly cloudy sky.
Mast”s intuition is on target with the numbers.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration”s Southern Regional Climate Center, based in Baton Rouge, La., has kept records on precipitation in Columbus and Starkville dating back to 1893. Luigi Romolo, the center”s regional climatologist, analyzed records for the Dispatch. So far this month, Columbus has seen 9.1 inches of rainfall, making it the fifth-wettest May in the city since the center began documenting precipitation — a development he called “noteworthy.”
And Mississippi State University in Starkville has already received 10.54 inches of rain this month, putting it on track as the second-wettest May on record there. “That is definitely a historic value,” Romolo said.
For Mast and other farmers with great swaths of land — he manages 5,000 acres of cotton, corn and soybeans, when he”s not tending to his catfish and hogs — long-term wetness can be just as problematic as a dry spell. Some of his fellow farmers in Crawford fear having to replant their supersaturated crops, which can wreak financial havoc, since they would yield little if anything, he said.
He knows not one farmer who has finished planting this year, he added.
Mast admitted he was concerned. But he stopped short of saying he”s worried.
“I”ve been farming 40 years, and the Lord has seen us through every year,” he said.
Meanwhile, gardeners, especially those with small plots and sand-rich soil, are managing to produce plenty.
William “Red” Drewery, a lifelong gardener who grows vegetables on less than an acre of sandy soil near his house on Mike Parra Road in Columbus, harvested cabbages blooming as wide as a “washtub” this week, coming in to the Dispatch with pictures to prove it.
When asked what was his secret, he replied, “The trick is Jesus Christ. Because as long as you know Him, He”ll help you.”
Oh, and he sang to them too.
Johnnie Harris has found similar success. Harris, who tends to his backyard garden in Columbus” Southside and boasts 30 years of experience, said his okra, bush beans, peas, cabbage and squash are coming along just fine. “We”ve had a lot of rain, but, for some reason, it just goes in the ground. It doesn”t stand,” he said.
Still, the major rainfall has not gone unnoticed among small-time growers.
George Rose, on-site manager of the Hitching Lot Farmers Market in Columbus, said most vendors at the market have already replanted their crops.
Among them is M.C. Ellis, owner of 40-acre Mayhew Tomato Farm in Mayhew. Ellis, 73, has had some, but not all, of his vegetables damaged, since he grows some on top of several inches of plastic, which elevates them above rain. He said this is the worst wet spell he”s ever seen. “It”s a tough lick on farmers,” he said. “It gets hard to recover.”
Rose concurred. “You need rain, but you need dry weather too,” he said. “It”s just too much of it.”
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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