No Floodplain Means No Flooding

I mentioned in one of my last blogs that we’d had a lot of rain in February. I don’t remember the final February tally but it was a crazy number, something like 12 or 13 inches of rain. March has started off in the footsteps of February and we had at least an inch, probably more like two inches, of rain last night and today. Schools were closed today in our county since several roads were closed due to flooding. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday were warm, sunny days. Their purpose was to fake us out and trick us into thinking we were done accumulating rain in February. The ground was drying up nicely and the grass is starting to really pop with green color in some areas of the farm. Then the rain moved back in Tuesday evening and hung around until mid-day on Thursday. We’ve had a LOT of rain.

Some of our very long time readers might remember our lengthy search for land. If you can believe it we bought this farm EIGHT years ago in January 2010. One of the reasons we spent almost three years searching for land to buy was because Jason was insistent that we have no floodplain areas on our farm. He was serious when he meant none. Even 2 acres out of 200 was more floodplain than Jason was willing to own.

At the time I thought Jason was making an already tough land search even harder. Over the years I’ve come to realize he was a genius in his insistence on no floodplain areas. Since we’ve purchased this farm middle Tennessee has had a 1,000 year flood (remember that time when Nashville and surrounding areas had 12 inches of rain in 36 hours) and now we’ve seen a month like February. We have predictable spots on the farm that form what I like to call “water features” when we have really heavy rain, basically little ponds where there shouldn’t be a pond. But our water features are gone within a day of the rain clearing out, and most of them are gone within an hour or two of the rain stopping.

Other farms in the area have not been so lucky when it comes to standing water and flooding. More than one farm in our area has pastures that are completely, 100% submerged under water right now. Some even have water in their barns. I’m thankful that we have none of those worries on our farm thanks to Jason’s meticulous due diligence when it came to our land search. Our creek even stayed within its banks while others within a half mile of us were out of their banks and flooding areas up to a half mile wide.

When it comes to running a farm it is easy to overlook some of the knowledge that Jason brings to the table. We have no worries at all about our barns or pastures flooding right now. After the extreme drought our area had in the second half of 2016 Jason spent a fortune in seed and fertilizer and countless hours on the tractor bringing them back to their usual excellent shape in 2017. He re-seeded four times and fertilized three times to undo all of the drought damage. Thanks to his large animal nutrition background we feed a custom feed designed by him with a vitamin/mineral profile balanced specifically to our soil, grass and hay tests. It takes a lot more than just hands-on horse knowledge to run a really top notch horse farm. Let me repeat that. It takes a LOT more than a good horse background to run a good horse farm. When I look around at the flooded farms around us I realize just how critical that knowledge can be at times, and how I have no stress at all while I watch neighboring farms trying to get horses and other livestock to high ground.

Thank you Jason for the lack of stress in my life right now.

Rocky and Toledo