03/31/2023
Let’s talk about being exceptional.
If you’re not familiar with the term drought, you can always ask us. We have become something of self-taught experts in the term recently. It is a word that means a shortage of water or a prolonged period of abnormally low rainfall.
There are four classifications of drought recognized in the United States. The classification starts with D0, but that just means abnormally dry, it’s not a qualifiable drought.
Then we get to the real drought classifications. There’s D1-a moderate drought, D2-a severe drought, D3-a extreme drought, and we round out the descriptions with the final classification: D4- an exceptional drought.
On this page we try to be thankful and grateful for every ray of sunshine and drop of rain we get, we try to be exceptional farmers, but on days like today when the wind is howling and carrying away our topsoil we do acknowledge the other side of farming.
Here in Southwestern Kansas, we’ve had exceptional applied to us in a different way. We’re not just in a drought, we’re in a D4 “exceptional” drought.
We have been in this D4 drought for over 200 days. And that’s just the timeframe of an exceptional drought; we’ve been categorized as “in a drought” since September 7th of 2021.
We’re grateful for every day we get to do what we do on this beautiful earth and while we watch that dust blow we’ll be praying that our corner of the world becomes a little less exceptional and gets a little more rain.
