A million dollar rain by Chris Judd

Every time we received a good rain, my dad used to say, “that was a million dollar rain”. The meaning of that old statement finally sunk into my slow old brain the third week of July 2018. After a month of very dry and hot weather that made vacationers happy, our neighbours were noticing some very troubling things.
Reduced hay yields of both first and second left winter hay stocks frightfully low. While driving through the valley, we noticed fields of corn that looked more like fields of pineapples with their leaves rolled up tightly and pointed towards the sky as if praying for rain. Hay fields, pastures, and lawns stopped growing, turned brown, and were starting to die. Farmers stopped cutting the thin hay crops they had for fear of the dry weather and hot sun killing the bare brown hayfield if it was cut off. People stopped cutting their brown dying lawns and lawn maintenance companies were laying off staff. Some rural residents were buying truck loads of potable water to dump into their wells because of fear that the well would go dry.