Oh, It's Drying Time Again

Area Farms Hit Especially Hard; Md. May Apply for Federal Assistance

Joe Wood's corn maze in Mechanicsville typically presents quite a challenge to the schoolchildren who try to make their way through it. The nine-foot-tall corn stalks tower over even the adults, who can see only the corn directly around them on the maze paths.

This year, though, a drought has stunted Wood's crop, leaving the corn stalks only three feet high, so even the smallest children can see the entire maze.

Even if rain comes, it is probably already too late for most of the corn, which is getting past the stage where water will help. Wood is predicting, at best, a yield 50 percent below normal.

"Right now, all I've got is apples that are a little bit bigger than marbles." Wood said, adding that rain in the next week could maybe -- just maybe -- salvage the corn maze. "We are three to four weeks behind because of the weather. The cold spring put us behind, and we've been behind ever since."

Wood is one of the many farmers across Southern Maryland who are staring at 40 percent to 70 percent crop losses because of a lack of summer rainfall across the entire mid-Atlantic region. The drought has hit the three Southern Maryland counties especially hard, and it has prompted state officials to consider applying for a federal disaster designation, which would give farmers access to low-interest loans.

"We have an extreme drought, I think," Wood said.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a group of government and weather agencies, Wood is right. Although the Drought Monitor classifies most of Maryland in a moderate drought, the three Southern Maryland counties are classified as being in a severe drought, indicating a very high risk of fire and water shortages becoming common.

Charles County's Farm Service Agency told state agriculture officials that it expects farmers to lose 60 percent of their corn crops. St. Mary's and Calvert counties, though not reporting specific percent losses, said their pastures were dead, dying or dormant.

Thunderstorms battered the area Thursday, but they dropped rain only in isolated locations, providing little relief to farmers. Earl F. "Buddy" Hance, the state's deputy secretary of agriculture who owns a 400-acre farm in Southern Maryland, said his corn is probably beyond the point of saving. If it rained an inch a week for the next month, Hance said, he might be able to salvage some of his soy beans.

"They'll hold on for a while, but they won't hold on forever," Hance said.

So far, Leonardtown is the only Southern Maryland jurisdiction that has banned outdoor water use. Officials in other incorporated towns, such as La Plata, are recommending that their residents conserve water because of a potential shortage. Leonardtown had shut down one of its three wells as it prepared to open a new one, but when demand for water increased with the drought, the town was forced to open the new well early with an emergency permit, said Laschelle Miller, the town's administrator. To get that permit, she said, it had to ban outdoor water use.

Droughts are not uncommon in Maryland, but the last one this severe was in 2002, state Department of Agriculture officials said. That's not to say this drought is a record-breaker. Based on rainfall statistics, this June was only the 28th-driest in Maryland in 113 years, said Eric Luebehusen, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Southern Maryland had about 71 percent its normal rainfall for the month, he said.

"It's drier than normal, that is for sure, but in terms of record-setting dryness, we're a far cry from that," he said. "You're more or less left at the mercy of afternoon showers and thunderstorms and the occasional cold front."

In farming, being at the mercy of weather is simply the nature of the beast, Wood said.

"We just got to take it in stride," he said. "This is what happens to you when you depend on weather."