Lack of rain concerns farmers, helps keep water levels down in flood-prone spots

This year was the earliest John Bartman has ever had to use his irrigation system.

“Usually irrigation season for us doesn’t occur until July. This year it was May,” said Bartman, who farms in Marengo and other areas of western McHenry County into Boone County.

Moderate to severe drought conditions have hit the northeast corner of Illinois, primarily hitting McHenry and Lake counties and spreading into the northern parts of Kane, Cook and DuPage counties, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System, a federal multi-agency monitoring system.

Moderate drought conditions also have impacted DeKalb, Boone and Winnebago counties as well as the rest of Kane, Cook and DuPage, according to the federal monitoring agency. Even more counties – sweeping from Jo Daviess County in the far northwest corner of Illinois to down through all or parts of Ogle, Lee, La Salle, Kendall, Grundy, Will and Kankakee counties – have experienced abnormally dry conditions.

“The 2021 drought has been very challenging for area vegetable farmers, because these crops need rain for their success,” Bartman said. “Usually April showers bring May flowers, and we didn’t receive very much right there.”

Not only do the crops need rain, Bartman said, but some herbicides, used to kill weeds, need water to work.

While less rain and drier conditions have hurt farmers, they’ve been beneficial for others.

Three Oaks Recreation Area in Crystal Lake saw issues with high water levels over the past couple of years, which caused some amenities, such as the hiking trails, to be restricted. With this year’s drier weather, these restrictions will not need to happen, Crystal Lake’s Deputy City Manager Eric Helm said.

“This year, we will not need to make the same modifications,” Helm said. “All the amenities and trails will be open.”

In DeKalb County, Sycamore High School’s softball field is referred to as “The Swamp” because of the way it floods in even the most modest amounts of rain.

But the field held up for two hours, even in steady rain, during a May 18 softball game against Genoa-Kingston.

Softball coach Jill Carpenter said the first MVPs of Sycamore’s 9-7 win against Genoa-Kingston were her pitchers. But for her, the second MVP was “The Swamp.”

“I think that tells you how dry it’s actually been around here if we’re able to get a game in,” Carpenter said. “I would say it held up until probably about the sixth inning, then I started getting a little nervous about it.”

There’s not a clear cause to why this spring was so dry, said Kevin Donofrio, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

Most of the area’s moisture, in the springtime, comes up from the Gulf of Mexico. High-pressure areas prevented this moisture from getting to northern Illinois, partly causing the drought, Donofrio said.

While there has been rain this spring, a lot of it has been along the Interstate 80 corridor, Donofrio said.

Making things even more challenging is that big rain events usually happen in spring, so it’s harder to catch up later in the year.

“Once you get into summer, you kind of get these hit or miss thunderstorms,” Donofrio said. “It’s harder to eat into the drought.”

Having cold weather at the beginning of the year hampered for farmers, too.

“Vegetables are very, very particular,” Bartman said. “For instance, with our sweet corn, we’ve had three frosts during that time period, and so that’s also affected the amount of sweet corn that’s been able to survive the drought.”

Bartman usually doesn’t open his sweet corn roadside stand until the Fourth of July, but because of the dry weather, the stand’s opening could be delayed, causing a financial hit for Bartman.

“Unless something massive happens, I don’t see us being open until early to mid-July, which is very unfortunate,” he said.

Chris McKee, a farmer from Woodstock, said he’s gotten enough precipitation to get by so far, although he’s still short on rainfall.

“We’re going to need an inch of rain a week real quick to make a crop,” he told the Northwest Herald last week.

If it doesn’t start raining soon, McKee said, he’ll have to start feeding his cows hay for the winter, meaning he’ll have less to sell to customers who buy hay for their own horses.

“That is going to end up driving the price up for the people who have a couple of horses,” McKee said.

It will also affect McKee’s bottom line.

“We won’t be selling as much of it as a cash crop,” McKee said. “That’s a big part of our operation is selling hay.”

Unlike Bartman, McKee doesn’t have an irrigation system on his farm, meaning his only option is to “pray for rain.”

“The production agriculture community is very good at being optimistic, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “[We] just stay optimistic and play the cards we’re dealt, that’s all we can do.”

Daily Chronicle Sports Editor Eddie Carifio contributed to this article.