WYATT -- Larry Enders has been waiting more than 50 years for a perfect growing season.
Each year it might be either too hot, too cold, too dry or too wet. Sometimes it’s a damaging summertime thunderstorm.
This year, the 74-year-old farmer has been battling rain — way too much of it.
On Thursday night and again Friday morning, he was outside cutting large holes in a catch basin and trying to clear paths so that water could escape some of his low-lying fields.
“We’re not supposed to get tropical storms,” said Enders, referring to the 1½ inches he says was dumped on the 700 acres he farms just south of Wyatt on Thursday night.
The heavy rain put a thick punctuation mark on a soggy May that brought us a record-breaking 8.33 inches for the month, according to the National Weather Service.
There was a lot of ponding in fields throughout the Michiana area.
“I don’t need a lot of heat,” Enders explained. “I just need it to stop raining.”
Despite a cold April and wet May, farmers in northern Indiana have managed to work around the weather, with about 92 percent of the corn and 84 percent of the soybeans already planted, according to a Tuesday report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.