By Bai­ley Wright | Decem­ber 8, 2016

Except for one time in the mid-nineties, Stephen Olsen has nev­er seen the ground­wa­ter lev­el at Agron­o­my Research Farm go this low.

Olsen has been the farm man­ag­er of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Plant Sci­ence Research Farm on Agron­o­my Road for 30 years. Every morn­ing at 8 a.m., he enters the data from the onsite ground­wa­ter meter from over night.  This year it reached 8 feet.

Stephen Nelson at his desk on the UConn Plant Science Research Farm on Agronomy Road on Dec. 8, 2016.

Stephen Nel­son at his desk on the UConn Plant Sci­ence Research Farm on Agron­o­my Road on Dec. 8, 2016. (Pho­to by Bai­ley Wright)

His morn­ings also include check­ing the three or four fore­casts book­marked on his com­put­er and a cou­ple more on his phone. It’s part of his job to know the weather.

How much did it rain last night?” his research tech­ni­cians will ask as they get ready for the day. Amount of rain­fall deter­mines what they will do that day. It deter­mines if they are going to irri­gate their crops and how much com­paction they are will­ing to risk with trac­tors or plows, Nel­son said.

I’m always look­ing at the radar through­out the day,” Nel­son said. Even if he does­n’t know how much they’ll get, he knows when rain is coming.

graph of rainfall

Total rain­fall record­ed to Agron­o­my Farm. (Graph by Bai­ley Wright)

Nel­son has­n’t seen as much rain­fall on the radar this year. Nei­ther has the rest of the state. Almost 83 per­cent of Con­necti­cut is now list­ed as being in “severe drought,” by the Nation­al Ocean­ic and Atmos­pher­ic Admin­is­tra­tion’s Drought Mon­i­tor web­site, and as of Nov. 15, 44 per­cent of the state is in “extreme drought.”

Con­necti­cut’s cur­rent state of drought has been grow­ing since 2013.

Luck­i­ly, UCon­n’s research farm has­n’t “seen any drought stress on any of the crops (we) grow here,” Nel­son said. That’s because Con­necti­cut’s topog­ra­phy lends to drought resilience on it’s own, accord­ing to Nel­son. The Nut­meg State is expe­ri­enc­ing a bad drought this year, he said, but it’s not as bad as oth­er parts of the coun­try like Cal­i­for­nia and Ten­nessee that are expe­ri­enc­ing wide spread fires and extreme damage.

Con­necti­cut land­scape lends to “com­bat basil till” or “frangi­pan” which are terms for an arti­fi­cial hard pan below the soil, Nel­son explained. The hard pan sys­tem means that water absorp­tion becomes more dif­fi­cult and there­fore stays toward the top of the soil longer.

Stephen Nelson opens the top of a water gauge that automatically turns off irrigation when rainfall reaches a certain amount in order to converse water. (Photo by Bailey Wright)

Stephen Nel­son opens the top of a water gauge that auto­mat­i­cal­ly turns off irri­ga­tion when rain­fall reach­es a cer­tain amount in order to con­verse water. (Pho­to by Bai­ley Wright)

The biggest impact the drought has had on the Agron­o­my Road research farm has been “brain power.”

Did it neg­a­tive­ly affect us? No, not beyond being more mind­ful of our water usage,” Nel­son said.

More stress is put on man­agers in times of drought, as they have to be more cog­nizant of how much and where they are get­ting water.

UCon­n’s research farm only uses up to 10,000 gal­lons of water a day. Oth­er farms in Con­necti­cut are allowed to use up to 49,00o gal­lons a day with­out obtain­ing a spe­cial per­mit. How­ev­er, all farm­ers are aware that an overuse of water could result in a source run­ning dry, Nel­son said.

NEXT: Impact of the Drought on Local Agriculture