By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

1And then it started raining. And raining. And raining.

Now, virtually all of northwest Kansas will end the year with above-average precipitation.

Goodland should end the year above average, even though halfway through the year conditions were fast becoming dire.

Sharon Springs farmer Bill Mai had only received about 41âÑ2 inches of rain by the end of June. The Goodland National Weather Service had measured only 4 inches of rain -- more than 5 inches below normal.

"We're dry, dry, dry, dry," Jeanne Falk said at the time. Falk is the Kansas State University agronomist who covers Wallace, Sherman and Cheyenne counties.

So dry, in fact, that Doug Austin, St. Francis, wasn't holding out much hope for recovery.

"I told people we're going to have to get what is average every day," Austin said as he swathed paltry stands of grass along Kansas Highway 27 north of Goodland. "The ground is dry way down."

"It's pretty dry," said Brian Eicher, as he worked ground just outside Brewster. "We did have a pretty good wheat crop, but it was from the snow two years ago."

That's been a familiar tale, farmers talking about how heavy snow in the final days of 2006 continued to shore up soil moisture supplies for growing crops.

But those reserves were running out quickly, and farmers knew it.

Dryland corn was faltering, stunted by high heat and low moisture.

Terry Ostmeyer, a teacher and farmer in Gove County, was concerned about the health of a patch of corn next to a field he was working on in preparation for planting this fall.

"This is terrible right here," Ostmeyer said, pulling back the husk on an ear of corn. "It may get chopped."

In the end, that field, farmed by Ostmeyer and his father, Ralph Ostmeyer, who also serves as a state Senator from Grinnell, was cut early for silage.

"We've been in a drought here for fall crops for five to six years," Terry Ostmeyer said.

Farmers were spoiled, he said, because the 1990s were excellent crop years.

"We're just going to get 15 to 18 inches of rain every year," Ostmeyer said, a fact farmers must recognize when they make farming plans.

Despite dry conditions at the time in Gove County, Ralph Ostmeyer said conditions were even worse to the west and north.

"You get from Brewster to Goodland, it's worse," he said. "Right now, we're looking at half a crop. If it doesn't rain, we'll be hurting."

And without rain, he predicted only about a third of a crop.

It did rain, however, but it didn't come in time for some of the corn.

"It saved the crop," Ralph Ostmeyer said after the rains fell. "The corn you were looking at, it's in the silo."

The rains were too late for pastures or hayfields that farmers swathed to feed cattle this winter.

"I haven't had cattle on my mother's ground for three years," Austin said as he took a break swathing grass along the highway.

This year, he was expecting to get about 60 bales from the highway; last year, he got 500 bales.

He cut the ditch all the way from Wheeler to a few miles north of Goodland.

Conditions are so poor, he said, that "it's hard to get enthused about getting out here."

"It's so spotty," Ed Harold said of the rainfall pattern.

He had hopes, however, of enrolling some of his land in a government program that could help him increase the size of his cow herd, which he was forced to liquidate in 2002 when conditions turned horrible.

"Right now, I'm down to 30," Harold said of the size of his cow herd. "I was close to a hundred."

Ever optimistic, he said conditions still could improve if rain started falling.

True to those words, that night he had 4 inches of rain -- and the pastures started recuperating.

It didn't stop there.

Since then, heavy rains have fallen.

At the weather bureau office in Goodland, more than 6 inches fell in August. That was followed by 2 inches in September and an unusual 4.28 inches in October.

Before the rains, however, Terry Ostmeyer acknowledged the mood was sour because of the lack of rain.

"The one thing we need the most, we have no control over," he said.