Hands on her pajamaed hips, Kiah assumed an injured expression and accused, “Mine blanket did this to me!”

I’m not buying it, baby girl; something tells me you made your blanket wet instead of the other way around. I do, however, appreciate your innocent inability to think that your own bladder could have done this to you while you slept. Kiah has been wearing “unders” to bed for the past week or two, a battle I didn’t expect to not even be a battle, and her full confidence in her body is commendable.

I’m just left wishing we also had a magical blanket of sorts to envelop the surrounding fields. Obviously the comparison struggles a little, as we would prefer a very different liquid to wake up to being saturated with…although at this point, farmers might take anything.

“Wet blankets” are generally fun-spoilers and killjoys, but whatever is wet sounds like a party these days. We’ve had such promising skies in the past few weeks — I call it Ohio weather, gray and cloudy, but to finish the similarity it would have to actually rain.

Perhaps you’ve been in the blessed portions of the area that have received some precipitation; I know it’s happened, just not here. I overheard one man declaring he had rain on one side of his house, yet the other was dry, which sounds about right for how localized some of the rainfall has been.

We have had spritzes and raindrops here and there, just enough to keep hope alive but not necessarily the wheat. I’ve done what I can when clouds start to form: hang out laundry, start mowing, take a walk, whatever to tempt the rain into dumping down. I thought it had worked the one day, when towards the end of mowing the whole climate seemed to change in a minute; it turned from warm sunshine to dusty blasts of cold wind and scattered pelting raindrops under a greenish-grayish sky. I zoomed through the last passes of the lawn bumping as fast as this pregnant belly could handle, parked the mower, and hustled across the driveway to the house barely ahead of the downpour.

The downpour … that never materialized, instead wafting away in the wind as quickly as it had pretended to come. Within five minutes, all was clear and calm again. I should have just found somewhere to keep mowing to keep it going.

Other days brought plenty of rainy-day vibes to encourage activities like hot tea drinking, soup making, and bread baking. But we stopped at vibes alone, and vibes don’t get row crops planted.

And this week’s forecast doesn’t look overly promising anymore, with hot windy days of increased evaporation. I want to say there’s always next week, but at some point it will be too late for farmers.

Join with us in praying for rain, actual rain that soaks in and replenishes the earth. Kiah may have misunderstood how bed-wetting works, but she gets how earth-wetting works — anything weather-wise, from rain to sunsets to blue skies, gets the exclamation, “Jesus made that!”

No amount of hopefully-rainy-day soup or magical wet blankets will do what prayer and patience can. I’ll probably still make soup just in case it helps at all, though.

Soupy Chicken Stirfry

This “soup” is a lovely meal for these in-between days, that start cold and probably get hot but might not; it’s very summery and fits with whatever fresh veg you have, but feels just a bit on the cozier side with its warm brothy nature. I suggest making extra fried peanuts for snacking on while you finish cooking.

Prep tips: I do not love when veggies are cut too big to fit in my mouth, especially in a soup where they also need to fit on a spoon; so here we are copying the julienne-style cut of a stirfry but making sure the veg aren’t too long.

• coconut or peanut oil
• ¾ cup peanuts
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced pole-to-pole
• 3 medium carrots, cut in short juliennes
• 1 large red/orange sweet pepper, cut in short juliennes
• 1” knob fresh ginger, minced
• 3 cups good chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 cups diced cooked chicken
• 2 cups broccoli florets, bitesize
• ¼ of a small cabbage, shredded

Heat a dollop of oil in a soup pot, and fry peanuts until toasty; scoop out of the pan and set aside. Heat another dollop of oil, and saute onions until softening; add in carrots and pepper and cook until crisp-tender. Add remaining ingredients, including reserved peanuts, and simmer until veg are all tender. Serve in soup bowls with (brown) rice and more soy sauce.

Lettuce Eat Local is a weekly local foods column by Amanda Miller, who lives in rural Reno County on the family dairy farm with her husband and two small children. Send feedback and recipe ideas to hyperpeanutbutter@gmail.com.