While most of us in the Northeast who are plugged in to local agriculture are reveling in our early CSA bounty, many of the producers of this bounty are worrying about the future of this year’s crop.

Laura, a friend in Cambridge, MA, who is a participant in this summer’s Adamah Fellowship in Falls Village, CT, writes on her blog that the Adamah CSA, which delivered its first share this week, is in danger of losing its crop due to the high volume of rain received by the Northeast US in the past few weeks. This amount of rain, combined with the fact that the rain is predicted to continue for several more days at least, and the fact that the farm is located next to a river, mean that it could cost them the viability of many crops, especially so early in the season.

At the end of her post she asks for readers to pray–presumably for NOT rain. An ironic twist on the traditional Geshem prayer said on Sh’mini Atzeret at the end of the Sukkot harvest holiday in the fall. For those of us with a stake in New England and Mid-Atlantic agriculture, we may want to create a new ritual to account for these rare cases of too much rain.

While the prayer for rain, T’fillat Geshem, also references the planting of a tree next to a stream by Abraham, similarly to the placement of the Adamah fields, it takes note of the complicated role rain has played in Jewish tradition, saying:

For a blessing and not for a curse, Amen.

For life and not for death, Amen.

For abundance and not for famine, Amen.

Whether or not this extreme weather pattern is due in part to climate change is unclear, but it seems likely that changes in climate will have myriad impacts on the relationships between Jewish ritual and the earth.