Under a blazing sun, Calvert County farmer David A. Cox Sr. stood beside the 7-acre tobacco field he had planted around Memorial Day and dragged his boot through ash-colored soil.
Instead of darker, wetter dirt an inch or two down, there's just more gray dust. The tobacco leaves are beginning to yellow for lack of water, and the plants are no bigger than basketballs.
"If this was a normal season, they would probably be approaching our waists," Cox said. "It's a rough year. It hasn't rained on us since we planted it. But it's still holding its own, and if we get rain tonight, it will take off strong again."
That's the sort of optimism that is required of a farmer. Behind him on his 365-acre Spider Hall Farm near Prince Frederick stood broad fields of stunted corn, most of it barely 4 feet tall. By this time of year, it should be 8 or 9 feet high, he said. The cobs are half as long as they should be, with only a scattering of kernels.
"It's done," Cox said. The corn is a total loss, along with all he spent on seed, fertilizer and weed killer. He got his oats and hay in before the drought struck. But he might not be able to plant pumpkins without rain very soon.
Forecasters predict a 60 percent to 80 percent chance of rain and cooler temperatures Saturday in Calvert County. But that would only be a down payment on what farmers in Southern Maryland and the Lower Eastern Shore need to salvage a growing season that has been battered by drought and extreme heat.
Calvert County lies at the center of a region of "severe" drought from southern Anne Arundel County to the Patuxent River. "Moderate" drought extends from eastern Frederick County to western Harford, through Baltimore, south and east to the Lower Eastern Shore, according to the government's weekly Drought Monitor map.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 38 percent of Maryland's corn crop in "poor" to "very poor" condition. Forty-two percent of the soybean crop was similarly rated.
Drive Calvert's two-lane roads these days and you see brown grass, stunted corn and swirling dust devils. The air smells like straw. Ranks of puffy, white clouds cross a pale blue sky without giving up any moisture.
Cox, 50, whose family has been farming near Prince Frederick since the 1830s, says three of the past four seasons have been dry. But this is the worst he can remember since 1983, when drought contributed to the collapse of the local tobacco market. Prices plunged from $1.80 a pound at auction to 10 cents a pound.
"A lot of farmers had operating loans and mortgages to pay, so they had to sell the land," he said. "That's when the change occurred." He believes the crash accelerated the county's transformation from primarily rural to increasingly suburban.
But Cox and his wife, Susan, hung on. She's been a teacher and principal in county and private schools, and her income helped sustain the small Cox farm on the Patuxent River and another that they own. Together, the two comprise 100 acres.
Six years ago, they were able to buy the much larger Spider Hall when the couple who owned it retired. It offered more land, beautiful vistas and deep quiet reaching nearly a mile back from the road. There's an old frame house that they rent and a collection of century-old outbuildings.
Susan Cox said her husband has "a deep connection to the earth, and he's a man of faith."
That's what keeps them going in the face of killing heat and drought.
That, and their four kids. Catherine, 24, earned a degree in biology and has come back to the farm. Charles, 20, is headed to Virginia Tech this fall to study agriculture.
"He wants to be the farmer," Susan said proudly. Spider Hall is really for him and the couple's other children.
It's a brave decision in a county that is losing its farms and its agricultural infrastructure — the farm organizations, the seed and equipment dealers that farms rely on. Since the county tobacco auctions closed, Cox has had to drive his leaf to Pennsylvania.
"Charlie," as his mother calls him, doesn't seem fazed.
"I love it," he said. Tall and tan in boots, jeans, a sleeveless top and grimy baseball cap, he looks the part and seems fully capable of taking over someday.
"If you love farming, there's no better job," he said. "You can be your own boss. You see the entire process, from the seed being planted in the ground to the full product — hopefully, the maximum yield the plant can handle. I really don't want to do anything else."
But it goes deeper than that, Charles said.
"We've been on that land since 1831. When I tell people that, they're amazed. We're part of the county's and the nation's heritage. It's a privilege."
Still, when your fall tuition at Virginia Tech depends on the harvest in a drought year, it's also a worry.
The level of spring-fed water in Spider Hall's small farm pond is dropping, even as the Coxes run pipe over a hill to carry water to the small cornfield they planted beside the road to become a corn maze for the public in the fall.
"The maze is dying," Susan Cox said.
If it survives, the 8-acre maze is a piece of what Susan, David, Charles and Catherine hope will become a productive new subsidiary of their farm operation — agricultural tourism. It would go a long way toward keeping Spider Hall viable as a family business in a time when small family farms are vanishing.
As an educator, Susan sees an opportunity to bring school and church groups, families and even hospice patients to Spider Hall to learn where their food comes from, to enjoy the rural scenery, ride a hay wagon, soak up the sound of rustling corn, the smells, the peace and the silence.
As the child of government employees in Montgomery County, she said, "I had no clue what this meant" when she married David 28 years ago. "My gift to this place is agricultural education."
But they'll still need rain.
"There's a nice breeze coming from the south," Susan said. That should bring moisture off the ocean. "So I'm encouraged."
Her husband squinted into the sky. Eventually it has to rain.
"That's when I get my paycheck, when it rains," he said. "That's sweet."
For information about Spider Hall Farm, e-mail coxfarm1@verizon.net