All summer Rob Johanson pumped water. He co-owns Goranson Farm, a hundred-acre organic operation in Dresden, Maine, where his family has worked the same ground since the 1960s. Through the driest months of 2025, he ran his irrigation on a constant loop. Three thousand feet of underground pipe pulling from the Eastern River, hydrants every three hundred feet, water spreading across fields that his father and grandfather farmed without any of it. He'd finish irrigating the whole place in about a week. Then he'd start again.
The soil at Goranson is Allagash Fine Sandy Loam, ancient riverbottom. Less than 2% of Maine's farmland has it. Fertile, good for most crops. The farm's own website says it "doesn't resist drought as easily as many heavier soil types found in most of Maine." For three generations that was a footnote. Maine is a wet state. Roughly 10% of its farmland has ever been irrigated. After the early-2000s drought, the state entered the wettest period in its climate record going back to 1895. Rain came. You planned around it.
Johanson had been planning around its absence for years, each season adding more pipe, more cost. He'd buried the main system, built two ponds to pump from, kept adding organic matter to help the sandy soil hold moisture. He needs one inch of water per week for his crops. He can deliver it. "The vagaries of the weather these days makes it very difficult," he's said. Consistent yields require consistent rain, and consistent rain is what Maine used to be.
Summer 2025 was Maine's sixth-driest on record. Nearly three inches below the historical average of eleven. Temperatures ran two degrees above normal all summer, the dry air pulling moisture from plants faster than anyone expected. By November, 81% of the state was in severe or extreme drought. 541 private wells ran dry. The blueberry industry lost an estimated $30 million.
The state's Drought Relief Fund disbursed about $438,000 in its first year. Ten farms drilled wells. Four built ponds. The math is what it is. The 2026 goal is $1.2 million for roughly forty more farms.
Johanson is now installing two additional center-pivot systems on top of everything he's already built. Center-pivot machines run more than $60,000 apiece. As of March 2026, 91% of Maine has drought conditions. Spring flood risk is below normal because even the melting snowpack can't refill the aquifers. He keeps building capacity, more expense every year, against a climate his family farmed for six decades without needing any of it.
He can do everything right. The rain still has to come back.