In talking to farmers over the years, one of the benefits of farming is that you’re not doing the same thing day in and day out all year long. Variety is what farming life is all about. Keeping several balls in the air at once is what you live for. Its what gives you satisfaction as you reflect on your day those few seconds each night before you go to sleep.
This year though, our farmers who irrigate have been irrigating day in and day out for longer than they can ever remember. Some pivots have been going since May. And those who lay pipe have been changing the gates on those pipes (mostly twice a day) since mid-June.
Ask them how irrigating is going and they just growl and give you this blank stare. It’s like those old computer screens. If you left them on too long whatever was on them would be burned permanently onto the screen. This summer, irrigating has been burned permanently onto the souls of our gravity farmers. Their stare says, “its not supposed to be like this . . . I didn’t sign up for this.”
Farmers are genetically engineered to worry, but after this summer of record drought you can smell their fear and worry that this drought thing might bleed over into next year. Dry land farmers are grieving the loss of their regular crop this year, and, worrying that if it keeps going like this they won’t be farming for much longer.
Farmers are also some of the greatest teachers of hope. If your crop did not come in this year, you plant that seed next year and hope and work and pray that next year it’ll be different. Farmers also prove year in and year out that you can grieve and hope at the same time; you can be pessimistic and optimistic at the same time. Cause you prepare for the worst and hope for the best and then take what you get.
Say an extra prayer for our farmers as they shut down those tired wells and pile up pipe and start getting ready for harvest. God help them as some of them grieve the loss of a crop, and as all of them start thinking about whether they are going to be able to get up the energy to invest in planting the seeds of next year’s harvest, or, . . . not.
Grace & Peace,
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