Six tenths an inch last night. Put together with the totals for the last eight or nine days, that would be six inches. And we are not the hardest hit. Today's broadcast news weather cutie (male this time) expects Houston to hit eighteen inches.
Amazing how these television millionaires can prattle on about astonishing weather events without ever dropping the word "climate" into the monologue. Their billionaire corporate overlords don't want climate talked about. It makes them uncomfortable. Ostriches.
Here, with the rains of the last week in mid September, we are headed for another fall of mud, the farm full of places the tractors can't go, and increasingly, even the cattle. Third straight year now and as I said yesterday, in hindsight it is pretty clear that the trend since I started ridge til in the early nineties through to today is toward wetter. That is why the difficulty with small grain seedings and the increasing impossibility of putting the cattle on the crop acres.
Another healthy dose of rain headed our way on Friday night.
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
rain
I woke last night at four o'clock to the sound of rain on the roof. I cannot sleep while it rains. This has been going on for some time, since the early nineties, I think. That is when rain started seriously interfering with my farming plans. I had started a project of ridge til then and pretty immediately became aware that it was not a good fit for my poorly drained and low lying soils. Ridge til lasted perhaps five years for me.
Looking back at my forty plus years of farming I now see that I was only successful at any kind of small grain in two of them, both years immediately following drought years: 1977, my first year, and then again in 1989. These two years, and these years only, I was able to be early enough with seeding and was rewarded with a respectable crop.
One way of understanding my farming years would be to call it an ongoing search for a crop rotation that could be built around corn, the only crop generally successful here. After a few moves at peas and one or two years of fall seeded grains, soybeans were given the boost out of the rotation-they never grew well on this farm-and we began to take a serious look at fall seeded small grains again.
But the most success has come with a major move toward forage and grazing. Forty per cent of our crop acreage in any given year is in hay. Often the need to bring stock off the pastures in late summer benefited the crop rotation. The cattle could take a cover crop mix by grazing, thus resting the pastures. The trouble is that for the last three years, and it looks to continue this year, this practice is not available either. The cattle have waded around in mud tromping down most of what they should have eaten. This year we have them on oats that were seeded on prevented planting acres and they have the entire sward covered in mud, shortening the feed supply by perhaps a week.
The rain that woke me up last night was an inch and three tenths. This followed two and a half inches four days earlier and three quarters of an inch twice in the week before that. And as usual, we didn't get the worst of it. I don't know where the cattle should go when we have to pull them off. They will be destructive wherever. Rain chance tonight 70%. One more ruined night's sleep.
And the urban people, our customers, think the rain problem is only serious if it ruins the weekend. Few know how close we are to a serious food issue.
Looking back at my forty plus years of farming I now see that I was only successful at any kind of small grain in two of them, both years immediately following drought years: 1977, my first year, and then again in 1989. These two years, and these years only, I was able to be early enough with seeding and was rewarded with a respectable crop.
One way of understanding my farming years would be to call it an ongoing search for a crop rotation that could be built around corn, the only crop generally successful here. After a few moves at peas and one or two years of fall seeded grains, soybeans were given the boost out of the rotation-they never grew well on this farm-and we began to take a serious look at fall seeded small grains again.
But the most success has come with a major move toward forage and grazing. Forty per cent of our crop acreage in any given year is in hay. Often the need to bring stock off the pastures in late summer benefited the crop rotation. The cattle could take a cover crop mix by grazing, thus resting the pastures. The trouble is that for the last three years, and it looks to continue this year, this practice is not available either. The cattle have waded around in mud tromping down most of what they should have eaten. This year we have them on oats that were seeded on prevented planting acres and they have the entire sward covered in mud, shortening the feed supply by perhaps a week.
The rain that woke me up last night was an inch and three tenths. This followed two and a half inches four days earlier and three quarters of an inch twice in the week before that. And as usual, we didn't get the worst of it. I don't know where the cattle should go when we have to pull them off. They will be destructive wherever. Rain chance tonight 70%. One more ruined night's sleep.
And the urban people, our customers, think the rain problem is only serious if it ruins the weekend. Few know how close we are to a serious food issue.
Monday, September 9, 2019
My grandfather's hands
Today we weaned and moved pigs, my grandson and I, and I powerwashed the feeders we would use later. As I pulled my hand out from the feeder holes I knocked it against the side. I felt it without really noticing it. A minute or two later I looked down to see blood streaming down the backs of my fingers from a quarter inch chunk of loose skin on the back of my hand.
Then I remembered my grandfather's hands when he came out to help my Dad years ago. His hands too were hard in the palm from years and years of callous upon callous. His fingernails were thick, some were bent and twisted and needed to be trimmed with a sharp pocketknife. But the skin on the backs of his hands was paper thin and could be knocked open by the slightest blow. I have gotten to where my grandfather was in the 1950's seventy years ago.
I was rueful, but not terrified at the thought. There is after all a certain rightness to it. I come from a line of peasants, people of the land, back through my Dad and then both my grandfathers and as far back as I know; poor and destitute sometimes, some were orphans, some manic depressive. There must have been a few liars, though I know nothing of that. For generations on the male side we have understood the pressing need to somehow make it go, to provide for children, to farm the land and to keep and protect wives. If that meant damage to hands or other body parts, so be it. If it meant risk and loss and too much work and no sleep, we would put up with it.
But I am terrified. Because for generations now, we have been taught to scorn and make fun of men like me, like my father and grandfather. Feminists have done it, and I suppose they have their good reasons, but so has everyone else. I mean no disrespect for the female side of my ancestry for they may well have suffered more and worked harder for the family, the community and the land than we males did. But I understand it as a man. And I pop awake sometimes at two in the morning, terrified at the prospects for my children and grandchildren and as yet unborn great grandchildren. And I fear especially for my grandsons and their sons. For we have chosen instead of respect, love, and a place for young working class men, scorn and rejection and the result all too often is a young white male full of blinding rage emptying a military weapon into a crowd of people.
Then I remembered my grandfather's hands when he came out to help my Dad years ago. His hands too were hard in the palm from years and years of callous upon callous. His fingernails were thick, some were bent and twisted and needed to be trimmed with a sharp pocketknife. But the skin on the backs of his hands was paper thin and could be knocked open by the slightest blow. I have gotten to where my grandfather was in the 1950's seventy years ago.
I was rueful, but not terrified at the thought. There is after all a certain rightness to it. I come from a line of peasants, people of the land, back through my Dad and then both my grandfathers and as far back as I know; poor and destitute sometimes, some were orphans, some manic depressive. There must have been a few liars, though I know nothing of that. For generations on the male side we have understood the pressing need to somehow make it go, to provide for children, to farm the land and to keep and protect wives. If that meant damage to hands or other body parts, so be it. If it meant risk and loss and too much work and no sleep, we would put up with it.
But I am terrified. Because for generations now, we have been taught to scorn and make fun of men like me, like my father and grandfather. Feminists have done it, and I suppose they have their good reasons, but so has everyone else. I mean no disrespect for the female side of my ancestry for they may well have suffered more and worked harder for the family, the community and the land than we males did. But I understand it as a man. And I pop awake sometimes at two in the morning, terrified at the prospects for my children and grandchildren and as yet unborn great grandchildren. And I fear especially for my grandsons and their sons. For we have chosen instead of respect, love, and a place for young working class men, scorn and rejection and the result all too often is a young white male full of blinding rage emptying a military weapon into a crowd of people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
