Most of us make brave noises about how we like the warmer weather and are enjoying it. But those of us who live close to the weather and close to the cycles of the earth have a feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop. There is a deep unease. We have caused a problem we may not be able to solve, we fear. What if the corn crop next year, for reasons we can't suss out right now, fails the way the pastures have failed the past two seasons?
It is a strange start to winter. We have had the occasional freezing temperature but for most of the fall and early winter we are above freezing most of the daylight hours. Not especially unusual for November, but well out of the ordinary for January. El Nino gets mentioned. We are reminded every day by the internet and radio chatter that climate change is now upon us. It is a worry.
We depend so upon winter being winter. We need the soil to freeze to help us erase compaction mistakes from the season and to improve soil drainage for next year. We need it to clear and cleanse the air we breathe. It seems now as if I have an ongoing head cold because allergies and sore throats as well as froggy voice come so often, seemingly each episode on top of the last. Irises are reported up along some of our building foundations.
The best farming advice I can notice tells us to spread our risks, to prepare for a wet season as well as a dry one, to look for both hotter and colder temps than usual, to expect more disease in the livestock while we hope for less. Diversity is our best hedge against an unknown and unknowable future. Planning to make a bonanza yield is out. Staving off disaster by hedging our bets is the thing.
We should remember that this posture, spreading our bets and not going whole hog for anything, is what farming was formerly good at, before crop insurance and this whole attitude of living via the internet in some kind of eternal present. We need to be people for whom the next tough time is as real as the last one, for whom preparation is everything, who know to not bet the farm on anything but ourselves, that we have to trust people beginning with trusting ourselves.
And we need to reach out for our neighbor's hand to proceed into the future together. We better hope that hand is still there.
