El Nino

 Are we seeing the end of El Nino here at the end of March?  Temps have retreated to a somewhat more expectable level and now we have eight or nine inches of snow on the ground.  Maybe the alliance between climate change and the Nino pattern is over for the time being.  

So, on with mud season.  It looks as if we will need to focus now on getting the machines ready to plant the crop and patch the pastures and hay fields.  The corn markets have so far fallen out of bed as to make us question once again the wisdom of even planting the crop.  

But our major possible alternative, grazing, is problematic too.  It is impossible for us to project any real possibility of profit with calves and stocker animals at the price being paid today.  Contract grazing seems the only way to go so it is going to be time to start looking for someone with more animals to graze than they have grass.  Of course that means we must accurately estimate the amount of grass we will have.

No one ever said any of this would be easy. 

spooky

 March is often the snowiest stormiest season we have.  So far this year, somewhat like the winter we just had, March is quiet, warm and dry.  Anyone who has anything to do with growing plants and/or animals is spooked.  This is nowhere near normal and it feels as if we should stop pretending it is.  

For farmers, job one is coping with the season's weather. After we have done our best with that, after we have modified the seed order, or put in changes in the cropping pattern to respond to the warming, drying soil and hot daytime temps we are all afraid we are going to see again we will have to figure out how to cope.

Farmers, especially those operating livestock and diversified farms do not have the option to "work remotely" or cut back hours or do any of the things that people sometimes are able to do to cope with bad weather or disease.  Farmers cannot sit in the house, turn the air conditioning up and farm from there!  Much as the thought leaders we are so plagued with would argue for some or another "easy way out" there really isn't any.  We, like our plants and our animals will simply have to go through it.

Cropping patterns and livestock breeding schedules are what they are for a reason, or for a variety of reasons.  They cannot, and certainly should not, be changed at the drop of a hat.  Yet the weather and the climate are changing and we have to take up the work of deciding how and under what circumstances we will change.  

There is this.  The very fact that we must suffer through whatever the universe has planned or whatever adversity we have brought on ourselves means that we will be paying attention.  And if we cannot look away and entertain ourselves elsewhere, so to speak, we should therefore be encouraged with the fact that we will be focused in a way that no remote and detached investor ever is.  We have, as the saying goes, "skin in the game".  Do we ever, and the thought is terrifying in view of what we are told is probably coming.  

We have long operated this farm under the idea that "closest to nature is best"  and "get mother nature on your side.  She works for a minimum wage" and so forth.  Nature is changing of course, due at least to the warming temperatures.  But nature is still more constant, and more reliable than say, politics.  Or the market economy.  Nature can teach us things worth knowing.  It is doubtful that politics or economics can, with the kind of upheaval we are likely moving into.