Thankful Thursday ~ State of the Farm

Hey Everyone!

Happy Thursday ! 

Things have been busy around here lately. Jeff and I were on vacation visiting family in Iowa, which you can read a bit about in my previous Thankful Thursday post. Then, we were home for a few days before some great friends of mine came from Seattle for a visit of about four days. I'll write a bit more about that soon, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, for the most part it has continued to be dry, dry, dry with the weather. Jeff just showed me the drought report put out by our local tv news station...

We are located near Havre on that map, in the peachy-tan colored section. So, we're not as bad as some parts of the state, but we're still pretty bad. We have not had much rain at all this year, which makes it pretty difficult to grow crops.

Then, on July 4th we had some "fireworks," brought to us by Mother Nature by way of a severe thunderstorm with rain and the four-letter H word. Yep, you guessed it.. hail. There was actually a tornado warning issued for part of our county. 

To add insult to injury in a dry, dry growing season, we then were hit with sideways hail. On the land that Jeff and I farm, we received hail damage to some extent on 100% of our crops. Tom (Jeff's Dad) had hail damage on some of his land, too. Both farms were reeling from droughthy weather. Some of our neighbors literally have no crop left standing in the field. With harvest just around the corner, their crops are completely totaled out already. 

You can see how the wheat is literally laying down.
The power of strong wind and hail.

So why do I bring all of this up? There are a fair number of friends and family who read this blog because they like to know what is going on here on the farm. Now you know. I'm not writing about this to gain sympathy or to share a sob story. It's simply statement of fact as to how the year is going. I.e. not very well. 

But what we must do, despite everything, or rather, IN SPITE of it all, is try to remain positive and thankful for what we do have. In agriculture, we are completely at the mercy of the weather. We cannot control it. We can do everything we can to plan and prepare for how we expect weather conditions to unfold according to typical weather patterns for our area, but when we have an off-year, that's just how it is. Not every year is going to be tremendous. Most will be average. When bad years or bad things happen, we have to learn from it, if possible, and move on. 

And just to lighten the mood while emphasizing my point, please watch this video from The Lion King:

"It doesn't matter-- it's in the past!"

What happens, happens. And, it really DOESN'T matter, because it's in the past! We can't change the past. What we can control is our own behaviors and actions in the moment and going forward.

Is it easy to let go? Hell no! Does it still suck when bad things happen? Absolutely. But I believe that a person can recognize, acknowledge, and give some weight to the negative emotions we feel due to bad circumstances, learn from them, and then let go and move forward. Try to make the best of what's still here to work with.

Rather timely, I'd add, another blog that I follow posted this article this week: Things You Gain When You Let Go Of Control. It's all about letting go of what you can't control, giving space to those things, and relishing what you can control, which is really only yourself. When you do that, you find that you're more able to recognize the good and the peace in what is all around you, and in yourself. I think the best quote of the entire article is this: "If you want to control your cows, give them a bigger pasture." Ponder that one for a while. :)

And so, even as the summer drags on, with whatever mixed bag of tricks Mother Nature still has in store for us, I remind myself of some of the many reasons I still am glad to be here. What we do on our farm helps feed a hungry world. Today's modern agricultural practices feed more people than ever before, and we are part of that. Every bit of grain we will harvest in the coming weeks, even though it's less than we originally thought we would have, helps to serve others. That's something to be proud of and to be thankful for.

I'll leave you with this Wendell Berry excerpt. There's a lot in there that rings true.


Happy Thursday, everyone! 
What are you thankful for this week?