Rain Break of the Bored Farmer

Rain Break of the Bored Farmer

After weeks of rain, the farmers have become restless. You see them in town during the day, loitering around the hardware stores and tractor places. Encounters have always been a brisk howdy-do, a run down on what’s up, and then on their way back to the fields. Now there’s nothing to talk about. No one’s doing anything. They’ve even been seen aimlessly roaming the aisles at Walmart, hunkered amid the screaming kids and harried mothers. Sad.

As a drought-ending deluge this one took as much as it gave. Ruined the winter wheat crop with too much rain, leading to sad spongy kernels flopping at the end of stems. Then created a bumper crop of corn, huge ears on immense stalks, a blessing after the two dried-out harvests before. But another week of rain and it’ll be rotted out, too. We appreciate having lawns again, but would like our gravel driveways back from where the rain has moved them several yards downhill.

Then Saturday morning brought sunny skies. The inland hurricane finally ambled to the east, drenching north Louisiana. Wildflowers responded with pent-up energy, able to open up their blooms unbattered by rain. The prairie fields erupted into a giddy frenzy of butterflies. Humidity evaporating from the fields formed expansive billowing clouds that grew by the minute. Soon the farmers’ unhappy hiatus would be over.

July 8, 2007