Typical Year, Average Farm??????

I have often heard other farmers and ranchers say one of the things they like about being involved in production agriculture is that no two days are ever the same. For the most part I have to say I agree with that, the challenge of the unknown is often what makes our job interesting. However, the unknown can also be quite maddening.

I have often said that there is no such thing as an average temperature, average rainfall, average snowfall, well, you get the idea. I am not sure I ever remember a year that was average. Average is the middle between the two extremes and I am quite certain we spend a good portion of our lives closer to the extremes than the average. To be honest it is kind of refreshing in a world where we try to control just about everything to know that the weather is still out of our grasp.

Harvest this year has been frustrating, to say the least. Crops have been slow to dry down and we have had to hit the pause button a couple of times. I like harvest the best when we can start and keep running without any pauses. One of the hardest things I have had to learn in agriculture is that nature has its own schedule and there is nothing you can do about it.

Often I am asked by non-farm people to give them an idea of what the typical farm year looks like. I often laugh and then give very vague answers. Yes, the typical farm year or the typical farm calendar is much like the average rainfall. Everything happens in its own time, especially fall harvest. I have explained that harvest can start in August, but that is often a bad sign. Usually that means drought and bad crops. We have also seen harvest last until November and that is usually a good sign, but it is also much more stressful.

I am not sure that anyone not associated with agriculture truly understands how much we are at the mercy of the weather. I have often heard that farmers are the only business people who don’t know how much they are going to produce or how much they will get paid for what they do produce before the business cycle starts. It takes the faith of a farmer to dive into the deep end of production agriculture.

So what good does it do us to explain all of this uncertainty to our non-ag brethren?  First, it helps to make them understand just a little better how fragile our way of life is. We have no idea when we will be faced with catastrophic weather events and we often are faced with a couple each year. Hopefully, it will help them to understand just how difficult it is to bring them the full shelves they enjoy at their local grocery store.

We also need to explain that the highs and lows in production have been greatly off set by our new technologies. Rarely do we ever see a complete crop failure but we all know it could still happen. However, thanks to technology like gmo crops we usually produce something. That alone is amazing given the unknowns we face.

The Farm Bill and most specifically crop insurance is the best reason for us to help the general public understand the uncertainty we face each year. The promise of crop insurance helps ease the fear of the unknown. Without it I suspect many of my Western Kansas friends would not have made it through their extended drought. Many would have gone out of business and then where would we be? I am not sure but it is something I do not want to think about. Food security is the cornerstone of all great societies and I like to think we are one of them and therefore protecting our food supply should be of paramount importance to us. Crop insurance and the support of it in the Farm Bill is the key to that.

They say change is the spice of life and nothing changes more than the weather. If that is the case, then I guess all of us in agriculture like our lives spicy. Although judging by the heartburn I feel each time I look at the forecast maybe bland wouldn’t be so bad. Who am I kidding? That would make things just a little too boring and boring is not what I signed up for.

Thoughts From the Rainy Season

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear. I am not going to complain about the rain, nor will I ever complain about the rain again. I know we have had quite a bit here in the month of June but I also know that it can shut off and we may not have any rain in the month of July. I also know that someone reading this will still be dealing with dry conditions and it just seems wrong to complain about rain. Of course, I am also aware of the fact that it will either be dry or wet and there is nothing I can do about it.

However, as I sit here I have become painfully aware of certain things during this wet stretch of weather. Let’s just say that I have had too much time to think about things. Therefore, I have decided to share my random thoughts from the monsoon season with you. Please hold your applause, and you can thank me later.

Random thought #1; nothing feels better than a rainy morning after a long stretch of dry weather. May was fairly dry and it allowed us to finish planting just ahead of the start of this unsettled weather pattern (that is some of my best metrological terminology). The first morning of waking up to rain on the roof and being able to enjoy my morning coffee watching the rain was wonderful. It is an experience that is second only to the first day back in the tractor seat when the weather finally straightens out again.

Mud is the by-product of wet weather and it is easy to deal with at first but it soon grows tiresome.  Mud tends to be everywhere; you can’t walk out of the house without getting some on you. After a couple of days wearing rubber knee boots, nothing is more refreshing that the first day it is dry enough to do chores in your leather boots.  Dumping water out of feed bunks goes hand in hand with doing chores in the mud. The water that is dumped out of the bunk has nowhere to go and you can’t get away from it. It did make me wonder if the EPA would designate the water in the feed bunks or in my boots as “Waters of the USA”.

I am always amazed at how slow days go by but how fast weeks seem to disappear. A day of being stuck in the house seems to last forty eight hours but I think someone must have misprinted the calendars this year. It seems as though they missed the first two weeks of June, we can’t possibly be nearing the end of the month; I have too much that didn’t get done. I don’t necessarily need both missing weeks back but an additional seven days in June would be nice.

Each year I forget what humidity is like. I just cannot get used to those mornings where it never gets below seventy-five degrees or seventy-five percent humidity. You have to love those mornings when shortly after starting chores you have already sweated through your hat and have sweat dripping off your nose.  While humidity is a bad thing for fat guys like me, I am amazed at how fast plants grow.  My corn seemed to grow several inches each hour, unfortunately so does the grass in my lawn. I guess you can’t have one without the other; at least I had time to mow the lawn.

Finally, I have asked myself over and over just why Noah decided to take those two mosquitoes on the Ark. I cannot think of any good reason for the mosquito’s existence on this earth. He probably did not intend to take any with him and they just showed up, much like they just show up anytime I am outside right now. I just wish he had packed a fly swatter and taken care of them and the flies while he had time during his period of unsettled weather.

I know I am whining and I should not be. I am very grateful for the rain and I really hope it keeps coming. I can deal with the side effects of precipitation because it is a lot easier to deal with too much rain than too little. Nothing is more miserable than to have nothing to do because everything is burning up during a drought. I guess in the end mud, humidity and mosquitoes are a good problem to have.