I woke up to lightening on Sunday night and had a flashback
of the rain and storms from earlier this summer.
After not hearing any rain fall to the ground, I fell back asleep.
Yesterday morning, I asked the farmer if it had rained and if it was going to.
"It just missed us," he said.
"Do we need it?" I replied.
"I wouldn't turn it down."
There you have it, a month ago we were praying it would stop and I was tearing up every time it rained. Now it's been just hot enough that we need a little rain for our crops.
It's always one or the other it seems.
But as dad always said, "it's just part of it."
Below is my most recent article in Farm Indiana about the rain, my tears and what is just part of this so called farm life that we are so blessed to have.
***
It has stopped, for now. I’m sure there will be more but maybe the
next hour will go by without any and hopefully another hour after that. I’m talking about the rain, and as I write
this I am becoming more anxious each day for our farm, my family’s farm where I
grew up, my farmer and all the Indiana farmers I work for.
Most of the time, rain makes me peaceful and want to
wrap-up in a blanket and read a good book.
It makes my flowers grow so I don’t have to water them and puts me to
sleep, a nice sleep. These days, I can’t
fall asleep when it’s raining. And when
I fall asleep to rain and wake up to more rain it brings back memories I don’t
really like to think about too often.
The rain this year has reminded me of the flood of
2008 which was not only a nightmare but a disaster. The rain put me to sleep that night, but I
woke up to my sister barreling down the stairs yelling “we’re stuck! It’s been
raining all night, we are stuck on the hill!”
At that moment, I knew it was bad.
The ground had been saturated from several days of rain before the all
night downpour. Before I opened my eyes,
I said a little pray and then headed for the kitchen where I knew my farmer dad
would be watching the weather forecast.
He was leaning on the kitchen counter, trying not to sulk in the reality
of what was happening. We made eye
contact and he said,
“Get your boots and jackets, we are going to check the
river.”
As we piled into his truck, rain still hitting the
windshield, I was praying it wasn’t that bad.
Surely the river was just out a little, like it usually is and it would
be fine. It was still early June, still
time to replant the crops. But no, the
worst had happened. The creek had turned
into the river and the river had turned into the Mississippi. At no other time in my life had I seen my
father’s face look so shocked, sad, upset and angry all at once. I think it was mostly shock as he said, “Girls,
I have never seen it this way. Not in my
lifetime. I bet some of the old timers haven’t
even seen this.” And he was right, they
hadn’t. We headed back to the farm and
stopped at Grandma’s house to tell her.
She hugged us all and tried to hold back her tears.
That’s what I tried to do then and have been trying to
do this summer, hold back my tears for my farmer and my family. Most people don’t understand though. I moved from our farm to the city the day
after the big flood in 2008. It was hard
for me to leave home during such a disaster, but I closely monitored the damage
and recovery from afar that summer while working and living in the city. When the flood happened and my hometown of
Martinsville, along with many others like Columbus, were covered in water, all
I wanted to do was return home to help.
I wanted to help my grandma clean up her flooded basement and help families
in town that lost their homes to the river.
No one in the city really understood, let alone understood why I wanted
to just go “home”. Well my home was the
ground that was flooded and covered in Mother Nature’s tears.
I sent my girlfriends a
text recently about how emotional I have been about the weather. A few of them had no clue, they live in the
city. Memories of 2008 came to mind and
tears started to fill my eyes, but I held them back.
What I have learned about
farmers in my 29 years of life is that they are resilient, in so many
ways. A flooded field, horrible drought,
fluctuating markets, sick animals and accidents on the farm may knock us down but
we do get back up. As my farmer says,
“we
are going to get through it and it’s going to be okay.”
Our home is the ground we
live, work and die on and where our blood and sweat saturate the dirt under our
feet. Some tears may fall from our eyes but we don’t let them hit the ground,
especially these days when Mother Nature is doing plenty of that on her
own. Those of us that have dirt in our
blood understand what my dad used to always say to me, “It’s just part of it”.
Next year, rain or shine, flood or drought we
will get back up.
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