Would You Rather it be Too Wet, or Too Dry?

I grew up on a farm in South Central South Dakota. Dad farmed and for a time had cattle as well. Things were different some 45 years ago. We worked fallow on about a third of the land and the rest was usually in winter wheat and milo. At 10:00 PM you could bet he'd be coming in, and waiting to hear the weather. In those days, it was usually dry. Real dry.

We've had an unusually wet spring here in South Dakota. Nation wide actually. This year farmers around the country are waiting. The wet weather this year started me thinking about growing up and some of the conversations overheard at the kitchen table. One night my uncle Ron said something that I didn't understand at the time. It was a dry, DRY year. Probably 1976 or so. And he said,

I don't care how dry it gets, I would rather have it that way. At least then, I can say at the end of the day I have my work done.

Dry scares me when I see it. And I don't like how dry feels. I would rather mow the lawn twice a week instead of twice a summer.  Dry makes the world look like it will never be good again. Hard. Hot and dry.

Wet, is different. It's lush, the grass is green and everything looks like a salad bar. To me, wet, or too wet looks better. But that's where it ends.

A friend recently told me he had one or two days so far this spring where he didn't have to wear boots/overshoes. I imagine that would get old. Stuck tractors. Stuck livestock. Boots stuck in the mud when then muck pulls them off your foot. Stuck in the ditch after you slid off a gravel road, or having to go around because the roads were closed.

It's rarely ideal. So maybe Ron wasn't entirely wrong. At least you could get what YOU needed to do done.

You're right. We city folks, or now city folks don't really get it. And we'll never know either. But know this. We're cheering for our food producers and their families, and we'll toss up a prayer or two again tonight. Here's to weather....closer to the middle of too wet, and too dry.

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