Death by a Thousand Knives

Those of you who have read my earlier blogs, know that this spring seeding didn't go very well, though we did finish it, and that is always an accomplishment. Sadly though, farming is still a gamble in the way that you are relying completely on mother nature. Well, this year she wasn't very helpful. The growing conditions right now are pretty bleak. It hasn't rained since last spring, the snow didn't come like we hoped in the winter, and now it is getting hot. Our fields right now are bare right now, wherever the snow blew off the hilltops, the seed never germinated, and in the hollows where moisture congrigated, the plants froze because of a late frost in the second week of June. Half of our seed we planted germinated, and of that, over half froze. It is to late for a rain, in fact if it rained now it would be worse than no rain at all. If it doesn't rain we claim crop insurance and hope for a better year next time. If it rains now, we won't get the crop off before the snow comes, and it won't be worth anything. Not to mention we will have to spend another $50,000 on fertilizer next spring. Everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong it seams, but we can't bend mother nature to our whim, we can only continue doing what we can to live.