Bryce Oates

It seems that when it’s time to go about reflecting on life as a farmer and modern-day homesteader, my mind wonders to the dreamy romanticism of the things on the farm that have very little to do with planting, hoeing, harvesting and washing. Instead, I get caught up in that all-consuming thought that so much of our toil and digging is wasted. Rather than worrying about pesky thoughts of debt and drought and diseases on the tomato vine, it might be easier (and superior) to spend my time letting the land feed us with what it already produces.

After more than a year of craziness, build up and drama, Election 2012 is now behind us. It was a multi-multi Billion Dollar spectacle. It was a booming time for the media due to all of the spending on ads for the federal and local races. It was an exciting time with lots of interesting rhetoric and promises. Now, we have to sort out what it all means.

Here’s the rub…Is it really more efficient for me to shovel goat manure, let it age, plant some lettuce in it, and truck it to local consumers? Or is it more efficient for Missourians to keep buying lettuce from California that was picked by migrant workers in unsafe conditions who were likely paid poorly, and with said lettuce robbing the withering Colorado River of its flow? There are people who try to figure these things out, but a lot of it centers on the pivot of what one means by efficiency and productivity and measurement.

After months of waiting, worrying and hoping, the clouds finally arrived here at Yellabird Farm last week and brought us the long-sought gift of good rain. It was a great two days of slow and soaking moisture that the cracked soil guzzled up with gusto. Seven inches was the tally. And it has brightened up the spirits of all of us: man, woman, child, goat, chicken, cow, clover, oak tree, frog, songbird. The whole living community around here is crying out with joy.

Out here in the Farm Belt, it’s hard to do much other than beat the same drum again and again (and again). It’s hot. It’s dry. Nothing is growing. We’re running out of water. And there is no sign of change on the horizon.

Drought is hard on us out here in Farm Country. But drought in the midst of boiling hot summer is amongst the worst conditions I can imagine. At this point in West Missouri we’re numerous inches behind on rain for the average year…On my farm, we’ve had right at 3 inches of rain since April 1st. April-May-June being a bulwark of the year’s annual precipitation jolt–between 12-15 inches per year on average. Some farmers have gotten more, others less). We normally get around 40 inches of rain per year, but maybe we need to get around to figuring out the “new normal.”