Let it Rain!

Well I wake up in the morning

Fold my hands, and pray for rain. 

-Bob Dillon

Yesterday morning dawned cloudy and grey.  Standing in line at Southern States on Monday the overheard conversations were all about rain- how much we needed it and how everyone hoped and prayed for it.  At Poplar Grove, the last of 350 new Petite Verdot grapevines, upon which Jennings is hanging his hopes, went into the ground last week.  You can bet he was praying for rain too.

At the barn down the road, the pastures are dormant again after optimistic sprouting, and the horses have eaten them to the level of a golf green.  Left in their stalls however, they'll just eat the barn, so out they go every morning.  Because there is little grass, however, the hay that is meant to last until this year's first cutting in June is getting perilously low.

Winter is a crucial time for replenishing groundwater, and after a warm, dry winter, many of us in this part of the United States have started out with an empty bucket.

I stumbled upon a website some time ago, where the writer complains about the utter stupidity of praying for rain.  "Get over it," he says, "it will rain everywhere, eventually, so hoping for it is a waste of time."  It is possible that he is not familiar with the Atacama desert, where, one day in 1571 it stopped raining.  Yes, it did rain again, eventually, it just took 400 years.

Or it's possible that like many of us, he hasn't thought much about where food comes from.  I wonder sometimes how we became so alienated from our agricultural roots.

Oh sure, we've been seduced by shrink-wrapped groceries, fast food and jet-setting fruit that flies in from Costa Rica, but even if one is not a farmer, one hopes that one might have at least a general acquaintance with where food comes from, and what is necessary to make it grow.  Water, sun, dirt.  Dirt???  What do you mean dirt?  Food comes from dirt?  Eeeuw.

We even rename food, so we don't have to think too much about where it originates.  How many kids today really get it that their Big Mac is in fact, a chunk of muscle from the rump of that big, hairy, brown cow grazing by the road?  Not to be an alarmist about the dirt thing again, but even Cheetos and Oreos come from somewhere.

In Barbara Kingsolver's fantastic book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" she marvels at a gum-smacking convenience store clerk, who complains, upon seeing the sky cloud over in desert Arizona for the first time in 3 long months of draught, "Dang, I hope it doesn't rain today.  I was going to wash my car this afternoon!"

I have never been a farmer, I grew up the daughter of an automotive executive.  I had the good fortune however, to be born in Indiana where 95% of the kids in my eighth grade class were farmer's kids.  I never cared much about rain personally, but I remember the grave looks on the faces of my friends when it had been far too long in coming.

In farm communities, even a 12-year-old can tell you the date and time of when it last rained- and even how many inches fell.   There is a wry saying in the Army that there are no atheists in foxholes, and I'm guessing that there are very few on family farms either.

I'm not a farmer, and I can't even begin to understand the anxiety they feel when a dry week, then two, then three roll by.  But yesterday morning as I was working at the barn and felt one tiny drop on my cheek, and then another on my hand, I felt solidarity with them.  And when the sky finally broke open and a steady rain began to fall, I looked up and said thanks.


Truly Fabulous Reading:

    In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned  the industrial food pipeline to live a rural life- vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.  Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, it is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred ways to an old truth- you are what you eat.  -Editorial Review


      A national bestseller that has changed the way readers view the ecology of eating, this revolutionary book by award-winner Michael Pollan asks the seemingly simple question:  What should we have for dinner?  Tracing from source to table each of the food chains that sustain us- whether industrial or organic, alternative or processed- he develops a portrait of the American way of eating.  -Editorial Review




     Only a farmer could delve so deeply into the origins of food, and only a writer of Wendell Berry’s caliber could convey it with such conviction and eloquence. Long before Whole Foods organic produce was available at your local supermarket, Berry was farming with the purity of food in mind. For the last five decades, Berry has embodied mindful eating through his land practices and his writing. In recognition of that influence, Michael Pollan here offers an introduction to this wonderful collection.

Drawn from over thirty years of work, this collection joins bestsellers The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Pollan, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, as essential reading for anyone who cares about what they eat. The essays address such concerns as: How does organic measure up against locally grown? What are the differences between small and large farms, and how does that affect what you put on your dinner table? What can you do to support sustainable agriculture?

A progenitor of the Slow Food movement, Wendell Berry reminds us all to take the time to understand the basics of what we ingest. “Eating is an agriculture act,” he writes. Indeed, we are all players in the food economy.  -Editorial Review