How often have you seen the local anchorman turn to the local weather girl and say, “Gosh, Marsha, that’s really good news! I’m sure getting tired of this rain!”
What’s he getting tired of? Having a soggy newspaper on the porch? Having to wear his goulashes from the office to the health club? Postponing the wearing of his new all season Nikes? He’s probably not gettin’ any tireder of it than the feedlot cowboy sloggin’ through the pens in hock deep mud. Or the Iowa range hog man slidin’ his feed wagon along the bank of the north pasture.
But somewhere, out beyond the cattle guard, a farmer’s standing at the edge of a quarter section of winter wheat, watchin’ it rain and smilin’.
A skiff of snow, a two inch rain, five days of hot and dry, a four foot drift and minus twenty-five wind chill factor are like person to person calls to someone whose livin’ depends on the weather. When the big city weatherman’s map has a yellow sun with a smiley face that covers the Louisiana Purchase, you realize how far from nature some parts of our civilization have been removed!
Great skiing weather can often be translated to baby calves on the kitchen floor, frozen water lines and chopping ice. Gentle April showers can keep tractors out of the field, chronics in the sick pen and bankers in a frenzy!
Farmers and ranchers are students of the sky. They spend a lifetime lookin’ for a blue horizon or black clouds. It’s bringin’em luck; sometimes good, sometimes bad.
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