Farming in the shade

We have recently been encouraged by the kindness of good friends and total strangers, both. Thank you, all, for your comments, shares, good wishes, and prayers. We wrote about our struggles with the wet weather in part because we feel we have a relationship with many of you. We consider you friends, and friends need to let each other know what is going on. We also shared because we know that many of you aren’t familiar with the risks of farming. Each year we take our blood, sweat and tears, as well as most of our remaining money, and we bury it in the ground. We hope and pray that everything works out so that we get all that money we buried back. And we also hope that the blood, sweat and tears fertilize it and make it yield an increase. That increase or harvest is what we convert to money over the winter and the next summer while the next set of crops grow. This money is what we use to pay the bills, fix things, take a small salary, and save a little to bury in the gr...

Well, folks, we have zero acres of corn and dry beans planted so far this year. And no hay cut for the winter feed for our cattle and sheep.  We still have a chance on the hay, but every day that passes means the quality goes down. We still have a chance at the dry beans. But there is the little detail of standing water in the fields. The window for planting corn has closed. So there will be no corn crop this year. We have had crop failures and catastrophes before. Usually one thing at a time, though. We are trying to stay hopeful while still thinking about what Plan B looks like. God is faithful.