Long Time, No Blog

You know the excuses:

I'm busy.

I'm hot (we're on day 157...well not really...of HOT weather).

I have writer's block.

I'm hot.

Either way, it's been awhile, and I know you've all been waiting with bated breath for my next post (ha, ha), but you've also already been there yourself.

Uninspired.

That's the bottom line. As far as advocating for agriculture, I'm still the first to stand up and tell my story, but here's the deal: farming, the actual job of farming, right now kind of stinks.

It's dry. Remember a few months ago when it was wet? Well, it's now the opposite. Remember how we couldn't buy a dry day in the spring? Now we can't pray enough to God to send rain to save our beans.
Remember how lush and green the corn crop looked in my first few pictures of the corn growth journal?

Those are the only ones I took.

It's now too hot, and the corn is starting to look snarly, in a semi-good, nearing harvest time way, but I don't have the mental energy to be okay with farming as a means of employment right now, so why would I take a picture of it?

Seasoned farmers will call me weak. Those who have "been there, done that" will cry, "whiner!" And maybe I am, but this lack of control, this doing everything right for it to be zapped by unrelenting dry weather is hard, on everyone. Not just the farmer's wife...the farmer sitting across from me at the dinner table has a new worry line across his brow. The kids notice that we're short with each other. Jack even came rushing out of his bed, long after we assumed he was asleep the night we finally received enough rain to make a semi-dent on the crusted, crack soil.

It's too much.

I'm not sure how much I can take, but I will tell you, we won't quit. We're pressing onward, because unlike a job that you can go and complain to the supervisor or boss or manager when your working conditions are unsuitable, we'd have to take it up to the man upstairs. Let me tell you, I have. God knows what we need, but God also knows how much we can handle, and evidently, he thinks I have nerves of steel.

Although this is a whiny, woe-is-me post, I would like to end with the thought that we are fine. We aren't in Syria...we are healthy...we are surrounded by love and family and are safe. So what if it's dry? That's what crop insurance is for, right? We've planned for disaster, you just hope to never have to really use that plan.

My hopes is that by coming clean with my worry, my mojo of writing will come back. My lightheartedness in the face of darkness will return, and I'll start laughing about dirt and dust, instead of throwing the broom at the floor...which may or may not have ever happened.

In the meantime, friends, pray for peace in the world. My peace of mind is so small, and in light of the date today, pray that we on this Earth can learn to figure out how to get along with others, and maybe then we can consider writer's block and heat big problems, not bombings and killings.