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It's all about the water
The black dog chases the red dog, running, carrying a deer's leg in her mouth. I look down to the frozen ground and ask aloud where all this precipitation was last summer, when we needed it.
The ground is a slate pool table. None of the melting snow is being absorbed. It runs down the hills and away.
The same field I'm standing in was a swamp just last April.
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It rained so much in August that we had trouble getting a second cutting of hay into the barn - muddy hills make for tricky tractoring.
We had no rain to speak of, none, from the end of August until Christmas.
January was soaking wet. And yet, here I am, standing in a rock-hard hayfield.
Thank goodness, I think to myself, that I don't have to farm for a living. From what I can see, the land does not forgive those who need on-the-job training.
When you depend on the weather, there is not much room for error.
And who can depend on the weather?
It's all about the water - finding it, keeping it, moving it, storing it. We learned that lesson a few years ago when the mine came through. As each neighbor was visited, one at a time, by the water buffalos, we somehow managed to keep our wells and springs.
We were lucky. The families who lived on this land before us drilled the wells, ran the pipes, dug the cisterns and stayed constantly aware of changes in the systems they installed.
We just bought the place, used.
I want to be a good steward of the land. I'm trying to learn as much as I can. I'm standing in a rock-hard hayfield in 20 degrees trying to figure out why the water is rolling away, down to the neighbors and the people next to them and some guy in West Virginia. Wherever it's going, it's not staying here; if it's not staying here, it's doing me no good.
One month turns to the next. It's a crapshoot. It may pour. It may be dry as a bone. The wind is brutal. The temperature spikes and dives with no sense of logic, giving us a 70-degree day in February and a frost warning in June.
It won't rain for weeks and then, boom! One week it rains too hard, all at once. The ground can't absorb it. It's too much water, too fast, and there's a flood.
That's what I'm thinking as the water melts and runs away, as the dogs fight over a deer leg. It's all about the water - finding it, keeping it, moving it, storing it.
And you want to be a farmer?
Good luck, my friend.
By the way, that's my water you're using.
I'll need that come July.
To hear Scott Paulsen's column, visit www.observer-reporter.com. He can be heard each weekday afternoon from 3 to 7 p.m. on 1250 ESPN Radio.
