Season for Hope

In this season we think of hope. Eternal hope even.

And while this phrase was coined in reference to all mankind, but it could not be truer of any group than the farmer. I am reminded of this because the farm just ordered its seed for next year. May I just remind you that this year's crop isn't even out of the ground yet!

Each year tiny seeds are placed in the ground with the hope that it will not hail, freeze, or get too hot. We hope for rain on exactly the right day, and enough dry spells to complete work on time. There is the hope that bean leaf beetles and spider mites will magically be absent this year and cut worms will only invade Brazil. We hope for bumper crops and higher market prices.

And every year the hail, the late frost, the flooding bottoms, the insects, or the droughts return. We realize that the hybrid chosen for the hill ground would have been better off in the bottoms and the corn we struggled to plant as early as possible did better when planted late. Harvest comes and you look back on the mistakes, misadventures, and misfortunes of last year with the perfect vision that is hindsight.

But as the year grows old the seed catalogs come. Stein, Golden Harvest, Pioneer and all the rest send their reps out to our fields to show their new products and promise cures for farming ills. Bright shiny pages advertise huge corn ears and giant seed pods. We are wooed by the promise that is “next year.”

And hope must spring eternal.