I keep scratching my head about the farming thing--should I stay or go.

Having never spent much time at 8-hour jobs where my time was pretty much spoken for part of the day, and time away from work was "free time", it's sort of difficult to imagine that sort of existence. I know there is something appealing about getting a regular paycheck, and having benefits like health insurance and retirement programs provided. I just got notice that my privately paid for health insurance won't be renewed as of the first part of December. Mutual of Omaha is giving up on the business, and I've never filed a claim against them or the company I had prior to them, who also dropped me. A retirement plan? What retirement plan?

Farming is so unpredictable when compared to other occupations. You are at the mercy of so many uncontrollable external factors. As an example, grain markets are controlled by speculators who sit at a desk much of the day. These people have never spent a day behind the steering wheel of a tractor or combine; don't have any money invested in grain bins to store the commodities they buy and sell; don't seem to care that people are going hungry in parts of this, and other countries. For them it's all about the money-the way the numbers work out on the computer screen.

Then there are the politicians who make big promises and pass legislation they claim will help the little guy. Running campaign ads, they convince people that they should vote for this candidate or that one, and refer back to the hard-fought battle to farm such beneficent laws. Few are aware that, while the bill was passed, it never received the funding it needed for implementation, or worse yet, that those very people it was supposed to help, who's names and lives were brought center-stage to marshal the required votes, were left out of the final draft. The wealthiest among us get richer, the poorest left further behind, and yet-to-be-born generations are being handed the bill. Same stuff, different day.

And the days go on, from dawn to dawn around here with little or no rain. Crops that looked so promising this spring, are beginning to reflect a distinct bluish cast that says "too dry" to the experienced eye. The wind is howling and the clouds go by. Maybe a few rain drops, scarcely enough to require drivers to turn on their windshield wipers. The only saving grace at the moment is that it's cool.

In other years, this kind of weather is accompanied by a general rain. The clouds close in and everything gets dark. Then it begins to rain and once started, seems as if it will never end. It's dreary, cold and wet. Dirt roads turn to mud, the rain soaks further into the hard-packed ground and once dry, passable dirt and gravel roads become impassable.

Something else happens, though, that's difficult to describe to those only experienced with life in cities, and one which I've missed during my urban explorations--the way the air smells during and after a rain is different here. It isn't the smell of wet asphalt and rinsed steel, but thousands of fainter aromas. Air that's perfumed with fresh grass and the headiness of wood; the astringency of sage and bitter edge of sweet clover combined with spruce, alfalfa, morning glory and myriads of faint traces from rain-bruised leaves--complex and subtle. It doesn't assault the senses, but hovers at the threshold of perception.

But when the clouds finally break and a patch of blue or ray of sunshine peaks through the two weeks of impenetrable gray, it marks the end of rain and a re-birth to the land. Color is everywhere and the landscape is beautiful.

Saying that "things are sure greening up" doesn't capture the moment. Wheat becomes a rich, lawn-green. Wild-oats show up as an apple-green stripe or patch here or there in an otherwise weed free field. The native prairie grasses are a decidedly different shade of gray-green, and the sage is, well, sage. Wild flowers that haven't bloomed in years begin to show. Prairie primroses are cream-white with yellow stamens, then turn pink as they begin to fade. Patches of translucent, waxy-yellow mark pincushion cactus. Button cactus, so hard to find the remainder of the year, are covered with star-shaped flowers of bright magenta.

There is a bluff of native sod nearby where I've found some almost invisible and otherwise unremarkable plants. They are the same gray-green as the sod and appear in clusters sometimes no bigger than a half-dollar. Completely unseen except for a brief time when equally inconspicuous white blossoms, about the size of a pin head appear, usually only three or four to a plant.

I noticed them one year when I parked the tractor at this place on this sod patch at the end of the day. Stepping from the cab after shutting the engine off, I noticed the quiet of the evening and something else. A faint, difficult to describe sweetness, like honey or gardenia or lilac, hard to place. I looked around for the source, but saw nothing blooming. I was still standing on the platform of the tractor cab, my head about ten feet above the ground, and climbed down the ladder to get closer to the source. I looked around, but still couldn't find the blossoms. The currents and eddies of the evening air carried with them the compelling fragrance, then shifted and the aroma disappeared. Finally my gaze found these tiny plants, but it wasn't until I got down to their level, not an inch from the ground, that I actually saw the flowers. I sniffed at them and was rewarded for the search. It seems incomprehensible that something so small could perfume the air so completely.

The uncertainty of farming remains during wet years. Wet years are often hail years. The crops can look great when the moisture is ample. When the wheat leaves out and shades the furrows quickly, the weeds can't compete. The crop thickens and gains height with each summer day. The heads form, bloom, and soon the kernels begin to fill. On a good year, looking out at a field of grain on a windy day is like looking at the ocean. As the season progresses, green turns golden . You can see the air currents dance across the tops of the plants, stirring rivulets and waves through the field. The day is hot and there are dark clouds rolling in from sixty miles to the southwest.

There really isn't anything you can do to protect the crop you've invested two years time and money nurturing. You can buy hail insurance, but there's something about the feeling you get from harvesting a good crop that money can't buy. Sometimes those clouds gather and provide another needed rain. Sometimes the wind dies down and the air grows heavy, hot...stifling. Thunder echoes in the distance. The calm. Then the wind picks up again, now blowing cold and much harder than before. The temperature plummets twenty to thirty degrees in less than ten minutes. Folks here call it the Great White Combine. In the distance you watch white curtains begin to fall from the dark clouds working their way toward you. Then it hits with beautiful, savage grace and all you can do is hope you're prepared. You watch as chunks of ice slice sideways through the air, carried with the wind and rain. Next year is bound to be better. The crop that you worked so hard for two years getting to this point, and looked forward to harvesting, is reduced to stubble in moments. Unsalvageable.

But the rains aren't arriving with the clouds, and the cold, and the wind this year. Not yet. A brief flourish of flowers is all we've had, and it's been years since I saw and smelled anything on the sod piece up north. Grain prices are low, and other costs keep rising. I know there are compromises in any path of life. It can't be good for a person to live such an isolated existence. If I leave, I give up the quiet, haunting nature of this place and any chance of coming back for more than a brief visit. That in exchange for an opportunity at a life that would be better in other ways. I might replace the star-filled nights with the passion of a lover who loves back.

The fleeting joy of a prairie spring might be offset by the simple pleasure of friends or a night out on the town. I wouldn't miss the brooding intolerance toward people who are "different". I get tired of hearing the hateful, ignorant comments of some, about those with darker skin, or different religions or lifestyle "choices". It's this, more than anything that compels me to seek out others who are "different"-like me.

Yet, while my parents have enjoyed relatively good health most of their lives, time seems to be catching up with them now that they're both past eighty. It's this, perhaps more than any other reason, why I stay. They retired three hundred miles to the south (still in Montana, for those accustomed to shorter distances), and don't need to be worrying about the farm. They've worried about it enough. My grandparents and parents worked hard to scrape out a living on this northern desert. But there was some comfort in knowing, however difficult the challenges, that neighbors were going through similar, tough times.

My situation is similar, but not the same as my parents or my neighbors. The challenges of farming are in many ways the same; but I'm not just another bachelor on the northern plains. Still, I know there are others like me, who face the struggle between roots that go deep into the land, and the possibility of a better life, elsewhere. If I leave, I know that there are flower shops and nurseries; parks and conservatories where I can be reminded of nature. But then, they could never compare with what I've had around me all these years.

There must be a good way to stay.

Addendum

The year began dry, but we picked up a little moisture in April and May, enough to produce some terrific stands of winter wheat, lighten spirits, and even cause some to think that the drought we've been under for about the past six years was beginning to break. What rain we got, quit in June, however, and hot weather, hotter than we've seen around here for several years, with temperatures in the triple digits, saw the crops go from terrific, through great to good, and on down to merely okay for some. Folks are mindful, though, that many haven't had anything to harvest for the past two years, so even an okay crop beats what we've seen for some time.