Enthusiasm carried us away. After that night of the humming tractors as the men ebulliently sowed oats and clover by artificial light, we had rain, then a freeze, more rain, a frost, more rain, and a gloomy Easter.
Possibly this is not the year. But we are undaunted. We are too far toward head-waters of our streams ever to be endangered by flood, so we haven't the nerve to complain of any moisture that is short of the terrible profusion of Old Man River and the Old Mizzou. No strange under-earth mountain ranges are rumbling with earthquakes beneath our farms. No tornadoes follow their baneful path over our acres. Even the hailstorms swing around to the north or to the south of us.
We never have a complete crop failure in this area, nor dust storms, nor the villainous locust and grasshopper pests that some folks have. And if our oats have washed out, or frozen, we still have time to reseed. This may not be the year, but it is bound to be a year good enough for all practical purposes. Chances are that our seeding is unharmed, and we have just had a reminder that the elements are not yet entirely under the control of man.
The women who uncovered their perennials and peeked under the dirt mounds to see if any roses survived last fall's early freeze find that little damage resulted from this late cold, wet spell, and now whenever the air warms up, everything is ready to boom. And those early bonfires were not a mistake either. The farmsteads that looked woebegone under the rain are now greening up neatly. Autumn bonfires fill a human need, with the pungent smell of burning leaves, a sort of incense that hovers over the laying of the earth to rest. But there is exhilaration about spring bonfires, with all their vigor, a casting out of all discouragement with the debris, a beginning again. It's hard to tell which are most staisfying. Depends on the season we are in, I guess.
So are we downhearted? No! Here we go on another season, not the year, but a good year, with some encouragements and enough troubles to break the monotony. Here we go again, putting our whole hearts into the job of producing more than our share, to make up for the stricken areas where work will be so delayed, so that the sum total of America's agricultural yield may be, as usual, plenty for all. -- Hope.
Memory Gem
If earrings grew on ladies' ears,
And this fact has been proved,
They'd spend the last cent that they have
To get the things removed.-- Aneta Ziegler.