Learning to appreciate what this year offers

Last winter it didn’t snow. The kids waited and waited to take out their sled, but they never got the chance.

The dams that usually fill with spring melt stayed empty, the grasses that usually get their first start the same way stayed gray and brown. Spring turned into summer and no rain fell.

By the time autumn rolled around, we’d been on fire watch for months, and neighbor after neighbor loaded their breeding stock onto trucks because no grass meant no hay for winter feed.

Early in December, we got a few dustings of snow, but it was barely enough to scrap together a shovelful. The sled stayed in the shed.

In January, we rejoiced when we finally did get enough snow to turn the fields white, but nobody relaxed. We knew it wasn’t enough to get the grasses growing when the time came.

Winter storm

Last week, an actual winter storm was forecast, and the number of inches predicted grew as the storm approached.

“I hope we get a foot!” our neighbor texted as the snow began to fall on the expanse that divides our pasture from his.

Ranchers and farmers across the county pulled their chairs up to the window to watch the fine, white flakes fall sideways with the wind, and prayed it didn’t stop for a long time.

It snowed on and off for two days while the temperatures hovered in the negative double digits. It’s always hard to measure snowfall on our patch of the prairie; the high winds make great glaciers of packed ice while leaving other spots bare.

All told, we probably got five or six inches of snow, but it was dry as sand, a fraction of an inch of actual moisture.

Today, the weather warmed. My husband plowed out the part of the road that always gets drifted over, and now the kids have their own private snow mountain. They spent the morning sledding down it, and the afternoon digging a tunnel through it.

“This is the best day ever!” my daughter shouts, arms raised atop their marvelous creation. Out in the pasture the cows look pleased as well. The wind is down, and they turn sideways to the horizon to catch as much sun as they can on their round and heavy flanks. Their babies will start arriving in the next week or two.

Give to get

So now when we pray for snow, we know it will come at a cost — the time of blithely wishing for a foot is past.

“You gotta give a little blood to get a little moisture,” the old timers say.

If we want the grass to grow, we need more storms, we need more precipitation. But wet snow or cold rain can kill a newborn animal quickly, and damp conditions can cause pneumonia outbreaks even in otherwise healthy, older calves.

So, what do we hope for when our choices are between bad or worse? What do we hope for when we aren’t even sure which is which?

It’s hard for those of us laboring in agriculture not to get caught up in “Next Year Country.” Next year it won’t be so dry. Next year the markets will be better.

I’ve lived here 10 years, and so far, next year only came once, and when it did everyone told me: “It will never be this good again.”

In other words, next year probably isn’t this year either.

Outside, the winter twilight is blooming slowly in rose and gold. The kids are still playing on their mountain, which glows like lavender fire beneath their damp-kneed coveralls and sodden mittens.

“Watch this! Watch this!” they shout to me when I stick my head out the sliding glass door to check on them.

There’s a roast and potatoes in the slow cooker, so when they finally come in and throw their wet clothes down to dry by the fire the house will smell rich and delicious.

They will still be using their joyful outdoor voices, bringing the earthen chill of old snow and new mud with them, their cheeks as red as the sunset, and I will think: “Maybe it is already next year, after all.”