Liar Liar
That darn groundhog was dead wrong in his prognostication of six more weeks of winter. Everyone else is telling me that we’re through the worst of it. At least I hope so or there’s going to be a lot of cold critters and sad market patrons if the stone fruit trees bloom early and get whacked by another blast of winter.
As a farmer I’m up close and personal with nature in a multitude of ways. Plus, age gives one the perspective of continuity. As I’ve been driving through orchard country this week I’ve noticed the peach trees are starting to take on the orange hue on their leader branchers where they’ll blossom and set fruit. The forsythia at the end of the driveway looks ready to bloom, too. When I went to visit Mom for Valentine’s Day there were crocuses blooming in the front yard. Even NOAA predicted an early spring this year for the United States east of the Mississippi.
But the biggest tell of all are the animals. Massive flocks of Canada geese migrating north, robins everywhere, and the animals shedding out their winter coats. Even the sheep are rooing! That means they’re starting to shed out bits of wool, but they’ll still need sheared.
The old timers say early springs like this are becoming more common and making them nervous, even going so far to admit there’s something to all this climate change stuff. Unlike our ancient ancestors, today’s humans are geographically sedentary. When disasters like flooding and drought affect our food systems, we no longer pick up and go elsewhere. Instead, we throw money and infrastructure at the problems with dams, levees, and crop insurance. New archeological explorations are revealing that entire cities consisting of tens of thousands of occupants literally picked up and moved over issues like parasites and disease.
Sure, the cold weather and quite possibly snow returns next week. We’ll be back to normal so why worry? We here in the mid-Atlantic have been fortunate enough to evade much of the more severe consequences of the shifting climate. We don’t experience the atmospheric rivers, droughts, and fires of the west which send ripples through our food system in the forms of shortages and higher prices. Everyone is quick to blame increasing food prices on inflation, politics, and the war in Europe, ignoring the glaring fact that much of our food is grown in areas now experiencing catastrophic weather conditions.
When I had decided I wanted to grow food while living out west, the old rancher I worked for adamantly insisted I leave southern California, telling me in ten years I wouldn’t be able to afford the water and in twenty there wouldn’t be any; he wasn’t far off in his predictions. And my farming friends out west with whom I’ve remained good friends over all the years, they’re struggling far more than the generation before them with what Mother Nature is doling out. It’s boom or bust without a happy medium.
Today on the farm it hit 70 degrees. This is normally when there would be a snowstorm. Even my Facebook memories tell me on this week we once closed the market due to dangerous winter weather. Another year I was digging out from a few feet of snow and another year I went skiing on Valentine’s Day. Friends joked about sitting outdoors at a café in DC wearing tee shirts. I’m not laughing.
Instead of listening to a damn rodent about the weather, I wish everyone would start paying attention to scientists and maybe even the farmers. Our lives depend on it and so do yours.