NaNoWriMo & NaBloPoMo: The wind's shifted.

NaNoWriMo word count: still 0 (it's hard to find time to work on a manuscript right now.)

This morning, I had to step out to run an errand. The first thing that struck me as I stepped out the front door was I could smell snow on the wind. The lower atmosphere is too warm for snow to fall but those clouds are billowing up above. The low tonight is supposed to be 33 deg F. That's just above freezing but I think it might dip into the freezing zone. I don't think we'll wake up to everything blanketed in snow (or ice). But that raw, bitter cold is on it's way in the immediate future.

In some ways this is reassuring. Before climate change kicked into high gear, we'd typically get our first snowfall somewhere between the last week of October and Thanksgiving. The last several years of unusually warm Novembers has had me concerned. I'm a farmer's daughter and I tend to look at the weather patterns from the perspective of how it is going to influence the growing season. It's just something I grew up doing and never really stopped.

We're currently in a serious drought. Whatever precipitation we get would be helpful. Last winter we ended in a drought. It doesn't make sense to say that we were in a drought in winter, but we were. The growing season started late this year because of the flooding and lots of mud that we had in the early spring when planting usually goes on. The summer left us shy of rain and a lot of fields were stunted because of it. When the corn being grown barely comes to your shoulder and in a good year it's taller than you are, it's a rough season.

Surprisingly, there was enough of a harvest that the next town over was still able to hold their annual corn festival like there was no problem. I'm hoping the farmers around were able to get a decent profit off of their corn. It seems like more of that stunted corn was chopped up for silage to be fed to the dairy cattle during the winter than was brought to market to be sold for human consumption. There's a bigger problem than my region's drought, however.

The western and midwestern US have been in extraordinary drought conditions for a couple of years. This is making it hard to grow enough produce, grains, and feed for livestock. As a result, we're operating on a beef shortage for at least the last year. I think the reason why the president is sinking money into the Argentinian economy is because their major export is beef. That's the only logical reason I can come up with.

All these tariffs are hurting the economy here. With bad growing seasons and a major drought spreading slowing across the country, only a fool who is disconnected from where their food comes from would be making these policies. I can only hope and pray for rain or snow. The rest of it falls out where ever the dice land. I'm frustrated that I wasn't well enough to keep a garden this year or do any food preservation. The victory gardens of old are starting to make a comeback as people are doing their best to learn how to preserve their food. People can smell trouble on the wind. It's going to be more than a bad snow storm.