Tag: environment

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Environment

Doubt No More

Earthrise by Bill Anders, Dec. 24, 1968

With recent moves to reduce the number of government advisory panels, overturn the Obama administration’s clean power plan, and increase the speed with which logging permits are approved in national forests, the Trump administration plows the field of deregulation in a way libertarians and conservatives could previously only dream about.

They have gone too far.

Even with regard to mitigating the impact of the climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry indicated the world is proceeding on an unsustainable path. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2019.

There is a growing mismatch between societal demands for action on climate change and the actual pace of progress, with energy demand and carbon emissions growing at their fastest rate for years. The world is on an unsustainable path.

In a special message to the Congress on Feb. 8, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson said,

Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.

A group of scientists explained to Johnson that burning fossil fuels could cause climate change, according to Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in their 2010 book Merchants of Doubt. “Most thought that changes were far off in the future,” they wrote.

In 2019 we see the effects of climate change in real time. We are living them.

Johnson signed hundreds of conservation and environmental measures during his tenure, developing the strongest record for the environment of any president. In so doing, he laid the legal foundations for how we protect the nation’s land, water and air.

Given time I believe Republicans will destroy the Johnson era legal foundation while their leader is lying to the American people about the quality of our air and water in a way that conflicts with our personal experience.

“We have among the cleanest and sharpest — crystal clean, you’ve heard me say, I want crystal clean — air and water anywhere on Earth,” President Trump said at a June 18 campaign rally in Florida. “Our air and water are the cleanest they’ve ever been by far.”

The science of climate change — that carbon dioxide and other gaseous emissions warm the atmosphere creating the greenhouse effect that enables life on Earth — has never been in doubt. It’s science and as Neil deGrasse Tyson recently said, “When you have an established scientific emergent truth it is true whether or not you believe in it.”

When Trump lies and repeats his lies over and over again, believers and followers will set aside what is in their best interests, what is plainly visible in objective reality, and parrot his words. It creates turbulence in society, an argument about things which there is no arguing, and delays political action that should have been taken years ago. It creates doubt.

Now we have a climate crisis.

Environmental advocates don’t agree on the path to resolving the climate crisis, in fact there are broad divisions. Some favor a carbon fee and dividend as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Others want geoengineering, a deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems, to counteract climate change. Others want to keep fossil fuels in the ground and convert our electrical grid to sustainable, renewable electricity generation. Others favor implementing nuclear power as a way to get to zero emissions with electricity generation. There is no agreement about specific strategies and tactics to use.

What remains from the divisions is an elemental truth, we have to do something to mitigate the effects of climate change. While assertions like those of our president and his administration create doubt about the use of political action regarding climate change, doubt no more. We have to do something and soon.

If you’d like to learn more about the climate crisis I recommend David Wallace-Wells recent book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. It is a comprehensive look at the diversity of the climate crisis. My advice is read his book then get involved with climate action.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Kale Harvest and Summer Solstice

Taco filling made with kale, black beans and Guajillo chili sauce.

I caught a break between thunder storms.

Friday I donned my wax jacket and rubber boots and went to the garden to harvest kale in a light drizzle.

The leaves were ready to pick and I wanted to get a regular shipment to someone.

It was a big harvest and what I didn’t give away was washed and went into the ice box and freezer.

I made a batch of taco filling with fresh kale, black beans and Guajillo chili sauce. It is Mexican street food and one of my favorite dishes. This year I planted Guajillo chili peppers in the garden to see if I can replicate what I’ve been buying from Mexico. Here’s the recipe for the sauce.

With today’s planting I consider the garden in. There are a couple of empty spots to fill and plenty of weeding and mulching, but the seedlings that need to be planted have been and it’s time to clean out a space to put my car into the garage again. Actually I just took a break from the computer to do it. The car is inside again marking the end of Spring garden planting.

From here gardening gets easier. I started Imperial broccoli seedlings to replace Blue Wind when the time comes. I also have basil and cilantro seedlings that will go in when there’s space. There are extra seedlings of tomatoes, eggplant and hot peppers ready if one already planted fails. I’m about ready to compost those as most everything took the first time this year.

As I mentioned here I moved the composter and spread out what remained. Some type of burrowing animal has been living there and I disrupted its home. It looks like it has been burrowing under the locust tree, which may be causing the problem with leafing out this year. It/they also got into the kitchen waste composter, which is comparatively tightly sealed. They drug a lot of stuff out, including most of the egg shells, to build a mound under the outdoors sink that was turned upside down sitting next to it. It was a surprise and I moved the sink up on a pallet.

The good news about compost was for the birds. Multiple species spent most of the afternoon prowling the newly spread compost looking for worms and insects, of which there were plenty. They don’t seem bothered by my presence.

The wax jacket is for garden and yard work. I bought it while vacationing in Stratford, Ontario where we went for three consecutive years when our daughter was in high school. It’s never been re-treated but repels water quite well and still fits. It’s the gardener’s equivalent of a barn coat.

My time at the farms finishes this week, tomorrow at Sundog Farm and Tuesday at Wild Woods Farm. I met with Trish Nelson at Blog for Iowa yesterday and I’ll be covering for her beginning July 1 so she can take a five-week hiatus. The first weekend in August I plan to return to Wilson’s Orchard for my seventh year as seasonal help and after that, it’s a rush to finish the year.

I plan to take a deep breath and reflect on my life as a gardener and citizen for a few minutes tonight after dinner.

Categories
Environment

Hiking the Deer Path

Deer Tracks, June 18, 2019

I walked due east from the garden along the utility easement to access a 25-acre stand of woods at the point where deer enter.

Deer are a constant presence in the neighborhood, especially during apple season, and I try to live in harmony with them by understanding what they will and won’t eat, and by using fences on the garden.

After dining, deer run across the same open space I walked to the wood line.

Based on the condition of the undergrowth, few humans visit the woods except around the edges. The main pathways are those made by deer and the brush is so thick I’m not sure how they get through. In 25 years of living here, there has been little interest in using the woods and I’ve hiked them less than half a dozen times.

Unnamed Creek, June 18, 2019.

I walked a deer path on the west bank of an unnamed creek up hill to the pond created by a now forgotten farmer. It was sweaty work and good exercise. I’ve studied the woods on maps for years and there was never a sense of being lost despite the claustrophobic feeling the thick undergrowth created.

The county planning and zoning commission requires our development to maintain a certain amount of open space so the woods can’t be developed with housing. If our association members had an interest in using the woods more, the deer paths could be upgraded to walking paths and mapped out. There has been little interest so it has become a habitat for wildlife.

If we were to develop the woods as a recreational area, there would be little money for it, so the work would be by volunteers. There would be a lot of work to do. Numerous native species of plants exist there, and identification and preservation seems important. The canopy is relatively thick and consideration should be given to long-term forest health. That might mean thinning some mature trees so younger saplings can grow. There are a lot of fallen branches which could be chipped into mulch to pave pathways. It could turn into a really big project. As busy as everyone is, I’m not sure who would volunteer and I know almost everyone in the association.

Native Fern, June 18, 2019.

Suffice it to spend an hour or so hiking the woods once in a while. It takes effort to forget the manicured lawns and gardens to focus on what is in front of us in the woods. By the time I reached the top of the hill, I had forgotten whatever seemed important when I left the garden to focus on finding my way, and then my way home.

It occurred to me that even though the association owns the woods, that ownership is only loosely so. I mean the woods will continue to develop as it has, enabling brief and specific glimpses into what used to be when Iowa was mostly tallgrass prairie. We are visitors on Earth, and that for a short while. Ownership is a cultural concept unknown to the plants and animals that live in the woods. No one truly owns the woods despite legal documents so indicating.

If I want to understand my relationship with wildlife better, I need to spend more time in those woods. Maybe during another hike in the near future.

Categories
Living in Society

Marianne Williamson Close to Home

Marianne Williamson addressing a gathering at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on June 10, 2019.

About 11:15 a.m. I left the garden and drove Ely Blacktop to 76th Street and headed West to Cedar Hall on the main campus of Kirkwood Community College where presidential candidate Marianne Williamson joined State Senator Rob Hogg in a “climate conversation.”

Since I would be returning to the garden after the event, I wore my overalls and mud-caked gardening shoes.

I joined a number of students and staff, along with local members of environmental groups in a large operating theater-style classroom. By the time we got started more than 40 people had joined us.

I attended partly because the venue was close to home, partly to support Senator Hogg’s efforts to engage presidential candidates about climate change, and partly to see if Williamson’s campaign is, as some have called it, a “joke.”

Marianne Williamson taking questions at Kirkwood Community College, June 10, 2019.

Williamson’s campaign is not a joke. Why anyone would criticize a woman who is successful in her own right, by objective standards such as having written four number one New York Times best selling books, had me curious. She made it to the first two Democratic National Committee presidential debates, although just barely achieving one percent support in three separate national polls to qualify. She’s dead serious about her platform and as confident as any of the other 23 presidential candidates. With great optimism she said, “If you’re going to run for president, you might just win.”

The main news out of the event was Williamson did not support a separate DNC debate on the topic of climate change. The reason, she said, was “because there is no competing with Jay Inslee.” Williamson also said the topic cannot be separated from the broader problems in the United States. She made a point. Advocates for addressing the deleterious effects of the climate crisis cannot separate this one issue into a silo separate from other important matters like health care, education and national defense and expect to resolve them.

State Senator Rob Hogg explaining why the Iowa caucuses are first in the nation. “We do it right,” he said.

Williamson made a strong case for slowing our relationship with Saudi Arabia. She said as president she would immediately stop arms sales to the kingdom and end United States support for the war in Yemen, a conflict she said was immoral.

She also weighed in on nuclear disarmament, asking why we need 100 aircraft capable of delivering nuclear bombs when dropping ten of them could end life as we know it? It was refreshing to hear a candidate raise the issue without prompting.

Dave Bradley at Blog for Iowa wrote Williamson was positioned in the third tier of candidates, among those “who truly have little chance and are often running to push some ideas or philosophy.”

Marianne Williamson has been finding her way all her adult life. Win or lose, the time spent with her this afternoon was memorable for her determination to assert her solutions her way. As Hogg referred to her speech in Cedar Rapids yesterday, it is the “politics of love” and quite different from the offerings of other candidates.

Neighborhood Network News recorded this event. The YouTube video can be viewed here.

To learn more about Marianne Williamson follow this link to her website.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Big Weekend in the Garden

Three rows of tomato plants.

I returned nine empty seedling trays to the farm Sunday morning before my soil blocking shift.

The empty trays reflected clear weather and dry enough soil for planting. I had been worried seedlings would get root bound. I think I made it into the ground in time. I hope so.

The last three days have been devoid of rain with mild temperatures. I worked outside a total of 15 hours, finishing initial planting in six of seven plots. Now I must find spots for garlic planting in late July, Ancho and Guajillo chilies, eggplant and winter squash. I retained several trays of extra seedlings in case there are failures. Starts of basil, parsley, cilantro and broccoli are ready for the second wave of those varieties.

Putting in tomatoes is a big production. I cleared a plot that had been inactive since fall. I dug two-foot wide trenches for the seedlings and prepared the ground with a hoe and rake, putting down fertilizer before raking. A big part of tomato planting is sorting seedlings grown in the greenhouse, seeing how they germinated and counting varieties. In the end I made 47 planting areas with one or two plants per cage in 21 varieties.

Row of Green Beans

This year I separated the cherry tomatoes into their own spot with more space between plants. The idea is to use that space to gather bowls of multi-colored fruit for the kitchen and for gifts. They are already blossoming.

Main crop slicers will be Brandywine and German Pink, both available from the Seed Savers Exchange. Plum tomatoes included Amish Paste, Roma, Speckled Roma and Granadero. I planted six varieties of cherry tomatoes with orange, red, yellow and white colored fruit. If the plots grow there will be plenty of tomatoes for fresh eating, gifts, freezing and canning.

Another big project was planting cucumbers. Planning included seed selection (Northern Pickling, Little Leaf Pickling, Jade and Marketmore) and downsizing the space from last year. I use 2 x 4 inch welded wire fencing to support plant growth and put seedlings close together. Everything survived the transplant. If plants are successful, there should be plenty of fresh and pickling cucumbers.

The last big planting was hot peppers. I made a patch of 15 plants and everything survived transplant. I have extra seedlings if some should fail. I selected jalapeno and Serrano for fresh eating and Bangkok, Red Rocket, Cayenne and Red Flame for drying. I also have Ancho and Guajillo chilies ready to plant once I figure out where. This will be an experiment in Mexican cooking if successful.

Spending time in the garden enabled me to watch the beans grow. From early Friday morning until late that night plants pushed out of the ground until the row was filled in. The same was true for the red beans, although they were a day later. It is something to watch the garden grow.

By Sunday afternoon I needed a nap. Today I’m rested and ready to get back into the garden for as long as the sun shines. The stress of too much rain is changing to worry about drought. We’re not there yet.

Categories
Environment Living in Society

Jay Inslee at the Cedar River

Governor Jay Inslee at Ellis Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, June 8, 2019.

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Saturday afternoon I drove to the Overlook Pavilion in Ellis Park where State Senator Rob Hogg had organized a “climate conversation” with Washington Governor Jay Inslee who is an announced candidate for president.

Hogg reminded us of the 2008 Cedar River flooding. The river was visible behind him.

It is hard to forget the 2008 flood that devastated Iowa’s second largest city. On my way to the event I compared flooding levels of the Atherton Wetland on Ely Blacktop which had been covered with flood water in 2008. From the center of Cedar Rapids I used First Street Southwest, which runs next to the Cedar River, to find the park. On the eastern bank someone had built a flood wall. An earthen berm restricted the view of the river on some parts of First Street. The low-lying area had been inundated in 2008 causing damage to more than 5,000 homes, evacuation of 25,000 people, and roughly $4 billion dollars damage. The flood was made worse by climate change.

In his introductory remarks, Senator Hogg recognized elected officials and organizations present and encouraged the almost 200 attendees to engage in the Iowa caucus process of meeting with presidential candidates. Hogg added later, “with the spirit of citizenship, we can bring Americans together for climate action we so urgently need and the many climate solutions that work.”

Governor Inslee began his remarks with the reason he seeks to defeat climate change, his grandchildren. “We have a moral obligation to the young people of America to defeat climate change,” he said. Noting last week’s atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was 414.42 ppm (only slightly less than the record (415.70) set May 15), he added, “It is time to act on climate.”

Defeating climate change would be the first priority for an Inslee administration, the governor said. It was a “predicate for success” in all policy areas. If addressing climate change is not job one it won’t get done.

Inslee split from environmental groups like Citizen’s Climate Lobby when he said he did not support a tax on carbon. He favors regulatory reform to reduce carbon emissions. Based on his experience in Washington State, voters are unlikely to accept such a tax, he said.

Inslee asked for help in two areas of his campaign.

While he met the qualifications to participate in the first two debates being hosted by the Democratic National Committee, he has not met the 130,000 donor threshold to participate in the third and fourth. He encouraged those present to donate one dollar or more to his campaign and ask friends and family to do likewise.

Inslee wants the Democratic National Committee to devote one candidate debate to climate change so every participating candidate can lay out their plan to defeat it for voters to see. The request has been rejected, making supporting Inslee the best way to make sure the topic is covered during the debates, he said. Holding a climate change debate outside those sanctioned by DNC is not an option.

“It is the DNC’s job to organize the debate schedule, and the ground rules on unsanctioned debates were made clear with all the candidates, including Governor Inslee, and media partners months ago,” DNC spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told Mother Jones. The DNC welcomes candidates to join issue-specific forums instead.

The thrust of the conversation was Inslee has a positive progressive record in Washington State and wants to take that success to Washington, D.C. To learn more about Governor Jay Inslee, visit his website at JayInslee.com.

The Inslee campaign posted video of the event here.

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Environment Living in Society Social Commentary

An Impossible Argument

Tagged Cow

I’ve been wanting to try the Impossible™ Burger and will have to wait.

I met a group of friends at a restaurant Friday where Impossible™ was printed on the menu. Since Burger King® decided to offer the plant-based burger nation-wide, smaller restaurants haven’t been able to get it according to our server.

The kitchen did have a Beyond Burger®, which I tried and was satisfied by my pub grub-style meal of a burger, coleslaw and Stella Artois®.

The reason I mention this is the American Farm Bureau Federation was running down products like these burgers for being “ultraprocessed.” In a June 4 blog post, author Teresa Bjork invoked reality to straighten people out,

In reality, meat and milk imitators are ultraprocessed foods. They are made from a long list of ingredients, including sodium and added flavors and colors, to improve their taste and nutrition.

One suspects increased availability of veggie burgers, and the Burger King® marketing decision, is taking a bite out of cattle producer market share. Likewise, the reason ovo-lacto vegetarians like fake meat is not for the salt content, but for how it fits into our lifestyle as comfort food. No matter how bad things may get for us personally, we want the sensation of eating foods that are traditional in our culture. Let’s cut to the chase.

The single biggest way to reduce our impact on Earth is to avoid consuming meat and dairy. Maintaining herds of livestock is a land use policy that encourages the ongoing mass extinction by taking land thus depriving other species of habitat.

“Meat and dairy provide just 18 percent of calories and 37 percent of protein, (using) the vast majority – 83 percent – of farmland and producing 60 percent of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the Guardian.

We can do better than that.

It’s no secret people should consume less processed food, particularly simple sugars and carbohydrates, for dietary reasons. For the Farm Bureau to favor meat and dairy production of their members is also not surprising. What is fake here is not the burgers, it’s the straw-man argument to protect what Farm Bureau sees as its own interests.

From time to time many Iowans crave a tasty burger. Getting one without politicizing it may be impossible.

Categories
Environment Writing

We’ve Gotten All Climate-Changey

Raindrops on the Driveway

We have a problem with climate change.

I don’t intend to get alarmist on fair readers with dire predictions of the end of the world as we know it. Even though doomsday stories are quite popular, and climate science is, well science, there is another issue.

In our weird, wet spring weather we believe we have climate change figured out. Instead of planting our potatoes on Good Friday, now we’ll plant them in early June as the ground dries out and all will be hunky-dory. That’s a problem.

Science: Around 1850, physicist John Tyndall discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in our atmosphere, producing the greenhouse effect, which enables all of creation as we know it to live on Earth.

Also science: As greenhouse gas emissions increased after World War II, our atmosphere warmed significantly. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. As we discovered, water vapor laden atmosphere can unleash torrents of rain on Iowa and elsewhere. There’s photographic evidence!

Suddenly we’ve gotten all climate-changey. Every severe weather event is declared to be made worse because of climate change. Maybe it is although the complexity of our climate doesn’t lend itself to such simple statements.

What makes this problematic is in a culture where we appreciate detective work that goes into finding a villain, assigning blame, and making them pay with social shunning or other consequences, there is no single antagonist with climate change. We are all antagonists which makes a pretty boring story.

Iowans may believe climate change brought us a new normal of wet springs. What the science is telling us about climate change is there is no normal as we define the word. The minute we believe we have climate change figured out a new twist should be expected.

It is time to Act on Climate.

~ Published in the June 13, 2019 edition of the Solon Economist

Categories
Environment Kitchen Garden

Cooking in the Climate Crisis

Shaved turnip, arugula and bok choy salad.

Ideas about how to cook are ubiquitous. Everyone — family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, chefs, dish washers, dieticians and scientists — has something to say about it. Almost everyone cooks. Talk about cooking can be devilishly engaging. Are there things we can do in our kitchen to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis?

It’s not clear how climate change impacts cooking once we get in the kitchen. We should minimize the use of water, electricity and natural gas while cooking. Many are and everyone should be doing so. Maybe that’s the point. Cooking is so common it’s hard to distinguish one process from another when it come to mitigating the effects of the climate crisis.

We recently lived through a rise in manufacture and consumption of pre-cooked and processed meals and ingredients, increased the amount of food grown closer to home, and changed consumer behavior due to national health scares originating in large farm fields in California, Arizona and Florida. Our collective actions to mitigate the effects of climate change, whether in the kitchen or elsewhere, matter in a time of hegemony of fossil fuels culture. For most, spending time cooking is when we nourish ourselves and practice culture that helps us deal with the complexities of a turbulent world. Cooking helps us focus on what we can control.

Inputs

Inputs set the stage for cooking. The focus is often on where ingredients originate and their environmental cost. That remains important yet I also refer to the framing of our lives in society, including land use, construction practices, kitchen configuration, water sourcing, energy sourcing, and education. All of these are inputs to cooking as they are to how we live our lives.

I’ve written about the importance of sourcing as much food as we can locally. My advice is get to know the face of the farmer where possible, and read the ingredient and nutrition labels on anything else.

If one has space, time and the ability, grow some of your own food. Not only can it taste better, time spent in a garden is enough exercise to avoid a trip to the gym or grocery store. Over our years in Big Grove I’ve developed a kitchen garden where what we eat and cook has become synchronous with seasonally available foods.

A cook includes ingredients grown or made a long distance from home where they offer something unique. Nutmeg and black pepper are examples of spices that serve a vital purpose but are not available locally. When the choice is learn to live without them or accept them for what they are, cooks will choose them as long as they are available. I don’t question that impulse.

Assembling and preparing ingredients on a counter t0 mix, saute, fry, steam, grill or bake them into a meal is fundamental. How much water, electricity and natural gas we use is part of background noise: important but seldom the focus of attention except when we configure our kitchen. Seeking energy efficient appliances and a faucet aerator are basic. Once a kitchen is configured few additional changes seem likely. Many of us don’t have the opportunity to configure a kitchen, especially when living in an apartment.

Simple practices like selection of cookware that retains heat, avoiding long preheating of the oven, keeping the oven door mostly closed while baking, and washing vegetables in a bowl instead of under running water have impacts.

A significant aspect of climate-friendly cooking is buying ingredients in a way that avoids food waste. Have a meal plan and buy only what’s needed for it. Plan to use up what’s in the ice box before it goes rotten when planning meals. These practices should be taught in the K-12 school system.

Our household eschews meat and meat products and has since we married in 1982. I’m an omnivore (just barely) and don’t understand the aversion to going meatless. Production of meat contributes to global warming and even if it is only one “meatless Monday” per week, reduction of meat consumption is basic enough that every household can do something.

Outputs

Cooking in our household is an irregular attempt to make something from ingredients that arrive unevenly over time. Cooking is about output, mostly what we serve for meals from our efforts. It is also about how we use what’s generated from the kitchen, including food waste, food storage and cooking by-products like carrot peels and pasta water.

I am a fan of Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace. Shortly after I read the book in 2011 I spent time generating the next meal from the previous one as she suggests. Adler presents an example of how cooking can be an efficient process that produces delicious meals. While her book is not about climate change, by being an efficient cook less resources are required and it can be better for the climate as well as our pocketbooks… and taste buds.

Our refuse company picks up weekly but we seldom put both containers at the end of the driveway. We could do better in reducing waste but in the kitchen every scrap leftover from inputs and meal production is put to use. We save leftovers for following meals. When there is excess produce we freeze or can it. Because we have a kitchen garden there is never enough compost so organic material goes into a stainless steel bucket, then out to a household waste composter near the garden. Using the results of kitchen production has become a part of a life that would seem weird if we didn’t do it.

Conclusion

The climate crisis is real, it is happening now, and the potential for global warming to harm us and our society is ever present. Cooking is ubiquitous, and determining ways to cook efficiently and with a smaller carbon footprint is as important as many things we do to mitigate the effects of climate change. It is not everything. It is something.

Categories
Home Life

Storm at Night

Fallen apples after a severe storm Sept. 20, 2013.

A thunderstorm with potential to create a tornado arrived about 8:45 p.m. last night. As the front of the cell moved over our house, we went to the lower level and waited in a safe corner, staying tuned to reports from news outlets. The National Weather Service precisely described our location in one of its tornado warnings.

The early warning system and technology supporting it are pretty amazing.

There was no tornado or straight line winds I could see or hear, although when the sun rises I’ll inspect the property for damage. The forecast is for scattered and isolated thunderstorms beginning around 2 p.m. today. We’ve seen worse storms than last night in recent years.

Wednesday I went to the warehouse club to fill a new eyeglasses prescription. On the way I stopped at a hair salon for a trim. Stylist conversation was about spring planting and how far behind many farmers are. We shared observations that fields have standing water and many farmers haven’t planted. One more manifestation of community talk about excessive rain’s impact our lives.

Farmers are giving up on corn, as it is getting too late to plant. They’ll switch to soybeans if they can get in the fields. From where we are today, they need a solid week of drying before running planters in fields. Estimates are 31 million planned corn acres remain to be planted, a few days work with modern agricultural technology. Because of wet fields with forecasts for more rain, it seems unlikely many will make it before the mid-June planting deadline to get crop insurance. 2019 looks to be a year farmers remain viable through insurance payments, federal subsidies and smart planning. Getting into wet fields not only poses risks of reduced yield for a current crop, resulting soil compaction would affect next year’s planting. So we wait.

I ordered my eyeglasses, fueled my vehicle and picked up groceries. The garden was muddy so I focused on inside work, still waiting for the weather to break. Last night’s thunderstorm indicated Mother Nature is not ready for that.