"Farm work is team work. You are part of the team. The part you have to do, not sort of have to do, not can ignore, is vitally important. You're going to think it's demeaning. It's not. You are a critical member of the team. Your job, accept it or not, is support for you husband and hands . . . Well, you're going to need them eventually. If you stick this. Here's your job list . . ."
Fix heartiest breakfast you can fix before your husband is awake. Cereal, if available, is insufficient. Carbo-load but add any available protein. There's a reason that bacon, eggs, hash browns and toast is called "A Farmer's Breakfast" on menus.
Wash kitchen thoroughly after each meal. Foodstuffs available to you have no preservatives. Flies carry bacteria. Flies are endemic to farms. The combination means any foodstuffs left out become bacteria magnets. You will suffer from food poisoning, sooner rather than later, if you don't keep the kitchen area spotless . . . If you don't have soap make it or trade for it in town.
Next chore is pick eggs. Get your kids to help you . . . Then I'm sorry. Hands are hands. Kids learn, early, they've got chores on farms . . . Go see if there are any orphans available . . . No, I'm not joking. If we chat some time I'll tell you about how my great-grandpappy started in the farming business. Short answer: he was an orphan from Baltimore who was sent out as slave labor. No, I'm not joking.
Then you're working in the garden . . .
Lunch for you, husband, family and hands. Heavy carbo load again.
Clean house. More garden work.
Dinner. Make it light. He'll be asleep in an hour.
Clean from dinner. Make sure everything is locked down and correct. Go to bed. Get up before husband and do again and again and again.
Canning.
Household maintenance.
Laundry.
Clothing maintenance. What do you mean, you don't know how to sew . . . ?
"There's a hole in the bucket dear Liza dear Liza there's a hole in the bucket dear Liza a hole . . ."
She eventually made a decent farmer's wife. She's a lobbyist for farmers now. Leopard can't change its spots, much.
There were about fifteen like that. "A"s that is. People who were out of their depth but willing to admit it and somehow got on the line with me.
There were way more that I tried to help and fell by the wayside. Farming is not easy.
One of the "A"s, sort of, that I tried to help was funny. I say "sort of" because there wasn't anything I needed to tell the guy about farming.
He'd been a farmer. He'd moved to Arizona when he retired. Sold the farm (big farms plural) to ADM. Didn't want to live in a retirement community. "Liked some space around him." Didn't like people much, that's for sure. Crotchety didn't cover it. Talked to his wife, once. Nice old lady. Didn't have to tell her about being a farmer's wife, either. She was glad he was back working since "he'd been a handful" retired. Given what he was like when I dealt with him, I cannot imagine what he was like retired.
Anyway, he'd bought a pretty big spread of fuckall. Think that desert I went through in Iraq. He wanted land around him, but he didn't want to actually have to work it.
Come spring of 2020, he's looking at what his internal computer is saying is prime farmland.
Huh?
Cli-mate Was Chang-ing. And not always for the worse.
Back in pre-Columbian days there was this race of "Native Americans" called the Anasazi. Had something sort of approaching civilization in the Southwest. Up and disappeared. Some indication of violence. Pueblo builders are thought to have been Anastazi "in retreat." But in retreat from what?
Probably each other. And surrounding tribes. See, in the mini-ice age back in the Middle Ages, the rains shifted. The "desert southwest" was about like, oh, Kansas. Prime farming country. As things started to warm up, it slowly dried out to the desert we know and love today.
Same thing was happening. The arid belt around the world was shifting south and contracting. Positive effect of global cooling. Thank God there was at least that.
Point is, this guy walks out one cold morning. Food around the nation is rationed. He's still keeping his ear to the ground about farming. Things are looking like fucking nightmare.
And here he is looking at what is quickly becoming some of the most arable land in the U.S. Rainfalls have been, for the southwest, nightmarish. The "arroyos" are rivers. Standing ones. He's not a climatologist but he's thinking they're going to stay that way. Sort of what the long-range forecasts, the good ones not U.S. Met, are pointing to.
Now, if he only had . . .
A big tractor.
Plows.
Planter.
Fertilizer.
Herbicide (still a bunch of that pesky sage around).
Pesticides . . .
Hell, it's a long list. If he only had everything he'd left up in North Dakota. And some weather numbers he could count on.
Oh, seed . . . that would be helpful.
So I'm leaning back in my chair, trying to stay awake and wondering how in the hell I'm going to get out of durance vile. There has to be a way. Marry a general's daughter? Nah, he'd think I did it to stay in the Pentagon . . . And I couldn't come right out and say "I married your daughter so I could get some career progression again, sir. Not that she's not a nice piece of ass but could you maybe call branch and get me the fuck out the Pentagon?"
"Yes, sir . . . I understand that, sir . . . Sir, we're not here . . . I don't think we have any actual equipment available, sir . . ."
I figure it's a tofu-eater. Let Smedlap take the heat. That's what enlisted guys are for, to take the fire.
"Sir, let me transfer you to my supervisor . . . No, sir, I'm not 'passing the buck.' He's a farmer, he might have some idea what you're talking about!"
Fuck.
"Major Bandit Six. What?"
"Do you know what time it is? I've been on this damned phone all night looking for somebody in the U.S. government who has a brain! I doubt it's you but maybe I'll find somebody sometime and I'll stay on this phone all night if I have to! I didn't pay taxes my whole adult life to get the run around!"
"All of which told me nothing about why you've called. So if that's all you've got . . ."
"My name is Farmer Bill. I've been retired for five years. I moved to Arizona and bought a spread. It was desert. It's not, anymore. I don't know what your bosses are saying, but as a professional I can tell you, sonny, that we're going to be short on food as a nation next year. So I don't see why a bunch of prime farmland should just go to waste. Can you understand that or are you as dumb as a box of rocks?"
"Hang on . . . No, seriously, I'm looking at the damned climate plat, okay . . . ? Yeah, Arizona's forecast for long-range increased precipitation. Gimme a township plat or your GPS location or, hell, your address . . . Okay." Tap, tap . . . "Yeah, you're right. But we both knew that. I see your plat. You're now the proud owner of four thousand acres of prime wheat, corn or soy farmland. Congratulations. And, yeah, Department of the Interior and the USDA both still have it marked as desert, the dumbasses . . . I'm not using their climatology models is why . . . Because I'm not as dumb as a box of rocks . . ."