When It Rains...

Thursday, August 23, 2007
Draper Farm, Grundy County, Iowa

The rain, thunder, and lightning keep rolling through. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself that our farm is in such a relatively flat area, with the Iowa River valley and Pine Lake 12 miles away near Eldora. But in a weird weather pattern like this, I’m glad to be where we are, and not on the evening news with a basement and backyard full of water. The people they interview on the news, though, are, for the moment, pretty lighthearted about their situation, annoyed yet matter of fact about the major hassle of a flooded town (“We had to park three blocks away!”), and at the same time tickled to be on t.v. for once.

I’ve never seen such soggy fields of corn, or ditches turned into streams. This afternoon Walt and I walked (slowly because of his tender back) for a ways down the road to the south, scaring up a great flock of blackbirds or starlings out of the corn. They were invisible until they lifted into the air en masse, then wheeled back and forth, glittering darkly in the overcast afternoon light. There were deer tracks in the mud by the side of the road, so I know the deer I saw in the fields last summer have remained, and a monarch butterfly came close as if to greet us as we started off down the gravel road. I’ve seen more monarchs this year than last, and more milkweed in the ditches. But I seem to have come too late for the lightning bugs. In June they go airborne at dark, flashing above the fields, a million fairy lights. Tonight brought something new, though: a hatch of some variety of tiny gnat or fly lured thousands of dragonflies and swallows to feast at dusk. The gnats were almost invisible so it looked like utter chaos, the entire yard and shelterbelt as far as I could see full of birds and bugs, flying in crazy circles and swoops. Finally I caught sight of a gnat and watched it spiral upwards in a lazy loop until zap! A dragonfly ate him.

I take back what I said about being a bread snob. I’m an Iowa gal; how could I be elitist? It is not snobbery to want to eat only what tastes really good and was grown and produced in a sustainable way. What I’m after, really, is simply to live in a place where to act on such principles doesn’t make me remarkable. I want to live where eating in the way I prefer makes me normal.