The farmers are out in the field, doing what farmers do this time of year. This year s a bit different though. There s a tension in the air that hasn t been felt for a while. As the tractors drive forward, there are anxious eyes looking back over the shoulders. Worried eyes looking at the sky, waiting for signs of rain, for the return of normal weather, weather that will nourish and see a crop grow to its fruition.
Climate conditions are always a worry.
Back when Albert was born, in 1932, the weather had changed in a way that devastated agriculture across North America. The prairies became a dust bowl and the rains disappeared. The dry soil blew in massive clouds across the unprotected plains, literally choking out the life that should have grown and flourished from it. Any hope of planting crops or raising livestock disappeared. Water sources dried up and eventually people had to abandon their homes, and their dreams and move on, searching for some other way, and some other place, to eke out their lives, to battle off privation and starvation.