Yesterday afternoon Captain Corsair and JB and I experienced our own personal storm. We knew things weren’t going to be good when the weight of the storm turned around and came back on the farm from the south. Never a good thing! Rolls of loud resounding thunder rumbled round us followed in turn by the ear-splitting crack of lightning that sounded as if it was in the next room. OK, by this time we had battened down all hatches that can be in an eighty year old farm house and waited for the onslaught. Outside in the paddocks stood our summer crop of sorghum and corn. Tiny little plants just beginning to flourish. And to the south- an ominously green sky was bearing down on us.
A disaster of any proportion in devastating. I have lived on this farm for twenty two years now, and I had never seen crops stripped as these were. Golf ball sized jagged hail stones don’t mess about. Oh, it was all over in fifteen minutes, but it caused the same heartache as the twenty year drought before it had. A years salary and weeks of blood sweat and tears torn to shreds. It made me think of the various disasters that have happened over that last few years, of the losses that people have suffered and will continue to suffer. We lost only a season’s crop, but for those who lost a home or family member the devastation must be as a searing pain, one that can’t be fixed by replanting a crop. As hard as the lesson is to take, I believe that we don’t really understand the lose of others until we experience loss ourselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment