“God gives us what we would have asked for if we knew everything He knows”
this is my Dad’s text to me last night, referring to something he had heard Timothy Keller say… and in reference to the struggling crops we have…
I took some pictures about two weeks ago as little Missy and I went for a walk and did a little crop checking at the same time…
in Saskatchewan we grow a lot of red lentils… in fact I believe we are the largest producer of lentils in Canada… I did not google this fact and perhaps made it up…
lentils like stress… they like a little drought, lots of heat and stress on the plant creates an abundance of red lentils…
so over 25 inches of rain and most of that rain coming in late July/early August does not create the type of plant stress that is beneficial to lentils…
what Missy and I found was two different types of rotting lentils… this first crop was one of the most beautiful looking lentil fields I have ever seen in June… and now it has white mould at it’s roots and is rotting from the ground up…
this is a different type of disease caused by the wet conditions and it is called root rot… it can stay in the soil after years like this and is difficult to get rid of apparently…
the other thing we found was billions of mosquitoes… apparently mould and rot and wet soil are exactly what they love… so there’s that…
as we cursed the mosquitoes and mourned the crops, we turned to run home and found Elizabeth Taylor had followed us on our crop checking tour…
and Missy had to carry her back to our house… although I don’t think she minded…
so the farmer and I and the kids headed to the lake for the weekend to get away from the depressing sight of rotting crops and constant rain…
only to find that we were not happy at the lake… we felt anxious and tense… like being lazy on a boat wasn’t changing the fact that harvest is on hold and the rain keeps coming…
and then we find we are on edge and building a new trampoline together turns into an argument… a major argument… and we know it’s because we wish he was in a sprayer or combine and I wish I was cooking and running for parts…
but God gives you what you would know you need if you knew all that He knows… right Dad? (my Dad is always right… just about… like 86% of the time)
so we get 2 inches of rain in a storm when I’m assuming the water level in the soil is already at it’s breaking point… (meaning – puddles are forming in odd places in the yard… over saturated)
and our newly renovated basement is flooded…
we do have flooring in it now that is water resistant and no baseboards yet and everything in tupperware containers in our storage… but it is still water coming up through the ground and going into your basement…
and then a strange thing happens… the two kids that were at home with us started helping with the clean up effort…
we turned on the Olympics downstairs and watched ping pong… we made up a few songs about mopping up the water…
and then we put the kids to bed and the farmer and I pulled basically an all nighter with the shop vac and towel rotation…
and laughed… and for some reason the crop stress went away… possibly because we had a new stress… one that we could fight and try to conquer… we could do something about this… we could work and figure it out and fix it…
but we can’t do that with the crops… we have zero control over the weather… a farmer tries to anticipate and plan but then is forced to react… and to have his heart broken when a bumper crop is rotting in a field…
and it’s not just about the profit loss… I know this because I live it with a farmer… it is about growing something and having it turn out… of course to make money but also to know that you can do it… that you can farm and grow a good crop…
so as a farmer… we deal with life somewhat like our rotting lentils… we need stress… we needed the basement to flood so that we could have a different stress than our crops…
and saying this makes me think my Dad is always right… we got what we needed… not that I believe that is always the case… but it was with our basement flooding…
i feed a farmer 
Leave a Reply