Phil Penne Creations

#15 - The Farmer

 

 

        The work is backbreaking. Up before the sun; milking, feeding, plowing fields, planting crops, mending fences and barns, trying to keep an aging tractor running, and not stopping until after the sun has set. But if Nature is accommodating the work has its rewards: watching green stalks reach towards the sky and bear corn that will feed multitudes; eating hot, hearty meals that have come straight from the Earth; and few things can rival the feeling of standing in the quiet of a field of wheat just before the sun comes up, breathing in the cool, damp air and watching the lightning of a morning storm illuminate the distant horizon. 

        Unfortunately, though, Nature has not cooperated for going on eight months now. The heat has been oppressive and there has been no rain. Stalks of corn that should be bright green and towering above you are stunted and brown, and the few ears that have by some miracle sprouted are sparsely populated with small, hard kernels. Watering holes are now alien landscapes of dried, fissured mud littered with the desiccated remains of small fish. Even the points of some of your deepest wells are now suspended uselessly above the waterline. The slightest breeze stirs up small cyclones of dust that mingles with the perspiration on your skin to form a dirty brown plaster... 

 

 

 

You've endured body aches, long hours, and little money, but the drought almost has you beat. You've always believed in hard work and honesty; now it's time to expand your beliefs into another realm.