The Fifth Governor

From the Heartland, Margot McMillen writes: You’d think that, after the drought of last summer, today’s weather in the 60s and rain would be good news. But it’s January 10, and it’s should be 0 to 20 degrees outside, or less, and snowing instead of raining. Snow makes a nice blanket of insulation on the fields, cozy in the frozen weeks that will surely come, while rain soaks in and alerts the plants that it’s time to grow. Warm rainy weather tells the fruit trees to make buds and prepare to bloom and it tells the wheat to put on leaves and more roots. Then, when the world freezes again, the buds will be frozen and fall off and we’ll lose a whole year’s worth of fruit. And the ground freezes in an action called heaving. Frozen dirt expands, then melts and contracts, shifting the dirt around and breaking the new roots on the wheat. Too much heaving and the wheat can’t recover. No good. No good. Global climate change kills farms. So we might tell our friend from the Patriots’ meeting, who noted that we operate under four governments—county, state, federal and world—that there’s another government operating, the government of mother nature. And we’ve abused her. And she ain’t happy.