Every morning, Mike gets up and checks the weather on his
phone. Two or three times a day, he
checks the weather. He has never watched the weather like this since we started the sustainable agriculture project 25
years ago.
When I was a girl, Daddy was a pastor in a rural area and he
held a rain dance when dark, dark clouds were looming, after weeks of praying for
rain…people laughed and laughed as the skies opened up. As an adult, our friends would joke with us
when we ran shelters that they could hire us out to end all droughts…all we had
to do was go camping and the rain would fall and fall.
When we started working with Nicaraguan farmers, I internalized
something that I knew but never really knew... rain is important! Too little, plants dry up. Too much, plants rot. Late rains, seeds do not grow or coffee
blossoms too early. Good rains and then
no rain, lush plants wither. I know, you
are thinking, “Well, duh! Everyone knows
this.”
Until working with farmers, rain was nice to me. We laughed about rain dances and camping but
now, I truly understand that rain is not something to take for granted. Farmers can’t buy shoes for their children if
the rains decide to come on a weird schedule.
If the rain doesn’t cooperate, food prices go up and poor people can’t
eat if food is not available cheaply, and it goes on... 
Agricultural investors don’t get paid and interest rates
rise when crops fail, burying the farmers further in debt. Our sesame plant workers do not work if they
don’t have seed to process. It is nerve
racking! 
And I don’t farm! I
just live with my husband, Mike, who watches and tries to balance the
investors, buyers, workers, farmers, and on and on for the organic agriculture cooperative…while he checks the weather.
-Kathleen
