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   Darrel stands with elbows jutting out and hands shoved down into his
back pockets as he stares out over his fields of brown, withered, plants. He
looks up at the sky. Not a cloud in sight as for as the eye can see in any
direction. “God, if you’re really up there,” he thinks, “have
mercy. . .please! What are we gonna do if we can’t farm?”


He pulls his hands out of his pockets and looks down at them. They
are callused and gnarled with dirt so deeply ingrained in the creases that
no amount of washing will remove it. “I belong to the land,” he thinks,
“It’s part of me. It’s all I know how to do.” He looks back at the heavens
and speaks out loud, “Lord, give us a break.. .please.. . give us back the
weather we used to have with spring rains and summer showers, when
things would grow if you just stuck them in the ground.” He stares at the
silent blue sky helplessly for a long moment, then drops his head and starts
back to his pickup truck angrily kicking a chunk of hardened dry sod out
of his path as he goes.

Darrel and his father before him and his grandfather before him have
farmed these lands for over a century, and the land has been good to them.
But in the last few years, the weather patterns began to change drastically.
Of course, they had experienced good years and bad years before, but
nothing like this. The rainfall was gradually decreasing, and hot dry winds...

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