Hail can be a powerful thing. Dan and I went to Wall Lake to see what damage there was after the hail storm the other night and it was bad. Bean fields that you couldn't even tell were supposed to be growing beans. Corn fields with nothing but stalks left standing and open ears of corn barely hanging on. Even the weeds in the ditches were stripped and bent over. Almost every house in town with windows facing west had plywood over where the windows used to be. A metal quonset had so many dings in the west side it looked like someone had purposely taken a hammer to it and made a pattern.
Summer storms can be rough. All those people with damaged homes will have to wait until their insurance companies can come assess the damage and then get them a check before they will be able to have glass to look out of instead of plywood to look at. The farmers are worse off than anyone, the crops are destroyed in the field and no amount of crop insurance is going to cover what could have been a great harvest. But money is not the only thing the farmer is losing. It is not even the most important thing they are losing. The farmers are losing the joy and satisfaction they would get from harvesting a crop they worked so hard to grow. Not many farmers I know are in the business just for the money, they are in it for the love of tending the land and growing the crop and then harvesting all their hard work. One summer evening weather came and took it all away. Amazing the power of the sky.
August 14, 2009