Oh Hail

While most fields have been droughted out, the few small patches here at home look good despite their diminutive stature. A month or more before wheat is usually ripe and ready for harvest it is already brittle dry.

It’s only a few acres. But it is a few acres of crop that has made it through the drought and is viable. Little enough has survived this past year. We need to cling to those things that have. They spent the afternoon changing concaves in the combine, getting ready to harvest.

There is a storm to the north. It blew up out of nowhere. We watch the ominous cloud grow. It is going east, we wont get anything from it. No rain, but also none of the hail that keeps setting the weather radio shrieking. We’ll take the bad we know for now and are grateful to stay dry, missed by the hail.

Then the cloud turns south. It hits town with a blanket of snow. But it will stay north of us.

The wind hits first. Stirring up clouds of dust on the horizon. The first drops of rain rode that wind. They hit the house sideways. Then it never stopped. For the next hour, two hours, it began to look like it may never stop, the rain kept coming.

The radar still showed it mostly missing us. It would be done soon. But more came. Hail began to hit the house. The first stones with pointed ends, cone shaped instead of round. Then bigger, and smaller again, but never stopping.

At first there was hope. The garden we had spent the early morning hours weeding and cleaning up could still be fine. Corn can take a bit of a beating. The wheat, brittle hard and dry, was lost immediately. The husks shatter and burst with the blow from the hail sending the fruit to the ground. But as the hours went on and the hail kept coming we had to admit it was unlikely that anything would escape without damage.

I finally messaged my husband. Would he like me to come get them? Surely they would have called for a ride home if they weren’t busy working on equipment. He easily gave in and accepted my offer. I was soaked in the short run to the car. Once everyone was loaded we went for a drive before coming home. Down the driveway, completely water covered, flooded, water rushing down the hill. The corn hung limply, leaves shredded. Hail broke against the windshield.

They always say it rains after a drought. I guess that’s true. They never do break easy. We stand and stare out the windows listening to the hail stones beat against the house. The harvest over before it began. The garden pummeled. Tired of the noise, tired of the never ending hail. This storm is breaking so much more than just drought.