Drought alert

Staring drought in the face. What it really means. Scarcity and crop switching.

This morning there are ice needles in the northerly wind. They have done there best to steel my nose and now they attack my hands. I write two lines. Stop. Walk. Warm up then two more.

Like me, the wild Pampas grass has lost its symmetry today. Its balance deserted with the stars, at day break with the arrival of this Arctic air.

My hair whips across my eyes as I turn up the hill. I walk up a steep stony track to warm up, beneath me are rocks and stones and dead wild grass. They are too pale to pray for water. Too weak to fight.

There’s me, nature and this drought who’s a hulk of a guy. Unfriendly and abusive. Slowly everything gives in to him. Like a nobleman from ancient times sapping all the energy from the workers of the land.

Flowers are so few and far between that my camera is trying to persuade me to ask the garden centre if I can take photos there for a colourful change.

Drought doesn’t want me here. He wants to own this land that is turning to sand and stone. He is pushing me away. But I love this land now. It’s my spa. I still photograph dead flowers and dried grasses with shredded tops.

My words are flowing but the blood in my fingers is slowing. The cold has got my thumb all numb. I walk some more.

This drought guy is a bitter chap. It’s like he has to get even. Maybe he has a story to tell when he was beaten. This is all he knows. This morning he has triumphed, having met and colluded with the Arctic wind. She is having a ball in the trees. The swoosh above is music to me but the birds don’t like the score. Mating calls are halted, cancelled until later.

The sun arrives deep orange to one side and stretches its limbs through the trees to me on the path but I feel nothing, Arctica has robbed the sun of its warmth.

I move. I must walk to warm up if I am to finish this tale. But whose tale is it to tell? This is out of my hands. Drought doesn’t listen to me. He doesn’t listen to small fry. We need to join together and rise up.

The farmer trimming his vines by hand, four lines of vines a day tells me he will give it two more years. Him and his farmer friends they are at their wits end. He looked at me and said, ‘this is the only business I know’.

His grapes are struggling thanks to drought. I hope the local council is listening to them all. I wasn’t surprised when he said it’s all he has ever known, at his eighty something years. He will need to sell his tractor but who will buy, if the land is too dry?

The bread on our table was grown in the fields with the love of the rain. If rain is going to play truant we need new grain. This is a game for the hunted. It’s not virtual and online. It’s for real and fee paying. The story is ours and the farmer’s to tell.

We are like skittles for drought. The lakes are 25% full. The five star hotels in summer will have to sell rooms cheap if there’s no water in the jacuzzi.

We all need to rethink. I hope the locals, the businesses, I hope they think. We are facing a serious challenge. We can’t sleepwalk into this. When we wake up the tap might be dry. Oh boy we need rain like you’ve never seen.

This is no longer just a tourists and hotel owner’s nightmare. We need 10cm of rain to grow a crop of wheat and a loaf of bread before it enters the oven is 60% water.

I heard drought laugh out loud while I’m researching all this. Of course I had to look this up. That’s the problem. We don’t know enough. We don’t realise how much we need it to rain for supper.

So I am looking for something positive to say, I learned in Lebanon there is a centre for research of farming for dry areas. Farmers could switch to Teff or Monococcum, ancient varieties of wheat. Which by the way, surprise, surprise, old wheat, it had low gluten.

In Morocco a drought is the worst in forty years and rainfall is down 70%, they are trialling a new cross of wheat with durum using some gene pool from wheat that grows in Syrian desert. They have called it Jabal.

Maybe that will be grown everywhere here soon because we are in winter and no rain means not even a winter crop. They used to opt for winter crops to avoid summer drought but this drought is taking winter for a ride.

We need to think this way forward. In Canada drought and heat was so bad last year the price of ordinary wheat rose by 90%. So the farmers need to be guided to grow these crops before they are left to close in desperation like this farmer today.

Apparently seeds are sold by just a few companies, so as I walk some more I start to imagen these farmers and councils sitting in every town at the table together with the seed growers and sellers, united, working one step ahead of drought.

I turn the corner and am suddenly blasted by full on sun at the end of the woods.

My fingers hurt. I can feel some warmth from the sun now. I have said enough. I must walk, warm up and look after me.

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Apologies for errors in first published draft. (I uploaded the wrong one. Typos are definitely my speciality!)

dry meadows by Pipp