Son of a Farmer

“Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.” - George Carlin

Man, is June the new July? For the love of man, it’s hot out here in West Texas. How hot is it? I saw two jackrabbits weeping beneath a frail mesquite tree. They peered at me with sorrowful eyes as if to say, “Brother, can you spare some shade?” Alas, I could not as I sped off with my AC at full blast in the comfy confines of my Dodge pickup truck.

You walk outside after lunch and you have to change your underpants before suppertime. Yes, it’s that hot. We’ve been hitting 102 degrees farenheit with regularity the past few days. Summer jumped out of the gates like a scalded-ass ape.

Cotton crops are holding on…by a thread. (Yes, pun intended.) Apparently 2009 is testing our true grit all the way through the growing season. That’s okay. True grit is what Super Bowl Champions, beef jerky, and the armadillo are made of, and I am chalk full of that, my fellow liberators. Most cotton (if there is any) is anywhere between pinkie and middle finger high. A field here and there is hand-high, but I’ve yet to see a dryland field boot-high as yet. Not good. Not good at all.

Many farmers in surrounding communities have planted, re-planted, and planted again to no avail. Some have nothing to show for it. We have to have a good two-inch rain to get this crop off and growing. Otherwise, we are toast for the second year in a row.

It is interesting to ponder, if not depressing, how many of us can endure another drought. After the Nasty Nineties, it is incorrigible to think of another prolonged period of minimal rainfall. Welcome to West Texas – where the desert gave birth to the prairie, west meets south, bone meets rock, crazy meets tough, and forever meets never again.

And U.S. Rep. Ron Paul does just that when it comes to the “economic crisis” in this country. I don’t agree with Paul on every issue, but this guy has more juevos rancheros than anyone in the country, and he makes more sense than anyone else in government or on mainstream media, particularly pertaining to his view on the Federal Reserve.

Check out this clip.

Just as many naturalists and scientists have been warning for years, years and years of abusing the soil with Roundup herbicide and GM crops are beginning to take their toll on American farmers. This story rips the face off the horrors of Monsanto ruining the American farmer and American soil.

Soil will continue to die, leaving Roundup farmers with nothing. Nothing. Once the soil is destroyed, nothing remains. If we do not change our course in agriculture, there will not be enough healthy soil remaining for farmers to make a living, much less feed and clothe this country and/or world.

Here are some highlights from the article:

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia.

“Farmers are taking this threat very seriously. It took us two years to make them understand how serious it was. But once they understood, they started taking a very aggressive approach to the weed,” Culpepper told FRANCE 24.

“Just to illustrate how aggressive we are, last year we hand-weeded 45% of our severely infested fields,” said Culpepper, adding that the fight involved “spending a lot of money.”

In 2007, 10,000 acres of land were abandoned in Macon country, the epicentre of the superweed explosion, North Carolina State University’s Alan York told local media.