On the way home from the Great Plain, the thermometer in the car read 27-28 degrees all the way through, at 3pm. That's about the same as mid- to late-May temperatures. For four weeks there has been no significant precipitation, in other words, a spring drought. The lilac is about to be cut, which, as you know from the lines "dress in new clothes for the dawn of Mother's Day", means a delay of about five weeks, because the first Sunday in May would be the holiday.
I went on alert, the monilies were done in a day, complete with food. No external infestation, all plant protection treatments were fine.
I won't go into the technical details of how the lack of (severe) frosts in the winter and the untold devastation of this disease, which was laughed at five or ten years ago, are related, but the point is that the (apricot) peach is gone.
In September, the cup council met, the decision was made: the chained one is coming in the autumn, let's F*** the whole thing up. We were supposed to do the next due treatment on him today, but we don't do it, it's pointless. What's the point if we cut it out in a few months?
I've known this was coming for ten years, and I've been saying we're in trouble for ten years, but now that the whole climate disaster has hit me in one piece at nine o'clock on Monday morning, I'm cracking up. The crying spasm came over me in the orchard this morning.
We pour money and work into it and this is the third year without a single grain. Obviously, if a business does not produce a single pound of income for three years, it has to be ploughed up. For us, that literally means: chaining and ploughing. I knew this moment would come, but now it has hit me like a f***ing ton of bricks.
And this is just the intro to the apocalypse that awaits us.
Domestic arable farming is in even bigger trouble. Maize, which is the economic backbone of the whole thing, hasn't produced S**t in the Great Plain for four years. Ask farming buddies and they've all made losses in the last three years.
