Yes, it is still hot, miserably hot. The longed-for September rains are nowhere to be seen, or they stay over in the Panhandle. The fire danger is real all over the state.
Yet, somehow, the air is different. Something clicked at the new moon, and it feels like summer is losing its grip on us. The days are shorter and lazier and like the moon they are swelling with the promise of fall, of final garden harvests, of tucking most of the work away for the winter. It isn’t here yet, but it is coming and it is in the air.
Wheat farmers are feeling a different kind of pressure, wanting to plant, knowing it is still too dry, trying to hit that balance between not enough moisture and not enough time until June, until wheat harvest. How they manage to thread that needle year after year – with very few misses or lost crops – is a constant source of amazement and pride.
Cattle producers are also pushing their own envelope. They must determine whether the calves are heavy enough, weaned enough, but still green enough to go to market. Are prices going to rise next week, are calves bringing more at Pratt or OKC or Fairview? When is the big run, the one that will ensure buyers in the seats, competing for those calves? Or does scarcity bring a premium?
Those are the questions farmers, producers and homeowners are fielding right now, scooping them up like a hot line drive to center field, and the throw they make with the answer will impact them for the next season.
The same conundrums come every year, and these folks handle them like the professionals they are. Luckily, the weather is having a little mercy on all of us, a little cooler overnight, a little longer to heat up in the morning. The heat even seems to break a little earlier in the afternoon. It is still hot, still tough, but in the waning days of summer, we’ll take any advantage we can get.