Day 301: watching it burn

A local rancher's huge stack of round bales caught on fire early this morning. A huge loss. As one of my friends put it "a summer's work & winter's feeding." There wasn't much the fire department could do but make sure the fire stayed contained to the bales.

I've lived in rural Montana nearly all my life & most of that time I've been continually adding to the mental list of reasons I could never be involved in agriculture. After thirty years it's a pretty extensive list, but this uncertainty of things--- the need to be able to survive the unpredictable weather (too hot, too cold, too much rain, too little rain, fire, snow. . .) year after year and work in and with whatever comes your way. That is near the top.