Agriculture

There's something comforting about howling winds and driven snow, if you're inside a cozy warm house looking out at the weather. There's something pleasing about the abrupt suspension of normal activity by forces beyond your control, if you know it's just a punctuation mark in a life that will resume its flow. If I had any doubt that I should simply savor this slightly inconvenient March snowstorm, I have the example of the people of Mariupol and other besieged Ukrainian cities to dispel that doubt. They cannot revel in the last of winter's cold, if they have no heat in which to take refuge from it. They cannot relax into the sudden and unanticipated break from their normal life, if they have no assurance of ever returning to it. I know, in a matter of days and with certainty, that spring will resume its inexorable march forward on the farm. They, in contrast, can rely on no certain delivery from the dangers and discomforts besetting them. By preventing me from carrying out the tree trimming and blackbe