By Amanda Huber
Yesterday, I heard those words no one ever wants to hear.
“We just can’t fix it, Mrs. Huber,” said the mechanic, at least not without a new engine that would cost several thousand dollars.
My beloved Suburban is dying. Ten years I have had this same vehicle. It’s the only car my children have ever known. I’ve been in peanut field after peanut field and never once gotten stuck. I’ve climbed on top of it to take pictures from a much higher angle. I’ve carried everything in it from bags of mulch, to eight-foot tables to seven kids at once and each with a party balloon.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. This year was the year we were putting in a pool, a do-it-yourself model, but still a pool. The Suburban just needed to last two more years. Now, I’ll be lucky if it will drive onto a car lot.
You might feel a lot like I do about this crop year. As prices climbed higher and higher, many of you were probably just itching to get peanuts into the ground this spring. You just needed some rain to get peanuts off to a good start. But in a lot of places, that rain never really came.
Now, many fields are left unplanted and fields that were planted are likely to have erratic, skippy stands, which sets up further problems as the season progresses. It just wasn’t supposed to happen this way; this was going to be a good year.
Unlike my car, you still have a chance turning this season around, if it will just start raining. We all know that peanuts are a most resilient crop and can pour it on if the water is available and pest problems are not too bad. We can all still have hope that the weather pattern will change, the much needed rains will come and this year will end on a brighter note than it began.