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After how wet this spring was, I never thought I would be looking at the clouds every day, begging for rain. Yet, I find myself standing outside and staring into the blue skies, hoping to see a rain cloud on the horizon. In fact, I feel a lot like my grandfather. When the grass started to turn brown, and the air just felt oppressive, he would look up into the sky and say that the sky looked storm blue or rain blue. As a kid, I never understood what he meant. To me, the sky was just blue — sometimes dark blue, sometimes light blue, but always just blue. In fact, it wasn’t until I was an adult that I began to understand this distinction in blues.

Google says there are 225 shades, hues and tints of the color blue. In fact, just look into the sky on any given day and see how many shades of blue you can see and name. Depending on the day, it can be overwhelming. But as a kid, I didn’t know how many colors of blue there were, nor did I really care. I just wanted to know when it would storm so I could listen to the thunder and watch for the lightning. I didn’t understand that grandpa was trying to teach me a valuable lesson.

See, I craved the excitement of the storm. I wanted to feel the wind blow, hear the rain hit the roof and watch the lightning illuminate the sky. To me, storms were the most magical thing to happen in the summer. In fact, I still feel this way. Those moments right before the storm, when the wind dies, the temperature drops, and you can smell the rain moving in, are some of my favorite moments. Listening to the rain pelt on my metal roof, watching the lightning streak across the sky and hearing the booms of thunder echoing around still make my heart beat a little faster with excitement.

Yet, while storms make me really happy, they aren’t necessarily great for farmers and farming. Lightning strikes can cause barn fires and kill livestock, not to mention knocking out power and creating inconveniences for everyone. Wind can cause severe crop and facility damage, and rain can cause flooding. Storms, while exciting for me, are nerve-racking for farmers. Farmers prefer rain that falls gently all day, slowly wetting the soil so plants and animals can flourish and grow. Grandpa was teaching me to understand nuances by deciphering the blue of the sky.

Grandpa wanted me to be able to tell when the sky was gentle rain blue, angry storm blue, hot blue, cold blue, and all the shades, tints and hues in between. He didn’t do this because he wanted me to be a meteorologist; he did this because he knew that life requires us to see more than just blue. Sometimes, we must differentiate Cerulean from Egyptian Blue or Power Blue from Caroline Blue. And sometimes, it’s not blues at all that we have to differentiate. Sometimes, it is parsing out like from love, dislike from hate, right or wrong, friend or foe. My grandpa knew life required me to see and tell the shades apart. He wanted me to embrace the excitement of storm blue, relax with gentle rain blue, bundle up when it was icy blue and stay cool with heat blue. He tried to prepare me for not only the weather I would face, but also the storms of life.

However, right now, if you drive past my house and catch me staring at the horizon, I might be contemplating the shades of my life or trying to decipher the sky. Right now, I’m just hoping to look up into the sky and see that gentle rain blue because, as farmers know, we need rain.

Submitted by Christen Clemson, a member of the Trumbull County Farm Bureau, who completed her Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University. She and her family farm in Mecca Township.

OFBF Mission: Working together for Ohio farmers to advance agriculture and strengthen our communities.