He Plants Grapes, and an Untimely Rain Brings Him a Harvest of Humility : Nature: The scientific farmer finds his smugness--and his raisins--washed away by the one thing beyond his control.

In September, three times a rotting rain fell on my grapes trying to dry into raisins.

Three times I cursed the weather as my stomach knotted with pain. Outside, my harvest was drowning; inside, my hopes were crushed.

Three times I was taught the lesson: I have a fragile claim on the land. I had 35,000 trays of withered grapes spread on the ground, waiting for the sun to dry them into raisins. With each rain, they swelled with moisture, sand became embedded in their wrinkles and the rot spread.

Yet the danger of rain was part of my harvest rite. Raisins are still made by the archaic method of laying grapes out in the sun and waiting for them to dry. It is one centuries-old farm practice that has escaped change. We may have paper trays today instead of wooden ones, but the ritual remains the same.

When the first storm came, I thought of praying, begging and pleading for the rain to stop. Another thought occurred: Had I committed an evil act, a sin, and was I now being punished?

But a part of me foolishly believed I could control nature. Allied with technology, who needed prayers? Science could do anything. If there was something wrong with my vines or grapes, I’d just spray something on to fix them.

During my youth, I was trained to be a master of my land, to control and dominate crops and harvests. Nature somehow became a separate entity, unconnected my daily practices.

But the September rains quickly humbled me. I was defenseless, helpless as I tossed in bed at night. I listened to the soft sounds of raindrops and pictured them falling on my raisins, pictured my raisins becoming miniature oases for mold.

I was being taught a harsh lesson: I could control much of nature, but not everything. Even though l could add a growth hormone to enlarge a berry, or dust a chemical and kill a pest, I was operating in a sea of uncertainty.

In taking our distance from nature, we farmers have lost touch with more than the elements. We exiled ourselves in our offices and homes. We functioned more and more as a business with workweek rhythms. We modeled our operations as an industry designed to produce a commodity. All the while we believed our insulation from nature was a control of nature.

During the first rain, I paced in the night, stumbling through the stages of grief, journeying from denial to anger to depression.

By the second rain I had begun talking out loud, asking for the huge black thunderheads to change course, pleading for the wind to blow and the sun to reappear. It must have looked crazy, yet in talking to the elements, I was beginning to acknowledge the mystery of my profession.

By the third rain I had aged and perhaps grown a bit wiser. I felt older, more like the old-time farmers I knew. They seemed to accept rain as part of life. They had a wisdom of experience and a tradition of care. The day after it rained, they’d be out in their fields, crawling on their knees, sorting out the survivors, tray by tray. They valued their produce and the meaning of a life intimately tied to their work.

The old-timers had patience and optimism and hope. This, too, was part of the nature of farming, the free and life-sustaining emotions of human nature.

That’s not to say they were free of other human emotions. As the first storm clouds approached, I overheard one farmer saving that he hoped it would rain. His raisins were rolled and boxed, safely stored in his shed.

His comment reflected how far we had gone. We had even lost our sense of community, opting for profits first and survival of the fittest. The rains would affect the law of supply and demand, the value of his raisins rising with each drop of rain falling. He would be a victorious hunter in the world of agribusiness.

Yet farmers are not hunters, we are planters. We are nurturers of nature. And we have chosen to live in nature’s fragile and transient world.

As I plan next year’s work, I will remember this September. I hope that in the rain I also was given a measure of the wisdom I saw in my father and uncles and neighbors.