Button Mashing

If you grew up post NES, more in the Genesis/SuperNES era until the modern day, then you know what it means to mash buttons. If the last time you played a video game it was on an Atari (I guess you CAN mash one button, but you aren’t going to squeeze any special moves out of it), or if video games never played a role in your life whatsoever, then maybe this analogy holds no meaning for you at all (Chris, and perhaps rightly so, turned down every winter invitation to get together with other farm folk and play Dr. Mario and/or Bubble Bobble. I made the best case I could. To play Bubble Bobble…is to love Bubble Bobble….)

For non video game folks, think of it as…shooting from the hip…but even more desperate. For some, button mashing is the beginning and the end of how you play video games, and for others, it’s a last resort. I’m more the latter.

Button mashing is for when your plan falls apart, when you are hopelessly out skilled by your opponent, so you might as well mash ALL the buttons, and hope that an irresistible Tornado Kick Flip Fireball Special Move comes out of it. Sure, your opponent might have the timing and finesse that you lack, but you have pure chaos!!

I keep saying that this Spring is normal. Finally, a rather usual Spring. We get rains. It’s cool in the morning and warm during the day. But the actual quantity of rain is a little out of the ordinary. This week we got a good 3 inches Sunday into Monday, and another couple Tuesday into Wednesday.

When the weather is dry, as it has been previous years, you can plan out your successions pretty accurately. Dry soil, even though it pains any good farmer to do so, can be worked. Soaked soil on the other hand? No…not so much. As a farm that seeds successions every week of the season, we are already starting to feel the pressure. With all this rain, suddenly our timing becomes even more precious. There may only be one window this week to plant our succession, or maybe none!! And next week? Will we dry out enough to get back on track? Suddenly all our tasks are in conflict with each other.

Folks have a tendency to think that farming is something you do with Nature. I tend think it’s something we do around and often in opposition to Nature. Sometimes we are adversaries. I have an interest (salad), and it is being thwarted (rain torrents). But, the problem with having Momma Nature as an adversary is she doesn’t really care what happens. She’s calm and collected and sends whatever your way with little thought as to what your mission is, your little lettuces be damned. Cause to Nature, there is no fight. It’s me and my salad that are creating the conflict.

Into this week, the pressure is on. But I am not yet at the point of mashing buttons. Though the thought is there, I won’t yet send the crew out to plant everything and anything in the mud and just do whatever cause it’s gotta be better than nothing and we need a miracle!! No. Not there yet. We’ve played our timing relatively well up until now. But now we are being tested and I can see how that could happen. I hope with experience it doesn’t have to. Because mashing buttons is a breaking point, when you don’t know how to manage. I’ve button mashed my way through in the past, and I can’t say that it necessarily worked, but I can’t say that it didn’t either. That’s the funny thing.

Either way, I’m happy that for me it’s a last resort and not the way to play. We’re just going to keep it together. Calm, cool, collected…like Momma Nature…right? No mashing buttons…