Rain Falls Up

Everyone knows that rain falls from the sky at least it has since Noah's day. But did you know that through capillary action in the soil that moisture is drawn up from the ground by an physical property of the soil where roots of plants and trees can get it? It is one of the reason that plowing fields is so devastating to soil. It destroys the soils natural ability to retain moisture. That is why you see so many irrigation systems running full steam to replenish what the plowman has destroyed.

Gardeners have known for along time that mulch covering the ground helps the soil to retain moisture because the sun is not allowed to bake the dirt into a hard crust.

The problem here is how does a farmer do all that is required to produce a crop without the use of all that equipment and methods? The other problem is of scale. What we talk about may work on five or fifty acres, but what about 500 or 5,ooo, or 50,000 acres? Mulching becomes unthinkable, or is it unthinkable not to mulch and cover the ground? Large or small, the principles are the same. You are farming in and with nature not on it or beside it. Why wouldn't you return to the field most or all of the byproducts of production. We are too much into the feed it to the cows mentality. Feed the cows cow food. Return to nature what belongs to nature. Most farmers produce a crop by forcing nature to conform to their way. When nature reacts, the farmer modifies his fertilizer, pesticides, or herbicides killing or curing as he sees fit.

So the story ends with rain falling from the sky and either there is too much or too little, but the farmer is never satisfied because he overlooks the fact that rain falls up.