I stood at the kitchen window sipping my morning tea and watching a few chickadees busy feeding at the birdfeeder. Blue jays perching in the white birch took turns stripping a seed cake. The little snow we had earlier in the winter, had completely disappeared during a long stretch of refrigerator winter weather. The snowless late February yard alongside the house looked dreary and comfortless like a hard, lumpy bed with neither the luxury of a pillow nor a blanket.

Thinking back over several decades of my life, I wondered, “Have we ever had a winter with so little snow and such warm temperatures?” Some winters had less snow when I was growing up, but not because the snow kept melting away in unnaturally warm December, January, and February weather.

Most families don’t avidly discuss the weather, but mine did, just as I suspect many farm families do. Unusual droughts, heat waves and unexpected freezes are the reasons many farm businesses have fallen into ruin. Delving deep into my memories, I tried to remember some of the things Mom and Daddy had said about unusual weather.

I recall Daddy saying, “There was one year without a summer. A huge volcano in Indonesia blew up and put so much ash and debris into the atmosphere that the entire northern hemisphere had dark, stormy weather, and frequent freezes all summer the following year. Because of it, crops failed, farmers went bankrupt, and many people starved.” The way Daddy spoke of that disaster, it seemed as if it had happened during his own father’s lifetime.

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