PEA RIDGE — As I write this, we’re having a nice break in the winter weather. Most of us love the sunny, warm days that arrived for the March 7 weekend, and we look forward to the official springing of spring on March 20.

About two weeks ago, I heard a new expression from pastor Matt Daniels about getting past those cold winter days. He said, “I am SO DONE with this freezing weather!” At first I was thinking that done is done, and how do you get more done so as to be SO done? But then I realized that we used to use some old expressions for various degrees of done. For example, we used to say, “I’m half done,” then, “I’m purt near done,” and finally, “I’m plumb done!” “So done” may be just beyond “plumb done.” “Plumb done” means that you are right straight up against it. I speculate that “so done” is like baking bread. You bake it until it is “done,” and if you keep baking it gets “so done,” but maybe not “too Done!” So, I guess in Ozark terms, pastor Matt was saying that he is “plumb burnt out” on the icy cold!

Nice weather sure is nice. But then I begin to think like a farmer and a gardener, and I am not quite so sure about getting warm weather at this point in the year. Could it be atemporary pleasantry that turns costly in the end?

As I recall last year, we enjoyed some early warm temperatures, causing the flowers to bloom early and the trees to bud; then the temperatures hit the lows again, freezing the blooms and tender leaves, and killing the apples for the season. Two years ago, my folks had more apples on their trees than we could find uses and takers for.

But last year there were no apples at all, all because of that premature, unseasonable early warmth and that suddenly recurring freeze.

With some years of experience, the farmer and the gardener gain a more circumspect attitude about the passage of the seasons, coming to see out-of-season pleasantries as possible mixed blessings, or even as carrying dangerous consequences. An experience that feels pleasant in the moment may produce very unpleasant results in the end. People who live close to the land and growing things are likely to become guarded about our emotional reactions to niceweather and bad weather.

Although we “like” nice days, and we “dread” the rainy, dark and cold days, the pleasant weather may actually work against our crops and gardens, and the “bad” weather may have richly beneficial effects on our growing things and on our eventual prosperity.

The Good Book tells us that there is a time and a season for all things under the sun. That probably tells us that our blessings are produced not only by the pleasant times, but also by the more rugged and trying times in our lives.

One of the things we learn as gardeners and farmers is that we need the sun and we need the rain, and yes, we probably need the snow and the ice as well. Living through a drought presses home to us the fact that while sunny days are often good, too much sun is disastrous.

I’m thinking of how my parent’s generation was hit by the Depression of 1929 and after, and at the same time by the awful dry years of the 1930s. Out of that time come stories of dust bowls, dust storms, dust erosion that ruined thousands of acres of farm land and drove thousands of desperate Okies and Arkies westward to California.

The worst dry years that I remember in our Pea Ridgearea were 1953 and 1954.

Our pastures and hay crops dried up, grasshoppers ate what was left of the grain and we had to haul water to the cattle when Otter Creek went bone dry! To use pastor Matt’s expression, I was SO DONE with sunny weather in 1953 and 1954!!

I’m told that cold, icy weather helps keep crop pests under control, and that snow helps bring nitrogen into the soils as well as replenishing the deep moisture. The freezing and thawing in winter probably have a positive effect in making the soils tillable and making the life processes within the soil work as they are supposed to work. Not that I am wishing that spring would hold off in coming. I am ready for spring. I am almost as done with cold weather as pastor Matt. I’ll enjoy the warmth.

But I’ll not regret the cold of winter. In the mystery of things, winter’s ice and snow are probably blessings, too! By the way, watch for the flowers on the hill - two hills, actually!

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Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.

Community, Pages 5 on 03/17/2010