The TV weather this morning showed rain moving into southern California. One of the blogs I follow is Foothill Agrarian, written by parttime sheep rancher and extension service employee. His most recent post was on fall, his favorite season, and the complicated planning he and his partner needed to do to plan for the upcoming year. The main complication was/is the prospect of rain or continued drought which impacts the forage available which impacts the health of ewes which impacts the lamb crop...etc. etc. So the prospect of rain, though I'm not certain exactly where in California he's located, likely cheered him.
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago another farmer I follow on twitter was concerned over the inability to harvest and store rain, given the rains which were dominating the weather in NY. I remember the years on the farm when we faced that problem, meaning we had to buy hay during the winter and/or buy molasses to put on the hay which we got in the barn only after it had been rained on (cows didn't like to eat such hay without the addition of molasses).
Back in the days when ASCS operated a disaster payment program IIRC the yields we used would be determined by averaging past years' yields, but dropping the bad years. That to me reflected farmer optimism--the normal yield was always better than the straight historic average of yields. Now I see it as a reflection of what humans do: use motivated reasoning to support their desired outcome.
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