My favorite bumper sticker is the one, seen on lots of pickup trucks, that proclaims, “FEEDING YOU IS WHAT FARMING IS.” So you must tolerate the farmer’s preoccupation with weather. Extremes such as drought or torrential rains can make or break the people who produce your bacon and eggs!

Chub and I are fascinated by the accuracy of the forecasts on the little satellite’s Weather Channel. We didn’t trust that at first because his Uncle Archie delighted in finding the weatherman in error. We never heard from Unc when things turned out the way they were predicted. But when things changed and “that weatherman got it all wrong again,” Unc would light a cigar and rock away a couple of hours in perfect peace.

Old timers like Uncle Archie and Dave Valentine, our bachelor neighbor for about 40 years, had a couple of sure-fire ways to predict the weather. We’d smell Dave’s corncob pipe and strong tobacco before he appeared from over the hill; on arrival, he’d predict changes in the weather.

“It’s a storm coming,” he’d say. “The calves are chasing around all over the pastures kicking their heels up in the air.” Or if he said, “The chickens jumped up on the wagon and sat there picking themselves,” we could bet that we’d get a good rain.

We learned that July and August would be hot and dry; April and May would be unsettled, a great relief from winter -- except an occasional surprise like snow. January and February would be the coldest months, but there could also be thaws that brought mud where “the bottom dropped out.” And it was often said, during those early warm days, “Don’t trust March!”

The old Romans warned of the ides of March. Actually, they spoke of the “ides” as being about the 13th of all months except March, May, July and October when the days near the 15th were “the ides.” Caesar was murdered in the ides of March. I don’t know what that had to do with anything else, but a feeling of dread lingered, to this day for some people, that terrible things would happen at that time. March 1960 was full of “ides!”

We had snows like none the old-timers had ever experienced. We’d get four inches on top of yesterday’s six inches. Then another. When two more inches were predicted, we’d get four. And so it went. We couldn’t drive through the huge drifts on our long driveway, even with the tractor. We left the station wagon on the county road, and Chub cut a fence so the tractor could get through the woods, across the creek and out through this new gap. We’d park the tractor and take the station wagon and reverse the process just before dark that evening. And there were hungry, thirsty cattle waiting.

One band day, Nancy was balancing her French horn case and Walt his trombone as we bounced along on the tractor in a real blizzard. It struck me as being ridiculous that, in addition to Chub’s huge roll of blueprints, I was carrying my swimming gear in near zero cold! I’d be teaching in a warm, steamy room where ice had formed on the inside of window corners. Steam, which condensed at the skylight, would drip cold “rain” on students who had already gotten the season’s first sunburn!

Don’t trust the ides of March!