We live in a farming community. Jimmy’s favorite saint is St. Isidore. He is the patron saint of farmers and rural life. We actually have a statue of him out at church. One year for Christmas I got a 3 foot statue of St. Isidore for Jimmy. He has lived all over our house but currently resides in the kitchen window. He overlooks us while we prepare our meals and as we eat them. We know he’s there but it’s nice to have him as a symbol of who we are: Catholic farmers who believe in saints.
Several years ago Jimmy had a decent crop of tobacco. He was in the process of stripping the air-cured tobacco and it had had too much water and it was molding a little. The company he sells to suggested that he fire the crop to eliminate the mold. Firing a crop is a lot of work. There are farmers out there who will fire their air-cured tobacco. But Jimmy has never done it. His dad never did it. And it sort of defeats the purpose of having air cured tobacco. Air-cured is just as it says, cured by the air. Jimmy told the company that the crop he delivered that day was the best tobacco he was going to be delivering to them. They told him that was pretty good but he warned them. He came home and let me know that they would probably downgrade his tobacco because of the mold. He didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t have the barn space to fire the air-cured tobacco and he just wasn’t going to put that effort into it. He said he would take his chances and maybe they wouldn’t downgrade it too bad.
The next morning they were bringing a load of air-cured into the stripping room. I hollered at them to wait a minute, I wanted to do something. I went and got the statue of St. Isidore, tucked it under my arm, dug out my holy water, and found my prayer book. Surely if St. Isidore was to see how bad the tobacco was he would want to do something about it.
I got into the stripping room as they were bringing in a load of air-cured. The guys were lining a wall with the stalks of tobacco. I perched St. Isidore up on a shelf by the window and pointed him towards the tobacco. I found my prayer to St. Isidore and while the guys were lining that wall I prayed that prayer. When I finished I sprinkled that tobacco with holy water. Jimmy told me that the tobacco didn’t need any more water but I didn’t listen to him. I left St. Isidore out in the stripping room.
Do you know that the next time Jimmy took a load of tobacco the guys at the company asked him about it. They asked him where his bad tobacco was. They told him that load wasn’t too bad. There must not have been that much mold on it because they didn’t see any on what they pulled out to sample. When he got home he told me that. I just smiled. I knew that St. Isidore was taking care of us. When it was all said and done that was one of the best crops that we ever delivered.
A couple of years later we had a drought. We have never had a drought to that extent and Jimmy had never irrigated his crop. We begged for rain. We prayed for rain. We just knew the rain would come. But it didn’t. One day that it was so bad I grabbed the statue of St. Isidore again and headed out to the tobacco patch by the house. St. Isidore needed to see how bad the crop was doing without rain. He needed to know what to pray for. While he was out there I took a few pictures of him. He didn’t seem to mind. That year we started lighting a candle to St. Isidore out at church. Every Sunday. Year round. We needed to make sure he remembered who we were. After a couple of weeks we started lighting a candle to the Blessed Mother too. It didn’t hurt to have more than one saint praying for you.
Do you know that at the end of that year we ended up having more pounds of tobacco than we ever had had? The stalks were pitiful but the leaves were just as heavy as could be. It got to be a joke that we put so much emphasis on our prayers to St. Isidore, we couldn’t forget about him because we needed him to remember us.
There have been other times that St. Isidore has come through for us. It just seems that whenever he does it’s better than we could have imagined, maybe better than we deserve.
This year has been bad. This year we have had too much rain. This year we have had too much wind. This year we have had hail. Our tobacco crop has been under water, blown until it was twisted and there are some leaves that are so full of holes they won’t be worth anything. It is too late to replant the crop. But due to 13 inches of rain in just a week once the plant came out from under the water then the heat caused it to scald. Jimmy estimated that one patch of tobacco was 80% gone. We didn’t know what to do.
We had not been lighting a candle to St. Isidore. We were doing some repairs at the church so we were having Mass over at the KC Hall. For three weeks we couldn’t get into the church. So for three weeks we didn’t light a candle to St. Isidore. The bad weather came in during the time that St. Isidore was being ignored. We had some time to make-up.
My mother used to pray Novenas all the time. You could give her something that needed prayers and she was right there praying a Novena. A Novena is 9 days of prayer. Mom would do them once a week but you can do them 9 consecutive days. And during the Novena you pray your special intention. I was never one for Novenas. That’s a pretty big commitment. What if you miss a day or something? But I decided that I needed to say a Novena to St. Isidore.
I didn’t know if there was a Novena to St. Isidore. I figured if there wasn’t I would make my own. But I was lucky in that there was one. I searched the internet and found one. I printed out all of the prayers for 9 days, I grabbed my holy water and I was ready. I was going to grab St. Isidore and take him with me and then I made up my mind that I needed St. Isidore in the farm vehicles all the time. I needed him to see what each one of our patches looked like. I knew that once he saw it that he would do what he could to help us out. So, I went back to the internet and found a place that had 4 1/2 inch St. Isidore statues. I ordered 10.
The first day of the Novena I went to the worst patch. This was the 80% scalded patch. I pulled up, got out of my car, and stood on the edge of the patch. One of the things I like about being able to pray outside like that is that there’s no one around. So I was loud. I was loud in my praise and I was loud in my petitions. I made sure whoever was listening heard me. And I prayed from my heart. I knew that I had done that because whenever I do I start to cry. And I cried a lot that day. Because that patch looked awfully bad.
At about day 4 I started to get excited. We hadn’t gotten any bad weather and no water since I started. One day it was poring at my office but when I called home they hadn’t gotten a drop. They told me that the sky looked awful but it looked like it was pouring south of them. That would have been on me.
That was about the time that Jimmy told me he didn’t know what I was doing but to keep doing it. I told him I was only praying. But I believed that St. Isidore would take care of us yet again, like he always has.
I don’t know if it was my prayers or what but I got through that entire Novena without us getting any measurable rain. In fact, the last day or two Jimmy told me to start praying for rain. I told him I would wait until the Novena was over. I also reminded him that he could pray some.
I’m not sure how this crop will be. I do know that really bad patch is still bad but some of it has come out of the scald. Most farmers will tell you that it won’t come out. I’ll tell you that some of it has. But Jimmy will tell you that where it didn’t get burnt is some of the biggest tobacco he’s ever had in that field. He said it wasn’t big enough to top and you couldn’t walk through the field. When he says stuff like that I just sit back and smile.
I will tell you that I didn’t have a thing to do with that crop coming out of that bad weather. And anyone that knows me knows that I am not an asset in the tobacco patch. And I don’t know if my Novena had anything to do with the weather calming down or the tobacco growing out of the scald. But I will tell you that I believe and with belief (and the right connections) mountains can be moved, and crops can be saved and people can change. Yes I do believe that.