Rain Follows the Plow

The plow has stood as a symbol of agriculture for centuries, dating back to ancient civilizations when humans first cultivated the land.  It is more than just a tool:  it represents hard work, perseverance, and the eternal hope for a bountiful harvest.  As farmers till the soil, they prepare the earth for seeds to be sown, breaking ground and creating an environment where crops can flourish.  

In many ways, the act of plowing is a dance with nature.  Farmers have a unique rhythm: plow, plant, water, weed, and wait.  Each motion is a step toward achieving that delectable harvest.  The anticipation builds as they watch the first tender shoots break through the soil—a vivid confirmation of their labor’s bearing fruit.

The story of America is the story of farmers’ inexorable push west, bending nature to their will, turning the endless prairie into fertile farms.  As we all learned watching Little House on the Prairie—Rain Follows the Plow.  Agricultural life on the prairie was idyllic.

“Horse Hockey,” says Pa Ingalls.  “The only thing my daughter Laura got right in that damn book was that dinky little shack was on a prairie.  We worked our asses off and the damn farm failed after only two years, and we moved back to Minnesota.”

If you’ve ever spent time with farmers, you know they can be stubbornly optimistic.  After all, farming is basically betting your year’s work on what the sky decides to do.  Maybe that’s why one of the most famous sayings of the 19th-century frontier was the cheery promise: “Rain follows the plow.”

At first glance, it sounds like a nice bumper sticker…maybe even a hymn to human effort: till the soil and the heavens will reward you.  But behind this simple phrase was a grand story—part pep talk, part science experiment, part sales pitch, and a smidge of religion—that helped drive settlers westward, reshape whole ecosystems, and eventually teach Americans a hard lesson about respecting the limits of the land.

The idea that farming could coax water from the sky wasn’t new when Americans started repeating it.  Ancient agricultural societies like the Sumerians along the Tigris and Euphrates, or the Egyptians on the Nile, knew that cultivation and irrigation transformed dry landscapes into fertile breadbaskets.  Their success helped cement the belief that human effort could literally bend nature to our will.

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years and European farmers carried the same assumption with them.  Wherever the plow went, crops followed, so why not the rain, too?  By the time American settlers were eyeing the Great Plains, this belief was ripe for a revival.

In the mid-1800s, the United States was in the throes of Manifest Destiny—that heady conviction that Americans were meant to spread across the continent.  Railroads were pushing tracks westward, land companies were printing glossy pamphlets, and homesteaders were itching for their slice of farmland.

But there was a problem:  west of the 100th meridian (that invisible north-south line running through the middle of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas) pthe climate got a lot drier.  Rainfall dropped below 20 inches a year and the grass grew in tough, wiry clumps instead of lush meadows.  To settlers from wetter eastern states, the land looked suspiciously like desert.

Enter the slogan.  “Rain follows the plow” became the marketing pitch of the century.  Railroad promoters and government boosters assured would-be pioneers that simply breaking the soil would literally improve the weather.  Each furrow, they claimed, released moisture into the air, invited rainfall, and proved that the West could be as fertile as Ohio or Illinois.  Even digging holes for fence posts or setting up a line of telegraph poles would improve the climate of the plains.

It sounded almost magical—plow hard enough and clouds would appear like friendly neighbors bringing a casserole.

And you know what?  For a while, it seemed to work.  The 1870s and early 1880s brought a stretch of unusually wet years to the Great Plains.  Farmers who took the plunge and staked their claims often harvested bumper crops of wheat and corn.  Newspapers crowed about the miracle.  Scientists with shaky barometers nodded approvingly.  And boosters pointed to every green field as proof that the climate had indeed changed.

In Kansas, promoters even set up “demonstration farms” to showcase the miracle.  Visitors would arrive, see lush fields waving in the breeze, and sign up for land on the spot.  The Ingalls family — yes, the same one immortalized in Little House on the Prairie — joined the westward migration to Kansas around this time.  While their short-lived homestead near Independence, Kansas was just east of the 100th meridian, they were swept up in the same current of optimism that fueled the “rain follows the plow” craze.

But prairie weather has a way of humbling human optimism.  By the late 1880s, the wet cycle ended.  Rainfall plummeted back to its long-term averages.  Crops shriveled.  Wells ran dry.  Suddenly those lush “proof” fields turned into parched reminders that slogans don’t change climate.  Countless farms failed and families who had staked everything on a patch of Kansas or Nebraska soil packed up wagons and left in despair.

One stark historical example comes from Garden City, Kansas, where a demonstration farm once showcased shockingly good harvests during the wet years.  Settlers poured in, encouraged by glowing reports.  But when the drought hit in the late 1880s, the very same fields became dust.  Many of the surrounding homesteads collapsed, and the boosters who had promised endless fertility were left red-faced.

And of course, the ultimate verdict came in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, when decades of over-plowing met a decade of drought.  The land itself seemed to revolt.  Dust storms blackened skies, crops failed, and thousands of families fled the Plains—a grim reminder that rain doesn’t follow anything except atmospheric pressure and jet streams.

Not everyone was fooled.  Some scientists raised red flags early.  John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War veteran turned geologist, warned Congress in 1878 that the Plains west of the 100th meridian were too dry for farming without serious irrigation.  He argued that settlements should be based on watersheds, not survey grids, and that small farms would fail in arid regions.

His advice? Don’t assume the sky will change just because you’ve sharpened your plow.  Naturally, Congress ignored him.  After all, optimism sells; caution doesn’t.  But history proved Powell right.

So why bother with this old frontier motto today? Because its lesson is timeless.  “Rain follows the plow” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of believing that human effort alone can rewrite natural laws.  It’s also a reminder of how badly we want to believe we’re in control of the elements.

Modern farmers face their own version of the same dilemma.  Climate change is reshaping rainfall patterns and turning once-predictable seasons into nail-biters.  The difference is that now, instead of repeating catchy slogans, we have meteorological models, satellite data, and sustainable practices like crop rotation and no-till farming.  The wisdom we’ve gained — painfully — is that the land will treat us better if we treat it with respect.

Still, there’s something almost charming about the old phrase.  It speaks to the boundless optimism of settlers who looked at a windswept plain and thought, “Sure, we can make it rain if we just work harder.”  Were they wrong? Absolutely.  But also a little inspiring.  It’s a reminder that human beings are endlessly hopeful — even if that hope sometimes plows us straight into a dust storm.

Maybe the modern version should be: “Rain doesn’t follow the plow, but wisdom should.” It doesn’t rhyme, but it might keep our topsoil where it belongs.