One of, if not the, most pleasurable aspects of being a farm writer is the privilege of driving out to a farm, sitting at a kitchen table, in the equipment shed or in the cab of a pickup, combine or cotton harvester to do an interview, then drive around the farm for photo ops.

That’s the ideal and I can’t count how many many farms I’ve been welcomed on over the past 40 plus years.

But some days it rains. Or snows. Or is so cold that asking a farmer to climb out of his truck to pose for a picture seems the essence of rudeness. More to the point, I can take a photograph a lot faster in 23-degree weather than I can at a balmy 72.

Rain, cold, snow or not, the need for fresh stories never abates and the best sources are the folks who endure all that weather, in addition to all the other challenges farmers face every day.

Rainy day interviews may not be the ideal option for gathering information — and images — for Farm Press stories but are often unavoidable. Sometimes they are even welcome. I can’t imagine a West Texas farmer complaining about sitting in his equipment shed back in the summer of 2011, waiting out a rain before driving me around the drought-ravaged farm.

I suspect a few Delta farmers would have welcomed a long chat in air conditioned comfort a few times last summer while a timely rain fell on parched soils.

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Many years ago, I interviewed a drought-plagued farmer in south Alabama. He asked if I could bring him some rain. I suggested that as soon as I finished taking pictures rain would be on the way. An hour after I left the farm, he got a soaker. He wrote and offered a steak dinner next time I was in the area. I never took him up on the offer, afraid that he might expect other miracles.

The flip side of rainy-day interviews is that farmers are rarely pressed for time. They can’t harvest, plow or spray anything. On a recent cold, wet, miserable February morning, I rode into the Mississippi Delta to do an interview. We met in a farm supply dealership, sat in the spacious conference room and talked without interruption for an hour or so.

We discussed, naturally, the weather, the need to be in the field preparing for another crop, getting ready to plant corn, the incessant rain that hampered harvest last fall and has not stopped.

We even stepped outside for a rapid photo in the cold rain. I take photos fast when it’s wet, too.

Ideally, I would have enjoyed a tour of the farm, some sun-dappled scenery, fresh-tilled soil. Not this day.

Something I learned a long time back, we don’t control the weather.