The grasshoppers came a few weeks before the seasonal harvest.
Their appearance from the north was nothing like the quintessential cloud of locusts one usually hears about; rather they flew low in a strung-out flock marked by the loud whirring of their short wings. The insects swept down into the crops and ate their way through them for some twenty-four hours. The desperate farm families went out into the fields using feed and flour sacks in a futile, exhausting effort to drive them off. Then, inexplicably, the grasshoppers disappeared as suddenly as they had appeared. Some stragglers were left, and the people stomped them into the dirt in rage and frustration.
The farmers were left with the disaster of a skimpy harvest. They were the type of people who lived in an environment where nothing could be taken for granted. Bad weather, floods, drought and other natural disasters could occur without warning. Sickness and injury were also a part of the bad luck that was part of their existence. The people looked on all misfortune as acts of God that were part of the Almighty’s great plan that would lead to the Resurrection when they would reap their eternal reward for their sufferings on earth.
Most time this collective faith made their hard lives bearable, but the incident with the grasshoppers was beyond the limits of endurance. It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.