"So, here, the first and second mows were ok, the third and fourth were nothing and the fith was ok."
(A farmer in the Estuary, December 2022).
I invite you to follow me as I inquire over the recent years’ drought(s). We will follow various leads that tell the story of this drought as it unfolded in the dairy grasslands of the Scheldt’s estuary. Following Sarah E. Vaughn, Bridget Guarasci and Amelia Moore’s call for ‘intersectional ecologies’ (2021), these various leads will enable us to grasp pieces of - some of - the ways in which this drought gains materiality, becomes a known and knowable thing and plays into local subjectivities. We will approach the drought as a window through which to observe and question the 'wetness' of the dairy grasslands. Following Franz Krause, we will not attempt to look at wetness within the frame of a binary opposition between the wet and the dry. Instead, we will attune to it as a possibility that emerges within a “particular social, economic, and political arrangement” and “in relation to particular human activities and projects” (2017:405-406).