Today's Farmer photojournalist, James Fashing, was on hand after this spring's storms. He witnessed something stronger than tornadoes.

You've heard it too. You've heard that whatever the weather, farmers will find a reason to complain. OK, it's true, but not completely. If you dig a little deeper, you'll see each complaint about the weather or prices is generated by a genuine letdown. I submit that this is the proof of high hopes and a positive attitude.

Farmers start each season, each day, believing that they will win the annual arm wrestling with nature and deliver a good crop. Sure, they'll conceal this eternal optimism with gruff complaint or machismo, but the optimism remains.

This spring granted me a chance to meet a few amazing, dare I say "victims" of Mother Nature's cruelty. What was left when she stripped away buildings and fences and these aforementioned facades? An abundant rural Missouri resource: generosity.

The first farmer I ever met who lost everything to a tornado, offered me a soda pop. Here stands a man with almost no personal property left and he offers me a soda; a roving photographer looking for that perfect storm destruction photo.

If you ever have such an offer, I suggest accepting and taking the dime tour. You'll never forget the details.

You'll see the neighbors lugging furniture into stock trailers, crawling on hands and knees in the hayfield, trying to recover just one more Craftsman wrench that Mother Nature so efficiently sprinkled across the field. You'll see neighbors rebuilding fences with five-strand barbed wire, where old three-strand fences used to stand.

I tried to imagine the contents of my garage (most of which I can do without) and every other object I love and cherish twisted together and thrown into a fencerow. It was something easily imagined since I was in the process of moving. As I stood in the storm's destruction, the mess in front of me made my problems seem miniscule. And I felt petty for stressing about my upcoming house loan closing date. I also doubted I'd offer sodas to journalists had the roles been reversed.

While one middle-aged woman clutched a cracked heirloom china plate recovered from the debris, she told me a few stories of her father and his years as a farmer. She was still stunned from the loss of her 88-year-old father who was killed when the tornado crushed his small rock home. She was also stunned by all the generosity of her community.

Her neighbors couldn't replace her loss, but they and complete strangers combed the countryside for days in search of her mom's plates and other keepsakes.

Ironically, the telling thing I saw on the faces of my new friends were smiles. These smiles are not the cordial ones that temporarily vanish with the awkward stress from being in front of a camera. These smiles are the ones that even a tornado couldn't wipe away. These smiles were of thankfulness for what each still had, of faith and the boiling over mixed-up happiness caused from seeing your son who is back, if only temporarily, from fighting a war--back to help you pick up windblown photographs.

One farmer said it best, "We were truly blessed that both of us lived through such a storm. We've been through so much together over these 40 years and I can't imagine a world without my wife. It would have been hell on earth for one of us to have made it without the other. We are so thankful for all we have."

We've all had profound thoughts of family and loss, but this man was standing in front of his destroyed roofless house with one arm around his wife wearing a big smile. I took a picture and his smile stayed put.

Like the spirit of the people wearing them, these smiles offer solace, are guaranteed contagious and are worth a try. I recorded these images of the destruction and hope they suffice as historical records, the smiles I'll keep for myself.