Friday, May 20, 2005

A Holiday Weekend ?

As I turned out of town tonight on my way home from work I met the first in a long line of campers headed out for the long weekend. There was a time when I would have felt anger and frustration at the sight. Why did everyone else get to take a weekend off? Farming ties us down for every holiday all summer long. In May we're still seeding, the 1st of July we're spraying, August it's either swathing or combining, and September it's harvest for sure. I would feel cheated for myself and the kids, but the farm always came first.

I guess I've mellowed with age because when I saw the campers tonight it was with no emotion at all - they were just the type of traffic that was going past. In fact, it took me a minute to remember that it was a holiday weekend. Those people heading off to campgrounds were welcome to them - I was quite content to keep the home fires burning instead. I wonder when my attitude changed?

We hope to get some seeding done in the next day or two but rain threatens again. It's not real late yet, but it sure would be nice to get the crop in the ground. My garden is nothing but swamp and I think I may just not plant one this year. I put the seeds into mud last year and it was a total disaster.

We've had a young city girl from Quebec staying with us this past week. She is a participant in the Katimavik program and is spending nine months discovering different parts of Canada. It's been a great learning experience for both of us - to view our country through another person's eyes. By the time her billet ends on Monday she will have bottle fed a calf, hunted for baby kittens in a hay stack, toasted marshmallows over a fire in our front yard, feasted on chicken wings at a local bar, and been treated to a day in the city to visit a Wallmart (because she hasn't seen one in SOOO long) to name a few of her experiences. So far she has been most pleased to have avoided woodticks - for which she is very thankful.

I'd love, someday, to go visit her in her home town. It would take more than a long weekend for that, but it would be more the kind of holiday I would want to take at this stage of my life. Maybe that's why the campers didn't bother me today - I have developed a different taste in holidays.

Saturday, May 14, 2005

Still no Sunshine

It's the weekend again. I had hoped to get out into the yard and get to work on lawn and garden, but it's barely above freezing this morning. I think it looks like another inside kind of day.

Our main calving season is over for the year. There are still cows to calve but it will be later in the summer. If a farmer has a choice, he would rather have it all done within one month but there are always the stragglers. It's much more efficient to have the whole calf crop all the same size and weight when you go to sell them in the fall. This year we have four or five smaller ones from last year we have to keep separate from the older ones, and next year it will be the same. A major factor in why we have the late cows is that they are old and should have been culled from the herd, but with BSE they are in kind of limbo.

We have had all kinds of moisture in the past week - some of it in snow. The grass is growing now, at least, and the weeds are taking over my garden. Twice in the past two weeks Glen has said he will work it up and both times it has been too wet by the time he got to it. Last year it never did dry up until June and I should have just skipped the year; it was a disaster. I don't grow the huge "family feeding" garden anymore, but we still love to have the fresh vegetables when they're in season.

Some of the neighbours managed to get some crop in before the weather turned sour on us, but Glen has only just pulled his seeder up to the quonset to get it ready to go. We only have 480 acres to sow so it doesn't take long - if the weatherman co-operates. As soon as seeding is done we'll be busy fencing again. We plan to have at least another two pastures enclosed by fall.

All in all, we have a busy summer ahead of us - we have family weddings in June, July, and August, and our son and his wife are expecting twins in early summer. This morning I'd just be happy if it would just warm up enough to make it feel like summer was even going to come at all.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

May Day

It's the first of May. In a perfect world it would be sunny and warm, the grass would be green and the trees would all be leafed out. Here in the real world it's cold, windy, and very little of anything is green. It has tried to snow all weekend long, although thankfully, it hasn't been too sucessful at it.

Some of the neighbours have been out planting their pea crops; it's something that can be planted early, although I'm not sure if this is because the plants are resistant to late frosts or that they need the extra time for germination. Peas are a crop that has become popular lately - since Glen and I have started moving away from growing crops, and more towards raising cattle.

I don't think there have been too many grains sowed yet, although, now that it is May things will really get rolling this week. Glen knows what he will be sowing, but is still deciding where he will put what crop. There will be a lot of work to do this next month as he wants more fence finished so that he can sort out his herd a little better and not put so many animals on a pasture at a time. So far it has been a pretty dry spring and we don't want to put too much stress on the plant life in the pastures. You have to let the grasses get a good head start before you let the cattle out to eat it. You want the animals to graze it, not kill it.

The latest government checks have started trickling out to post office boxes this past week. This is the money announced earlier this year to put money in farmer's hands so they can put their crops in. I wonder how much good it will really do. There are so many problems to do with the whole farming scene.

Low grain prices, bad weather, and insane crop input costs make a person wonder what the heck he's going to do. Sure, Ottawa is sending out some money - and it sounds like a lot in the announcement - but once it's all divided up, will it be enough to make a difference? With the price of fuel today, it will cost Glen $280.00 to fill the tractor's fuel tank every day. Hopefully, we'll be able to plant what crops we sow in five or six days, but our farm is small. What about the guys with ten times as much land? Think of what their bills will be. And that is just fuel - what about seed, fertilizer, chemical treatments?

I'm not saying that the government should be responsible for putting the crop in, because I don't believe that. Farmers don't even want that. But, on the other hand, if the agriculture industry is going to survive, we need our farms and our farmers. This week alone, I've heard of three of our younger neighbours trying to find someone to rent or buy their land. They are struggling to take care of their families and their futures - for them it means their farms have to go. I wonder how long the agriculture industry in Canada will be able withstand an almost constant exodus of it's "ground force" people before there is nothing left?