ON THE SANDBAGGING LINE

“You’d think this was Manitoba!” This was a common remark heard along the sandbagging line in Benson this week.

It’s been a crazy spring. We’ve gone from wondering what the spring melt might bring, to witnessing how the winter’s snow added to last year’s soil moisture content to produce some of the wettest conditions anyone can remember. Fields under water, roads either being washed out on their own or purposely cut to save property, sump pumps in every basement. It was a trying time, but all we had to do in Saskatchewan was watch the news every night to keep up with what south western Manitoba was dealing with, and we could go about our business thinking it could be worse.

But Mother Nature wasn’t done yet. Week after week, rainstorm after rainstorm it got worse. Farmers couldn’t get out on their land, roads turned to quagmire, and still the rains kept coming.

“Saturation” is a word that has been overused lately but there is nothing else that describes the situation. The ground is saturated; it can’t hold another drop, so when yet another weather system dumped another two to four inches of rain on us in one day the stage was set for a flooding event like we’ve never seen before . At the moment Manitoba has nothing on us.

The hamlet of Benson made the news this week because it has the misfortune of being caught between a lot of water and Highway 47. Runoff from the deluge last weekend has collected itself into a river that doesn’t even exist and is making for the USA border to cause further havoc on the other side of the border – but first it has to cross #47. Suddenly prairie people found themselves students in the school of sandbagging ... and I found myself delivering a pump and some hose to my daughter and son-in-law who live there.

I don’t know what I expected to find when I got there, but what did greet me was pretty impressive. Parked along the west lane of the highway was a mile of pumping units, mostly oilfield pumper trucks with a few farmers’ tractors and pumps as well, 52 units in all, sucking flood water out of the ditch on the Benson side and over the crest of the road to send it on its way to the town of Lampman. I hoped the dike I had seen them building as I had passed through was going to be done in time.

Although a major amount of water had been flowing from the north for a week or two, this last rain had really compounded the problem. Benson authorities had been informed of the danger they were in on Monday; by Tuesday the town had been surveyed and stakes had been placed where the sand bag barrio would need to be built. I learned that the black line on the stake told where the level had to be to be 4 inches higher than the highway, meaning the water would have to flow east, and not west further into town. If it was painted orange at the top meant that the stake was too short to show the appropriate level.

Let me tell you, four feet of sand bag dike is a lot of work, but by the time I got there at sundown on Wednesday, they had accomplished a lot. Tractors with front end loaders delivered pallets of bags to the work stations; the weight of such traffic had reduced the streets to mush and people’s lawns to pudding – something you don’t think of when you’re watching it on tv.

Neither do you think of the “sand burn” along the inside of your forearms from the constant movement of the rough material over your skin all day long. The sore shoulders and back are easy to imagine, but the skin rash? The soaked feet from water in your boots? The mosquitoes the size of pterodactyls?

Shortly after I arrived there was a helicopter flying over. Its presence gave the feeling that people who know about things like floods were on top of things, but as time went on it was frustrating that what they saw from the sky never filtered out to the people doing the work. The townspeople had been told that there would be a significant surge at one point, but no one was sure when that was supposed to happen ... afternoon? Evening? Night. Tomorrow?

It made for a restless night. With the roar of the pumper trucks and the uncertainty of what was happening out in the dark sleep was hard to come by.

The sun came up on a much different scene than what had greeted the day before. The trucks had taken the high water mark from halfway across the church parking lot down to the ditch being almost empty. Unfortunately the town’s first line of defence, a hastily built berm, was beginning to leak with the water pressure behind it. It was decided to do a controlled breach and refill the ditch where the trucks could continue to pump it away. This worked for a while but they had another crisis later on when the soggy dike failed again. This time the gap was filled with large round flax bales which have managed to hold the flow to what the pumps can handle. Benson appears to be out of the woods – or in this case, the water.

As of Saturday afternoon the long line of pumper trucks have been replaced by two gigantic pumps provided by Enbridge.

ONCE IN 500 YEARS IS STILL TOO MUCH

You wouldn't believe the mess we're in. I'm having a bit of trouble trying to take it in myself. South east Saskatchewan is making the record books these days - in fact, I think we make a record one day just so we can break it the next. The water is everywhere.

It was a wet summer last year. The snow pack this winter was significantly higher than usual. The spring melt filled the potholes and creek beds, washed out roads and flooded yards and roads and low lying buildings. The roads have all but melted into frost boils. There was a blizzard at the end of March, and at the beginning of May we had another that dumped rain and snow on us. The ground was so soft and wet power poles were tipped over like sails in a gale, and many people were without power for hours - even days in some cases.

The melt from that storm had the runoff raging through the bridges and culverts again. Sloughs filled even fuller. Glen and I had gone out for a tour on the quad one evening the previous month and he remarked that he had never seen the sloughs that close together before - now the same bodies of water are actually touching.

No one even cares any more how much more rain has fallen since then. Once you reach a certain point, it ceases to matter. No where near 50% of the crop was planted in this corner of the province. Up until now Glen and I have found some comfort in the fact that we have no crop to put in, but as time goes on and the rain keeps falling, we find ourselves worrying about our hay crop instead.

With all the moisture the hay crop is coming along nicely, although it would be doing better with some strong sunny days as well, but the ground is like a sponge. We were out on the pasture last weekend and every step we took sounded like a "squish". How are we going to put heavy tractors and equipment out there to cut and bale it? It's got to be dry before it can be baled - with humidity this high, how is that ever going to happen? Is it ever going to stop raining?

One of the reasons we were out on Saturday was because Glen had to move the electric wires from his fence up higher so that the water in the sloughs didn't ground out the electric current. The water is so high he did this job in chest waders. The second thing we were doing was trying to find a three day old calf whose mother was quite frantic about it being lost. We never did find it - Glen thinks it could well have drowned, or at least got stuck in the mud trying to cross the creek, and coyotes decided that it looked like a tasty lunch. Including the two we lost in that last blizzard, that is three that the weather has cost us.

And yet, I guess we shouldn't complain too much: Weyburn is under a boil water advisory because their sewage system was compromised, Roche Pierce had to be evacuated in the middle of the night and is now under water, and Minot, North Dakota is expecting the worst flood in it's history when all this water hits them on Thursday.

They are starting to refer to this year as a "once in every 500 year event". Normally prairie people love to own the bragging rites to having been there to see such a thing, but I'm starting to think it would have been okay to read about this one in a history book.

IT'S A SERIOUS CROP INSURANCE YEAR

I just re-read my last post and I don't know that I have anything new to say - will this rain ever stop?

There was a week in there that actually had wind and sunshine and the creek running through our yard slowed to a trickle. I even got out and managed to mow perhaps 2/3rds on the lawn. It wasn't a great job, and I found myself out in the water a couple of times, but it was the best I could do. I had planned to get right back out there last weekend but Mother Nature did not cooperate. we got almost two more inches of rain. the creek is back up to river status, the puddles are now ponds, and we had to install a new sump pump in the basement because the old one died on us.

Actually calling it "old" is misleading - it was new 14 months ago, but except for the months of December, January, and February, that poor thing ran non stop. Glen had seen pumps on sale this spring and had a feeling that having a spare might be a good idea - it made him the hero yesterday afternoon when I got home from work and discovered an inch of water in the basement.

It can finally be said that some of the neighbours have managed to get into their fields. I think that was from Tuesday until Friday night last week. By Saturday noon it was poring again. I took my life in my hands yesterday and started asking farmers how much crop they had got in the ground. The answers varied: one guy said he had planted three fields and had two sown meaning that he had lost a whole 160 acres out of 480 to water and mud. Another said they had barely started with a mere 45 acres in. Another said he was waiting on a big high clearance sprayer to come in and "burn off" the weeds, so his hands were tied until that was done. The answer that was the most telling was the guy who said he had suddenly taken up a great interest in what Crop Insurance had to offer. He said that every other year the Crop Insurance package would arrive and he would just toss it in the corner, this year he was treating it like the bible, and reading very carefully. It's the 25th of May and there isn't a 5th of the crop in in our corner of Saskatchewan. On a normal year there would hardly be a 5th left to be done by this time. The Canadian prairies have only so many growing days to a season - you have to plant after the last frost of spring and the crop has to ripen before the first frost of autumn. That window of opportunity is sliding closed.

As of the rain last weekend my mind has been made up about putting a garden in; it's just not going to happen this year. I've never not had a garden but I can't even walk on it at the moment without sinking past my ankles. It hasn't even been worked yet and it's that soft! Thank goodness asparagus is a perennial - we'll have had at least one green thing not bought at a store this summer! The rhubarb will probably be okay, but my apple trees might be drowned out - they've spent the last 6 weeks standing in a foot of water; I don't think apple trees like that kind of treatment.

Glen has bought himself some chest waders to go fencing in. His electric fence has been giving him problems and the most likely root cause of the drain of electricity is the wire being under water. he spent the day out there standing in chest high water fighting with wires and feeding mosquitoes - made my day at the office sound like a piece of cake!

It Just Keeps Getting Better and Better

Well, it's not like it's been a fine spring so far - the cold went on and on, slowly softening to merely being cool which melted very little of our way-too-much snow. Environment Canada had predicted a long, cool spring and unfortunately they got that one right.

Next up was the eventual melt - and what we all knew was going to happen. The ground being still saturated with all the rain we got last year and covered with extreme amounts of this winter's snow. When Mother Nature finally did turn up the heat, there was water running everywhere. In this neck of the woods every spring has runoff. The creeks all fill and run for maybe a week - two if there was a lot of snow, or it rains during the melt, but this year they have been running - no, make that gushing - for almost a month now. Roads washed out, bridges were plugged, yards and fields were flooded, people had to deal with water in their basements. It was crazy

Looking back, those were the good times. Last weekend along came the worst blizzard of the winter - maybe even quite a few winters - and dumped two inches of rain on us before the unwelcome moisture turned to snow and carried on falling for the next 24 hours. The temperatures weren't so bad but the wind was unreal; steady at 60 kph and gusting to 90. Neighbours lost the roof to their brand new shed, bins tipped over and rolled around in the wind, and if you have a shingling business, you could be busy here all summer. The toll was pretty high for cattle producers too - newborn calves can't take that kind of treatment. I don't know how many died over the weekend. We lost two but I have heard that one herd lost 40 - not nice, not nice at all.

Being as it was May by this time, Mother Nature lost no time turning the thermostat up. By Tuesday it was 18 degrees again. If we thought we had water problems before, we learned that we hadn't seen anything yet. What is normally a small pond in a regular spring was a very large one this April, and now is a small lake with waterfalls running into and out of it. And there are many many many such lakes per quarter section. Seeding is a distant dream and will be an exercise in exasperation when they finally do get out on the land. The plantable acres will be a fraction of normal and very difficult to get to. I don't know how many times Glen and I have thanked our lucky stars that we only have pasture land any more!

I took a walk up the road tonight after I got home from work - the two places where water was running over the road (within a mile and a half) are now stopped, but the road will need fixing and a new culvert put in one place. I should ask the RM administrator how many places they have like this - my guess that they don't have too many miles that don't have this kind of trouble. They have even had to cut some roads in places to save property; just three miles east of here they cut through in two places to save six or seven bins full of grain. It's been a spring for the record books ... and the weatherman says that there is more rain on its way tonight.

Today I heard that Environment Canada is predicting that June, July, and August are all going to be hotter than usual. On the one hand, we all feel that we are due something good from them, but on the other hand heat has a habit of brewing up storms on the prairies - after seeing the damage in the States caused by tornados, I'm not sure that's a good thing either.

SPRING 2011 ON THE PRAIRIES

ISLAND LIVING

By Jocelyn Hainsworth

Be careful what you wish for.

All you people out there who buy lottery tickets and promptly take up dreaming of spending their winnings on a remote island where they will live out their days in peace and luxury – pay attention – a word of caution here; you need to be more specific!

We’ve all seen the lottery commercial with the young, gorgeous couple wandering their personal island, ending up on the patio of their exquisite beach house to relax in the sunshine ... the beach sand is white, the palm trees are perfect, the rum and colas are ice cold and are served with as much lime as they want. There is a boat on the beach in case they should ever want to leave, but get serious, who in their right mind ever would?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the desire to live where the weather is warm year round. It’s a perfectly great idea to want the peace and solitude of living separate and away from the mainstream world. Who doesn’t dream of being served by handsome cabana boys – oh, whoops, probably about the half the population, but you know what I mean - when you’re dreaming you may as well dream big.

Dreaming big is fine; my warning is to be sure to dream more precisely. This can be very important. We had a little lesson in precise wishing last week, and I thought I would share the experience with you so that you don’t make the same mistake we did.

You see, even though I’m enthralled with the tropical island dream on TV, and picture myself wandering those same beaches, when I actually speak of what I would do with my imagined lottery winnings, what I actually say is “I sure would like to try that island living!” Did you note the lack of detail? Did I mention all the things I was picturing? Did I even imply the sand? The rum and colas? The cabana boy servant? No, I did not. How is Lady Luck to know about all of these things if they are not spelled right out for her? She’s a busy lady, you know. She can’t be blamed for the lack of information.

This subject comes up this week because last Thursday we woke up on an island. I can’t say as it was due to a big win in the money department, but I can assure you, it was a big surprise! There was water to the west of us and a waterfall just up the road. There was water in the Quonset and completely covering the Sask Power box in the front yard. There was water to the east of the house and the sump pump was running steady. There was water covering the entire yard, garden and well into the spruce trees in the shelter belt. There was water running uphill out of the barnyard to the east, and there was water within a foot of the top of the well cribbing. There was water across the driveway. We were on an island.

But it wasn’t at all like I had imagined it to be.

It was cold and dark, and dirty snow protruded from the water like icebergs. There was not a single palm tree on the horizon, and although I really could have used a good stiff rum drink for breakfast, there was a real lack of serving boys around as well. Sunshine did not warm my shoulders. Exotic tropical birds did not flit from tree to tree. The dog stood at the water’s edge and tried to get his bearings. This was nobody’s dream come true.

But, it was a lesson learned: be careful - and PRECISE - in what you wish for. I went to work and the Farmer took up some serious wishing of his own – mostly that the weatherman was right and it was going to get much cooler for the next few days so that the meltdown would slow down. He must have done something right because we’re only living on a peninsula now.

THE PRAIRIE MELTDOWN

It's been a rocky start to spring - we've had two substantial blizzards since the official first day of spring and the weatherman says we might well get more rain or snow tomorrow - people around here are starting to think that this is never going to end. I swear I'm going to dig out my spring coat and just wear it in defiance! Maybe we can ignore winter away.

When the sun shines there is good strength to it - I was amazed tonight when I left my office at how much the snow banks had receded from the sidewalks since I had walked in this morning. And the puddles are definately growing, which is just a warning of what is to come. All around town today you could here pumps running trying to keep the water at bay. I saw on my way out of town that they seem to be winning at the elementary school yard - yesterday there was a lake, today there was a large-ish pool. I'm sure the kids were fine with the water theme park, but the teachers are probably relieved that it's gone.

Farmers are sitting still. There are some years that they would be out on the land already, or at least have the equipment out in the yard getting ready to go. This year nothing like that is happening. Too much snow, or if the snow is gone, there is deep water or mud in its place. Glen is home from his work in the oil patch and expects that "break up" will go on a very long time this year. The ground is so saturated that they were having mud problems when it was 40 below. They would clear off the top frozen layer and find mud - which of course, being warmer than the air, would let steam of all day long. By dark the steam would be gone, they would go home and the next morning they would open it back up and start all over again. Even though these stories are great to tell, I think he would be pretty happy to just have dry earth to work with. There is no finesse to a job done with mud - frozen or otherwise.

I've spent the day thinking of my sister who spent most of her day in surgery to deal with cancer and reconstruction. Sounds like everything went as the doctors planned but texts only give the bare minimum of news - guess it's time to go give them a call.

History in the Making

> DIVINE WIND
> By Jocelyn Hainsworth
> This planet is a small place. It doesn’t seem like it when you are trying to get to someplace, but it’s a whole different story, I think, when you are trying to get away. Just put yourself in the shoes of the people in Northern Japan: how far away is far enough when a nuclear reactor is in its death throes? The people in western Canada don’t think they are far enough away, so the poor, earth-shaken, tsunami-struck, overwhelmed people of northern Japan must feel vulnerable indeed.
> I am a Baby Boomer. I grew up watching reruns of the movies made about World War II. These films were nothing more than propaganda Hollywood style, of course, but in the first decades following the war we didn’t think about that. It was much easier to think in terms of good guys and bad guys. Everything was either black or white. You were either an ally or a foe; a friend or an enemy. In the cowboy movies of the time they made it super simple to spot who was who – the good guy always rode a white horse, and the bad guy always rode the black. The viewer needn’t be troubled to do any thinking at all.
> This past week, while I sat in front of my TV set, mesmerised by the pictures and stories coming out of Japan, I did a bit of thinking ... and subsequent learning about, and then developing a respect for ... the people of this tiny country.
> I can’t help but be struck with the calmness and dignity these devastated people are utilizing to deal with their circumstances. Compare the scenes of Japan this week with those in the streets of Haiti last year. There is no looting or civil unrest, no anger and frustrated shouting for help to come quicker. I don’t mean to belittle the people of Haiti because I shudder to think how I would react to such trauma, but this only makes the Japanese people’s grace under such horrible conditions all the more awe inspiring.
> And, by far, the most awe inspiring act being carried out on the planet at the moment is the on-going effort to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Electrical Plant.
> It occurred to me, as I watched the news stories about the men (and possibly women) who are going into this crippled nuclear plant, day after day, that the concept of “kamikaze” had resurfaced, but in such a good way.
> The true translation, I found when I asked Google to enlighten me, is “divine wind” and refers to two typhoons that saved Japan from Mongolian invaders almost a thousand years ago, but to anyone who grew up watching the same movies as I did, “kamikaze” means a warrior who is willing to sacrifice his life for the cause that he was fighting for.
> There was a time that “kamikaze” was only something to be feared. They were the suicide bombers of their day, men who measured their success in how much damage they could inflict and how many deaths they could cause with the sacrifice of their own lives. They were serving a cause, and were willing to die for it; as we have learned since 9/11, there is hardly anything to be feared more than that kind of extreme allegiance.
> Isn’t it strange how, without altering the “willing to die for a cause” definition at all, suddenly we find ourselves cheering on these Japanese warriors of today? What the workers at the Fukushima plant are doing by just so much as entering that building, is no less deadly for them that flying a plane into a target. And yet, that’s what they have been doing for a whole week now.
> I am struck with the poetic justice of the situation, too – that it is the Japanese people who get to redeem this term “kamikaze”, and in this new light, make it a thing to be admired by all the nations of this tiny planet.
> And maybe, if they can win the battle against meltdowns and superheating, this kamikaze sacrifice will stir up a new breeze – a divine wind of peace ... and may it blow straight to the Middle East.
>
>

Knocking on March's Door

A person has to psych herself up to even go outside these days. The first thing I heard this morning was the DJ on my alarm clock radio with the cheery news of how cold it was outside. This was followed shortly thereafter with an e-mail from the Weather Channel (yes, I am that geeky) telling me that my little corner of the world was under a windchill warning - something that kicks in when it dips below minus 40. By the time I am dressed and ready to go out and start my car, the dog has already been out for his usual morning "check the perimeters" run and looks at me with a "I wouldn't go out there if I were you" look on his face. Too bad I have this job I have to go to ... which just happens to pay for his dog food bill. I tell him that we're in this together and plow through the snow drifts to get out on the road and we go about our business for another day.

Everywhere we turn these days there is talk of flood worries when it finally does warm up. When winter hit last year the ground was absolutely saturated and there is more snow right now than I can remember for at least 30 years. Everyone is praying for a slow melt, giving the water time to seep in or trickle away. The farmers want to be able to plant their fields. Homeowners are worried about water damage. Municipal governments are concerned with roads and bridges that may wash out. And oilfield workers know that "spring breakup", a period of time that they have to shut down every year when the ground is too muddy and the roads are too soft for their equipment, could last all summer if it stays too wet. That's a very long time to go without a paycheck.

The month of February has been a bit of an adventure. There hasn't been one big snow storm, but there have been many many small snow falls. Roads are built with ditches for drainage in the summertime, but also it gives somewhere for drifting snow to fall into during the winter too. This year the ditches are full - to overflowing as of a few weeks ago. There are many places on my drive to town that the ditches are higher than the road now. It's kind of like driving through a bit of a gully in places, but I keep wondering if we will end up getting a really big blow because that will be the end of my getting to work until the graders are out. As it was, last Friday I had to get out of the yard through the barnyard gate (Glen calls it our bunny hole escape) and once on the road I chose to drive a route that added 4 more miles to my trip but I was pretty sure would make the difference in my getting to town, or not. I got there but I was sure glad I drive an SUV with all wheel drive.

The weather people are only talking about cold cold cold for the next while so maybe we will dodge the kind of storm that could shut us all down. We're almost at March, you know. Of course, there is still that "lion and lamb" thing to worry about.

IT'S A ROLLER COASTER RIDE

Glen and I have often marveled at a prairie sunset and agreed that if the scene before us with all those colors (and we're talking everything from pale pink right through all the oranges and reds imaginable to purple and magenta ) were in a painting or framed photograph, no one would believe that it was real. Remember back in the days of the original Star Trek series when they would alter the background colors to make it look like "other-worldly", well that about sums up what we see for sunsets every night. Saskatchewan has "Land of the Living Skies" written on our license plates - it sounds kind of over-the-top when you first hear it, but come and live here a while and see if it doesn't fit.

The reason I was thinking of this out-of-this-world weather scenario tonight is not because of the sunset (although it was beautiful, as usual) but because of the temperature. I got to thinking about what aliens would think about our planet today if they had their sensors trained on the North American continent trying to see what the living conditions might be like.

This time last week we were just coming out of an incredible deepfreeze - temps in the mid minus 30's and windchills to take it to minus 40. Then a spell of a few days when the ice melted and the roads became trecherous. Then, back down to minus 45 with the windchill. I can just see the little green men in their weather room putting a huge X through our planet and placing it on the "Uninhabitable" list. I would hazard a guess that there are more than a few humans who would agree with them right about now. But, not to worry, by tomorrow evening we are supposed to be up near the zero mark again. There's a saying out here - "If you don't like the weather here, just wait a minute."

B-B-B-B-BABY IT'S COLD OUT THERE!

A person forgets what 40 below feels like. It's probably self preservation - shutting out the memory of your nostril hairs all crystalizing together in a brittle lacework restricting air flow to your lungs. Mind you not getting the frigid air all the way to your lungs is likely a good thing too- you just run the risk of freezing them too. Suffice it to say that it's just plain nasty out there tonight.

But beautiful in a surreal sort of way. There is a full moon, and when you combine its white light shining on the white snow in the achingly clear coldness, the scenery is breath-taking. I had to stop at the end of the driveway yesterday morning to try to take in the ghostly beauty. It's not often that the moon gives off enough light for you to be able to see the horizon - a silver-blue line in the distance. It was so dark a camera would have never been able to pick the details up so I took a moment to try to store it in my own memory bank. A scene like that doesn't happen too many times in a lifetime.

And, before I put my vehicle in drive again I got out and walked around it to do a tire check - they were all round although it took nearly a half mile before they felt like it. Gotta love how 40 below can make it feel like you are driving on square tires.

The weatherman promised me at supper time that it would warm up all night long (which is good news) and the wind would start to blow (which is not good news). Glen's brother and nephew were over this week with the tractor and snow blower and cleaned out the yard so that I would have no trouble getting in or out. Depending on the direction of the wind and how long it blows, I may or may not be able to make it back out of the driveway to work tomorrow morning. We have had inch after inch of light fluffy snow for weeks now - a howling wind across the prairies is all we need for a fine old blizzard/white-out conditions. Which is all fine and dandy if everyone you know and love is safe inside somewhere ...

I guess that means I should head off to bed early, and set my alarm clock for an earlier call - just in case I have to shovel or fire up the big truck so I can get to town.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Well, here we sit at the beginning of a new year; I wonder what this one will bring? Health? Prosperity? The winning Lotto Max ticket? I think there are quite a few places on the planet where all people want is for it to quit raining - the Canadian prairies being one of them!

Not to take anything away from the problems of the folks in Australia, but we're not going to be in much better shape come spring. The ground was still at its saturation point when freeze up came and we have already had the snowfall we would normally have for a whole winter, so unless it quits snowing right now (and it's snowing as I type tonight) we are going to get more than our fair share of the white stuff, too. Mother Nature must love watching farmers getting stuck. If you want to see some interesting photos of what went on during harvest on the prairies last fall look up stuckinthemuck.com. An implement company sponsored a photo contest this fall so there is a lot to look at. Unfortunately, the contest was set up so that the winner was chosen by the number of votes a photo got, not how stuck they were. I think the winner just had the most friends on Facebook.

As we have turned most of our farm over to pasture and hay land, the rain did us nothing but good. The hay crop this year was bountiful, to say the least, and the bale stacks are impressive. Glen has always said that you can never have too much feed - just in case next year is dry - but the first cut of hay was so plentiful that he never even considered a second cut. His actual words were "he was putting the second cut in the bank" which means that he wanted the plant life for holding snow cover this winter and for it to rot back into the soil for fertilizer in the spring.

In his job as a catskinner (it's not as bad as it sounds - he operates large earth moving equipment - a Caterpillar tractor - to prepare sites for oil rigs) Glen has a chance to observe lots of soil types. When a field is over grazed the soil is packed harder than concrete and just as dry, but he had the opportunity to do a build on an organic farmer's land and he said the soil there was amazing - it rolled up in a solid sheet of sod: intact, alive, and smelling like soil is supposed to. I don't know how many people who read this will be shocked at this confession of my childhood, but back when I was a kid I remember if an inquisitive child turned over a dried up cow pie (now there's a strange name, eh?) she would find a whole insect kingdom underneath. You don't see that anymore - the soil is over used and over fertilized. The plant residue and organic material just isn't there to support healthy microbe growth. But Glen's experience on that organic piece of ground proves that it does come back if the land is treated right.

Right now, with the ground finally frozen, the company Glen works for is trying to get some work done. The summer and fall were so wet it was almost impossible to do anything in the oil industry. There has been a whole new field open up about 100 miles from here in southwestern Manitoba. At first Glen was doing that drive twice a day and I worried about him falling asleep on the road with all the hours he was putting in. Eventually we decided to see if we could find a suitable house in Melita so that he didn't have to drive. We found a very satisfactory deal and hope to rent out bedrooms to other oilfield workers in the same long distance situation.

So, we begin this new year in separate houses. I usually head up to see him on the weekends and he was home for almost two weeks over the holidays, but the solitary week nights take some getting used to. I have identified all kinds of jobs I can tackle in the evenings to keep me busy, but so far there have been no earth shaking changes to my usual after-work laziness. Maybe re-starting this blog will set me on a path of future fruitfulness ...

ONE WEIRD SUMMER

A month ago a bunch of us neighbours were sitting around a barbeque and talking about the the rain we'd had so far this summer. We haven't been keeping track but some had and reported that it was at the seventeen inches mark as of July 4th, well past the average for this time of the year. Well, here we are a month later - and at least ten more inches - with storm warnings out again for this afternoon and evening. There were two days last week that didn't have these warnings, it felt kind of weird.

These aren't big low pressure systems coming and raining gently down on our fields. These are pressure cooker storms that suck the moisture up from our saturated fields, brew it up into a boiling pot of energy, and slams it back down at the end of the day with wind and hail and rain that comes in sideways. It gives us a fairly comfortable night temperature, but in the morning it starts all over again. There is nothing unusual about this as a typical prairie summer storm, what is not typical is to have them every night - and all the way from Edmonton to Winnipeg. I don't know how many times there have been golf ball to soft ball sized hail reported this summer. That's normally a rarity, not a weekly occurrence. Carlyle is a town 40 miles west of here and that's where the hail gods made their mark last night. Here's hoping that they're done with this area now. I imagine that the insurance companies are starting to sweat about the constant claims rolling in too. It's been quite the summer - and it's only half over so far.

My yard work has sure suffered. First of all, the whole place was under water for almost two weeks. My garden is an almost complete write off. No potatoes, no peas or beans. The spinach didn't make it, the corn is yellowed and slow in developing. This swiss chard did okay and the beets are coming, as are the carrots. I found the cucumbers in that weedy mess, but I don't know if either they, or the tomatoes will ever bear fruit

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR ...

I just re-read my last post and found that I was complaining about low soil moisture. You won't find anyone on the prairies feeling that way any more. I don't think we've had a full two days of sunshine in a row since then. Many fields remain unplanted - and are very likely to stay that way because it's too late in the season for many crop varieties now, even if it were to dry up tomorrow ... which the weatherman has already told us isn't going to happen. Between watching the oil disaster in the Gulf on the news, and then listening to the depressing forecast on the weather, a person just wants to fling the TV out the window. At least the Blackhawks (the ultimate underdogs) gave us something to cheer about last night. No matter how you feel about them as a team, ending a 41 year drought has to be cause for some kind of celebration.

I did get my garden planted in the middle of May, and aside from the potatoes being very slow coming up, it looks like 100% germination. If I can ever get in there to weed, I'm going to have a fantastic yield. At the moment it is way too wet to think about anything but walking along the edge and looking in. To step in would mean to sink in to my ankles. I'm afraid that the roots will soon start rotting from lack of oxygen too. What a mess!

I also would like to mow lawn, but with every rain more of the yard slips beneath the waves. Last night (when it actually wasn't raining for a change!) I went out to mow around my rock garden, but the minute I got down the hill the mower started to labour and while I stopped to try to see what was wrong with it, my shoes filled up with water. The grass is so long now that I couldn't even see I was out in two inches of water. It killed my mower's motor, and I needed rubber boots to continue. Needless to say, I did the top of the hill and quit. It's not like everyone's lawn doesn't look the same, anyway!

Glen has had very few days of work - again, because of the rain. His part in the establishment of an oil well is to come in before anyone else and prepare a perfectly flat work space for the rig and equipment needed to do the drilling - and build a berm to contain anything that might go wrong. The earth has to be the right consistency for this operation, and mud just doesn't cut it. When we think of all the rules and regulations that have to be adhered to for the drilling of a well on land, it's really hard to wrap your head around how lax things seem to be in deep sea drilling where such harm can come to so many things, and the fix - if they even have one - is almost impossible to implement. How dare the companies like BP and the government regulators charged with watching over them be so callous with wildlife, people's livelihoods, and people's lives, not to mention the Gulf of Mexico itself. They keep talking as if there is enough money to clean it all up. There is not enough money in the world to undo the damage that has been done. And the oil hasn't been stopped yet, either.

Well, enough of my rant - that's what bad weather can do to a person. If I could only be out on my lawn mower, making my yard pretty, you would have been saved from that.

GROWING STUFF - NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR

I know it's been a long time - my apologies to everyone - but we arrived back from Australia on Wednesday evening and have been trying to get life back on an even keel ever since. Trust me; jet lag is a nasty thing by itself, and dealing with head colds is making the experience SO much more fun. I have to show up at work tomorrow morning and I just know I'm going to be expected to come up with some brain function - I'm not looking forward to it!

We left Canada in the middle of March when the snow was just beginning to melt and came back to no snow and full green grass. The trees are just beginning to leaf out, but that won't take long with the temperatures in the low 20's. Glen puttered around in the shop on Friday and got my lawn mowers and garden tiller ready for the season. He even went out and tilled the garden twice that afternoon. If I work up the energy today I'm going to put some potatoes and onions in, and hunt down what garden seeds I have left from last year to see what I need to buy for the rest. The ground is still fairly cool so there is no hurry, though. Our garden experience in Australia was enlightening - they plant garden veggies year round. The backs of the packages tell when is the most opportune time to plant the different types, so Wayne was planting a fall crop while we were there - the peas that he planted were a week from blooming when we left; they had been in the ground maybe 3 weeks.

Today Glen has gone out to harrow down the manure lumps on the hay ground left by the barn cleaners last fall. He spread some fertilizer yesterday too, I guess he's trying to get back into "farmer mode". It sounds like he will be being called back to oilfield work very shortly as spring break-up is over and the rigs are starting to roll again. This afternoon we are going to head into town for a spring auction sale - not that we have anything we want to buy (although there are always those surprise impulse buys that turn up) but it's always a great visiting day.

We left our bred cows under the care of Glen's niece and her husband and it sounds like everything went well for them. Our son, Mitchell, was in charge of the bulls and horses here at the yard, and that went fine too. The pastures are starting to green up and the duggouts are full, but there isn't a whole lot of ground moisture. We sure could use a couple of inches of rain to keep the grass growing.

Well, it's time to think about meal planning. I've been free from that chore for a long time and it appears that I could get used to that! Or maybe my apathy toward food at the moment is just because I can't smell anything and my energy level is at zero ...

OKAY, SO MAYBE THIS WILL DO ...

Okay. Last night I was whining about being cheated out of a blizzard. This morning is a whole different story. We could hear the wind blowing all through the night, but the yard and the driveway wasn't filling up with snow so I wasn't too concerned about getting to work this morning. The problem is never the roads anyway, the problem is always just getting out of the yard where the trees have held the snow and let the banks build up.

But not this morning. This morning I had no problem pulling out onto the road. In fact, that's where my problem began. The road disappeared! I know what zero visibility is. I've been out in it before, and as of this morning I have even driven a mile in it. I probably shouldn't have even gone that far but I thought that once I turned west toward the highway I might be able to see better. I was wrong about that. Once I got to the corner a mile south of here I knew I was going to be lucky to get turned around and head for home. Meanwhile my part time girl who lives in town called me to say she would go and that I should stay home. She had just got a call from her boyfriend that he had hit the ditch on his way to work. I managed to get back home and will wait until it's full light before I try it again. The chances of the mail truck coming out from Weyburn today are very slim so it's not like there will be anything to do.

So, here I am, at home, and checking what the weather guys are saying today. This is the funniest part of all - some time during the middle of the night they called off the blizzard warning! Apparently it's all over now. Could have fooled me.

BRING THE BLIZZARD ON

You really know you're a prairie person when the weather forecasters predict a blizzard and you feel let down when it peters out before it gets here. Any sensible person would heave a sigh of relief, but I've been watching all day for signs of significant weather and ... there is no other way to describe my feelings except to say the word "disappointment". I realize that this is crazy behavior, but I know I'm not alone. We see ourselves as tough and resilient, and we revel in the chance to prove it.

It's not that we haven't gotten anything out of this storm system. Overnight Friday night a lot of heavy wet snow appeared in the yard. When I took some home made soup and her mail up to Glen's aunt on Saturday morning I chose not to drive into her yard for fear that I would get stuck. I had only just barely made it out of our yard and I knew that the dazzling whiteness gave no hint as to how deep the snow banks were. I warned her about the storm coming too - she probably thinks I was imagining things - and went home before things got any worse. They never did.

Next, I decided an impending blizzard called for a bunch of comfort foods. I spent the day making a huge pot of potato/bacon soup and a double batch of oatmeal/raisin cookies ... and checking the weather channel (which insisted we were really in for it) and the view out our picture window (which showed nothing of the sort).

Glen had gone to work early that morning for a rig move so I was on my own to do the chores. still believing what the TV was preaching I dressed for winter ... full one piece ski-doo suit, touque, gloves, Glen's heavy winter boots ... I near about died of heat stroke! By the time I had filled 16 pails of chop, carried them into the pen, fed the steers, and hauled the pails back to the bin to fill them again for the morning chores, I had my own little personal sauna going on inside my suit. I swear, when I undid the zipper on my way back to the house, steam rolled out!

Today wasn't much different, although the wind has picked up and we got a few more flakes of snow. Nothing from yesterday is blowing around because it came down warm enough that it was too wet and sticky to move. The Weather Channel still says that tonight will be the worst of it all for this area, but I still don't think that they should try to pretend it be called a blizzard. I guess I'll judge them on that as I drive to work tomorrow morning. Glen spent today cleaning out the yard; that's something that has to be kept up over the winter or a big dump of snow (should we ever actually get one) would paralyze every vehicle in the yard. We now have wonderful snow hills pushed up just waiting for little kids to come and dig tunnels in them ... pity our grandchildren all live in Australia!

But, that's the most exciting news of all to come out of last week! We have actually booked our flights to spent five weeks over there this spring. It's been talked about forever, but now it's actually down on paper ... mostly my VISA statement so far ... and we are really going. So, I guess I had better start getting my head around how hot the weather can get, not how cold, because they have a whole different idea on what it takes to tough out the weather over there.

CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN

The last time I blogged I talked about how warm it was in November - I just read that through now and couldn't help but marvel at this crazy country; yesterday and today we have finally emerged from a bitter deep freeze. It was all the way up to minus 10 this afternoon and everyone was treating the day like it was spring. After 40 below with another 10 degrees in windchill for ten days, it's a wonder we all didn't freeze solid.

I think I have finished all my Christmas shopping. Even the wrapping is done - I think - who knows, I probably have things hidden around this place that I'll find in July.

The decorating is done too. It's not as extravagant as some years, but it's also better than others. Somehow, this year, there will be no little children coming, so it hardly seems worth the effort to put lights up outside; we live three miles off the highway so it's not like anyone but us or our guests will ever see them. The tree is up and the main rooms are sporting some finery. For 2009 it will have to do.

Where I have really failed this year is in the baking department. There just hasn't been time and heaven knows, we don't need the excess calories. There will still be way too much to eat, but it won't be butter tarts and shortbread cookies tempting us - just chocolates, nuts, and other snacks. Even without all the sugar-filled temptations my New Years resolution better be to join my friend, Janet, at the fitness club in town. But not until January 1st. No point in spoiling the pleasures of the table before then!

Glen has been enjoying a slow down at his work. He has had time to get things done with the cattle and finally, today, sorted the cows away from their 2009 calves for weaning. It should have been done ages ago, but first they had to have their fall inoculations and he didn't want to stress them right away, and then it got so cold and he didn't want to stress them more so it got put off again. We have the most un-stressed, coddled cattle in the country. Tonight, though, it's plenty loud out there - mamas on one side of a very stout wooden corral fence, and their 650 pound babies on the other side - all bawling at each other like it's the end of the world. Being able to see each other helps, though. Again, we do it that way to lower their stress level.

My work has been crazy. That's the deal when you work for the post office at this time of the year. Tired as I get, it's still my favorite time - delivering the things people want, sending off thousands of cards and good wishes, everyone is a giving and happy mood. It's just a fun time, all around. After tomorrow it should start to slow down a bit except for the leave-it-for-the-last-minute people who'll be Expressposting like crazy on Monday.

That being said, I had better get myself off to bed and re-charge my batteries for the morning.

There's just over a week to go in November and it's absolutely gorgeous outside again today! My fingers did get a bit cold hanging laundry out on the line this morning, but not enough to go get gloves. I remember when the clothes line was all my mother had to dry clothes on year round - in the winter you froze your fingers hanging things out, and again when you brought them back in. Then they (the clothes) were strung out around our tiny little house so they could finish drying because freeze-drying didn't quite get the whole job done. The smell of damp cotton thawing out transports me back to those days in the blink of an eye, and it's a trip I love to make, frozen fingers and all.

But, as I said, that wasn't a problem today. There is a temperature of at least 10 degrees and a good stiff breeze from the south so my sheets and towels will be completely dry and be soft and fluffy when they come back in. And, being fully dry, will smell like heaven, to boot. I know. I know. I'm just a country bumpkin and the littlest things make me happy - sophistication is something that other people can strive for.

Glen is working yet another weekend. He says that once the freeze up starts the oilfield will slow down and he'll spend some time at home again. There is so much to do around here freeze up better happen pretty soon. We are still grain feeding 60 or so steers twice a day. They should have been shipped to market ages ago but there has been no time to make the trucking arrangements and sort them for the trip. He does the chores in the morning before he leaves for work, and I do them as soon as I get home from work at night. I really prefer to work with big animals like that in the daylight, but the sun goes down earlier every night. I have got it down to a science now - how long it takes me to carry 24 pails of chop , and fill them again for morning chores. It used to take me 45 minutes but I can do it in under 35 now. It's quite the workout, and by the end of this week those minutes I've managed to shave off my time won't make any difference anyway - it will be dark regardless. Maybe he'll have a few days off in a row this week and those animals will be gone by that time ... of course then we'll just turn around, bring the herd in, wean this year's calves, and start all over again.

Meanwhile, inside the house, I'm doing my regular Saturday thing. I have buns on the rise, laundry to fold, stew on the go for supper, and will next be sitting down with the Sears catalog to try and come up with some Christmas gift ideas. There was a big trade fair of local businesses and home party salespeople in town this morning so I went in for a bit. I didn't buy anything, but have placed an order or two so at least I can say I have started shopping. There's a long way to go though, I had better get on with it ...

BREAKING THE BREAD ... BARRIER

In families as big as the one I come from, hosting a holiday meal - or, as I like to call it, Staging the Feast - is a big deal. The sheer number of people, and where to put them all, especially if it happens to be really cold outside (like Christmas usually is), is a challenge even for the best of us. Scrounging up enough chairs is a quest in itself.

Depending on who all can be there, we have done everything from setting the tables out in a heated garage, to renting a hall. And, we share a traveling table that does the rotation through the hosting houses as the year’s feast days roll around. It’s always “the kids’ table” ; the grown up’s get to sit at the “real” table. There’s no right-of-passage quite like making it to “grown up’s table”.

But there are other stepping stones in the family meal tradition. The whole thing is one huge growing experience, really, when you think about it. And anyone who has just finished putting the last of her fancy dishes away from the latest family banquet, if she has any sense in her head at all, longs for the days when she got to sit at the little folding table in the living room and dodge doing dishes altogether.

I don’t know as any of us every knew what a lot of work Staging the Feast was, because Mom always made it look easy. Did any of us ever know when she stuffed that 25 pound turkey? Were we even out of bed yet when that job was done? I know I had to call her for thawing and stuffing directions the first time I was named “cooker of the bird”. And to be completely honest here, I have two kinds of “done” in my repertoire: not-quite-done, and way-overdone. The learning curve is a work in progress.

Luckily - for all family hostesses - another family tradition is that everyone contributes to the feast. As soon as the invitation is issued a reply of “What can I bring?” is offered back. The hostess usually provides all the hot dishes, and the guests furnish the more portable items. And, there is a hierarchy to this that I had never thought about until this past weekend when I was asked for ... (drum roll here) ... buns.

You see, when you are first considered grown up enough to contribute, your part of the meal is something that you can’t possibly mess up - a jar of pickles (store bought, of course) or a pound of butter (ditto). Once you make it past that first barrier, a jellied salad is suggested. If that makes the grade, maybe you’d like to bring some kind of a chilled dessert slice? By this time, quite possibly you’ve hosted a smaller gathering yourself, and have proven you can cook, so perhaps next time you’re asked for a ham or your own personal trophy salad. But, when my sister - my older sister - asked me ... for ... the ... buns ... last week, I was taken aback. If you think that moving up to the big people’s table is a big step, you haven’t been asked to provide the buns yet.

Is it because “the bread” at a meal is the symbol of the meal itself, as in the breaking of the bread? Is it because good bread is something only experience can provide? I don’t know about other families, but in ours, bread is the offering of only the top cooks. And I was being asked for this all important component! I was in awe of the responsibility.

It’s funny. It’s not that I can’t make buns, I do it all the time - for my own family, and nobody has died yet; that must count for something, but making THE BUNS for Thanksgiving, I tell you - this is big stuff.

It took me two batches, because the first batch was just mediocre, but my offering for Sunday dinner was the best I could do - and still a little steamy from the oven. Not a one survived the afternoon. I feel like I’m all grown up now. I wonder what’s next? Should I try my hand at Christmas Pudding?

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT

Supper was a quiet affair last night. Just as we were sitting down to eat the phone rang and I knew before I picked it up that this would be the unwelcome news I had been expecting all weekend. A friend and neighbor had given it her all, but cancer is a formidable foe and not everyone wins the battle. The hopes and wishes of so many people had been denied. She was gone.

I came back to the table but our appetites were no longer what they had been. Instead we sat in silence. Thinking. Remembering. Contemplating. Filled with empathy for those who would miss her the most.

Actually, I felt that I had spent most of the past few days with her. For sure, she had never been far from my thoughts. We had been high school classmates together. We had both married young and our first babies were born the same year, and grew up to go to school together too. We had done birthday parties and skating practices and hockey games and grad meetings together. There was a lot of history there. And yet, we had only reached our fifties, there should have been lots more history to come.

Nearly everything I had done over the weekend had brought my thoughts back to her. Our farm is halfway between where they live and land that they farm, so seeing them go around our corner was a common thing. As I worked in my garden I recalled talking about gardening with her. As I mowed my lawn I remembered us both vowing to have a dandelion free lawn some day. I certainly haven’t managed that goal yet, I wondered if she had ...

My thoughts were with her again while I was out doing the chores. She worked hard, and she was proud of this. She wasn’t a farm wife because she married a farmer; she was a farmer herself. She was a full partner on their farm: she knew every inch of land, could run the machinery, work with the cattle, and had a full understanding of the books. I understand completely how good it feels to earn the right to call yourself a farmer. Everyone who knew her knows that she had earned that right.

And yet, the farm would have meant nothing to her if she hadn’t shared it with her husband. In a world where the term “marriage” has become blurred and out of focus, theirs left no doubt, no gray areas. They loved each other, trusted each other, were devoted to each other. They were a team, a package deal. We should all be so lucky. I find myself hoping that having been a part of something so special will help carry him through the dark days ahead.

That, and their children, and grandchildren. And parents. And brothers and sisters. And neighbors and friends.

The only good that comes out of times like these is that we are forced to re-examine the miracle that life really is. If there is anything in this world that we take for granted, it is drawing our next breath: this is a good time to stop and acknowledge just how precious a gift that is. Discover, again, the sweet scent of rain on the wind, experience the bubbling laughter of a baby, witness how every sunset is prettier than the one the day before.

And speaking of sunsets ... our day was coming to an end and since supper wasn’t holding our interest we may as well go out and finish the day’s work ...

We started across the yard in silence, but then my farmer turned to me and held out his hand. I laughed, and teased him, a mushy gesture like that coming from such a macho man, but I took the hand he offered. Even through chore gloves the connection was warm and good.