CONSORT, Alta. – As she trod across the hay field, she left a trail of dust hanging in the air, like a half-ton pounding down a grid road.
You could almost hear the dry grass crunching as she headed down to the only deep green part of the field – the waterhole where other cows were sipping.
A kilometre down the road another herd chewed disconsolately at the sparse grasses that bordered an
alkali flat so white it pained squinting eyes.
It’s bone-dry around here, and it’s not a local problem. A big chunk of the central Prairies missed recent rains that poured across Manitoba, and large parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta. The dry area runs down most of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, from north of Lloydminster to south of Oyen.
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Along this region patchy crops struggle from the powdery soil, cattle scrape at sun-desiccated grasses and farmers ache for rain from the clouds that daily tempt, then pass.
“It clouds up nice, but nothing ever happens,” said Chauvin, Alta., farmer Ron Tizzard. He was halfway through swathing a field that was supposed to supply enough alfalfa hay for his 30 cows for another year.
This day, as they have all season, the clouds promise rain, then float past leaving none. When it does shower, little more than a couple of
millimetres fall.
“The way the wind’s been coming, it just dries up as fast as it comes down,” Tizzard said from under a dusty ballcap.
Instead of the hay field producing 280 bales as it did last year, it likely will yield slightly more than 50 this year.
The hay grows only in low patches. On higher sections, Tizzard’s swath lines disappear as if sucked into the soil, then reappear out of the next low area.
He’ll soon have to pull the cattle off the pasture, put them on the hayland and supplement their diets with feed grains left from last fall’s good harvest. He has enough feed for the winter, but next spring nothing will be left.
“I can make it through, but you hate to run it like that,” he said.
Fortunately for these parched midwest producers, some rain fell last weekend. But though it’s the best most have seen in a year – about 25 millimetres in many areas – agrologists say it is far too little to save many crops.
The older the better
Those that are flowering, such as peas and canola, will be able to flower for longer, bringing better yields. And all crops will be strengthened.
But the drought has so crippled young crops that average yields are impossible even under perfect
conditions.
A few rainless weeks doesn’t normally faze farmers in this great central desert. But there has been no real rainfall since last June.
“Guys are already moving (selling) cattle,” said Consort fertilizer seller Tony Owens. “The old guys have never seen it this dry. Not even in the Thirties.”
Usually snowmelt provides enough moisture to germinate the seed and get the crop off to a good start, but this year, seed in some of these fields hasn’t germinated.
A good rain could produce a poor crop, which would be a lot better than no crop, said Owens. And it would save the pastures and allow farmers to produce some greenfeed for their cattle.
As the drought bites throughout the region, local towns see business drying up as farmers stop buying. Merchants can see the signs of a general economic slowdown.
“When that hill’s brown,” said one person in a farm supply outlet in Consort, Alta., about a normally lush slope, “you know you’re screwed.”
Even farther north near Vermilion, Alta., an area usually blessed by more rain than much of Alberta, the crops look weak and unpromising.
