VANGUARD, Sask. – Wind, cooled by rising flood waters, blew dust from the damp grain across the Hapke farmyard. Headlights and a rising full moon gave an eerie fog to the otherwise black night.
Singing engines of tractors, augers and farm trucks drowned an insistent splash and crunch of water and ice 15 metres behind bins of wheat. A father and son were moving their grain to higher ground.
Darell and his father Ed Hapke, of Vanguard, Sask., were facing their third flood in 45 years. The first, in 1952, long before Darell came to be, forced the family to concede a since-demolished barn to the Notukeu Creek. The second, in 1976, only threatened the farm. Now the creek was coming for last fall’s crop.
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Harvest had been late and the grain stored damp. Now it would be necessary to market the wet grain without drying.
Stay on dry ground
The semi-tractor trailers stayed high on the road and out of the mud and water-pooled farmyard. The Hapkes began to relay the grain from bins to farm trucks to semi-trailers.
“The grain isn’t insured for flooding. We have to move it or risk losing it,” said Darell. He said they had called grain companies for miles around looking for elevators that could take delivery of their now homeless crop.
“We should be videotaping this water. It’s surreal. It’s never like this. This creek might be eight feet wide most of the time. …
“We’re planning on visiting my brother and sister in Vancouver. I really should have something to show them. We grew up on this farm and only once did it ever even get close to this high,” said Cathy Meyers, Darell’s sister.
Southwestern Saskatchewan is known for many things, including cactus, cowboys, tornadoes and cattle, but water is not something that normally makes the list.
Moving 10,000 bushels of grain in the middle of the night didn’t tire the family enough to keep them in their beds later the next day. As the sun rose to illuminate the shallow valley, it was greeted by a spectacle of ice and water that would seem better suited to an arctic river.
The three-metre creek was a kilometre wide, filled with giant chunks of ice flowing quickly past. Remarkably, the grain bins remained dry.
