Life is most depressing in rural Saskatchewan these days.
With the announcement this week that grain prices are probably not going to turn around for 10 or 20 years, next year country has become next decade or bust.
For 2000, when farmers are making their cropping decisions, they’re not deciding what crop will make them the most money but which one will lose them the least.
In other years, farmers and rural business people alike would rejoice when it snowed because snow meant moisture and moisture went a long way to ensuring a good crop.
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This year, there is no joy in snow and people want subsidies for the darndest things.
As most readers know, in another life I am the owner, co-publisher, editor, reporter and sometime janitor of a weekly newspaper in rural Saskatchewan.
Following is a quote from a letter that crossed my desk recently: “I am very upset. I came to work this morning and found snow eight inches deep covering the sidewalks in front of my shop, while across the street there was no pileup of snow. As the day progressed, the snow piled higher, but I noticed there was no bank of snow in front of Madam Editor’s establishment.
“Is this right? Is this equality? Is the printed word more important than the arranged flower?
“I am asking Town Council to ensure that the next snowfall is distributed equally on both sides of the street. I also think I should be subsidized for the extra wear and tear on my snow shovel because it is wearing out faster than Madam Editor’s.”
The letter was from my friend Audrey Tumback, who runs the flower shop in town and who has been my business neighbor for going on 13 years. I can’t understand why she was so bitter.
Think of the exercise she got shoveling in the bracing air, not once but three times, while I was forced to sit like a sloth in an overheated building, cheeks pale and wan. Think of the stories she has to tell her grandchildren about the great storm of February 2000.
I’m attributing her surfeit of snow to climate change. The earth’s 10 hottest years since 1860 have occurred since 1982. Everyone knows that when it warms up in the winter, it snows.
Obviously, since she got more snow on her side of the street than I did on mine, it was warmer on her side. Some people just don’t know when life is good.
If the truth be known, what she’s really upset about is having to carry her ladder through knee-deep snow to get to the pole in the back lane so she can send her flowers by wire. But that’s another story.
