For once, most farmers are singing the same song: “Rain, rain, go away.”
To date, about one percent of the seed is in the ground in Saskatchewan at a time when the number should be much higher. Sloughs have appeared and stubble fields in some areas are under water.
Sometimes, there are days with no rain, just grey, hanging clouds that threaten but don’t produce, but aren’t conducive to drying either.
We’ve also had our days with sunshine, just enough to put hope in hearts and a spring in the step and the thought that maybe, tomorrow – before another shower comes along to dampen hopes once again, in more ways than one.
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Praying for rain is being replaced with the hope that rain can stop for harvest. Rainfall in July and early August has been much greater than normal.
Farmers are frustrated and changing their seeding plans daily. How reliable, one wonders, will this year’s census of agriculture be? The middle of May was a silly time to take the census, with farmers still in the field in most years and this year it proved to be especially silly, given that some had not even been near their fields.
The rain isn’t just affecting farmers.
Rural roads are getting more and more rutted as time goes on and road crews will have a merry time of it once things dry up, trying to be in all corners of their municipalities at once.
The foremen who dispatch the crews will have to have the judgment of Solomon and the patience of Job as ratepayers phone and councillors jockey to have their roads done first.
This is the season of high school track meets, but in many cases they too have been flooded out. In our town, they were forced to hold a meet in the arena.
Fertilizer dealers may be among the few smiling. Some farmers are planning to up their fertilizer use in hopes of bringing what will surely be a late crop in on time.
I’m told by people who remember such things that 1974 was a year just like this; seeding didn’t start here until the end of the month and there was still a crop, of sorts, though it was mostly feed quality.
Driving on slick, muddy roads is not my idea of fun and I look for any excuse to stay home these days.
Hubby doesn’t mind, as I make him quite nervous, moaning on my side of the car, knuckles white, fingernails dug into the dashboard, right leg aching from stomping on the brake I don’t have.
Our health district has been conducting focus groups to see what services people in our area communities need, the theory being that a happy community is a healthy community. If anyone is listening, a paved grid road past our place would sure lower my stress level and help me be happy and healthy on these rainy days!
