Another week of forest fires and cooker weather. My fat little body does not like this plus 30 stuff. I have no rain in the hoar frost calendar forecast. I have just about given up on accuracy of that thing, anyways. Nothing is coming, no rain, no hail, no snow, no sleet, nothing. It looks like just more drought and hot weather.
The crops around the area have started to look better, but without rain it is just an illusion. Some people were lucky enough to get in on the showers lottery where one person gets an inch of rain and another person a few miles down the road gets two tenths. That’s the showers lottery. The plants want to grow, they have sun and if they can get deep rooted there is some moisture down there. Unfortunately they now have a large canopy of growth that they can’t sustain without rain. They soon will not be able to pump enough moisture up from below to cover off what they are losing on the top growth. Now the plants start shedding leaves and the heads or pods will not get filled. If anyone knows how to do a rain dance, I would ask you to start. We would all be grateful. We all need rain.
I met Noel Light in the co-op store coffee nook in Lloydminster. Of course we talked about the weather. Noel told me the weather has a seven-year drought cycle moving from south to north. I hope this dry weather will be in the Florida Everglades next year. Noel said there also is an eleven-year sun spot cycle. When the drought cycle and the sun spot cycle arrive at the same time, which is every 77 years, major drought like 1935 results. I have done the math. I think we are in it. Noel said if we can get through this we are good until 2092 for the next major drought. We both agreed probably neither one of us would be around to see that.
Waseca has had a weather station since 1906, so we have a history of rains, droughts, frosts and snowfall. In my farming career, I was introduced to drought in 1981. It was the worst I had ever seen. The crop in my hills came up nicely. I had a hoe drill with seven inch spacing. Soon the ground was covered and I had a smile on my face as I anticipated a good crop. Then it forgot to rain. Then hot wind and 30 plus above. My crop, which was almost at shot blade stage, started to go back. First all the stools turned yellow and fell off. You could start to see the rows. Then we got down to surviving individual plants. I swathed it and then it started to rain. I picked the swath out of a green mat. Canada feed, tough. Very poor yield, very poor grade. So much for my farming.
Then in 2002 I got to experience drought again. It was the first year I farmed the Hewson place. The rest of the crop was a write off but I had 60 acres of wheat on summerfallow. I made arrangements with Crop Insurance that I could go down and harvest that 60 acres. I moved the combine and a three-ton truck 25 miles down there. I combined all afternoon and got only 237 bushels for my troubles. Might as well have stayed at home. No matter how good you plan, no matter what you do, you can’t grow a crop without rain. And that’s the truth.
My dad always talked about how tough it was in the Dirty Thirties. When I started farming one of the colourful people I liked to talk to was Eddie Bergy from the Forest Bank area north of Waseca. He would frequently be hauling grain the same time I was. He was a different looking character as I don’t know maybe he cut his hair once a year. He looked like a tramp but was actually quite intelligent. He would never initiate a conversation, but if you spoke to him first you would find him an interesting visitor. I asked him about farming in the ‘30s and he said he grew some of his best crops in the ‘30s but they were not worth anything. I told him that kind of conflicts with what my Dad had been telling me about the ‘30s. Eddie said it was always drier south of town. He said they never got big rains in the ‘30s but little showers would come along and keep the crop going. Sort of makes me think times haven’t changed much. I miss my visits with people in the area when the Pool elevator closed. Eddie Bergy has been passed away for several years now.
This past weekend I got to go to Bob and Ada Polinsky’s 70th wedding anniversary in Bud Miller Park. This is my wife Bev’s father and mother. Bob is to be 93 July 24 and Ada is 90 and they seem to be in good health. Bob has brother Wally and only has two sisters left. Freda and her son Patrick and his wife and their children from Toronto, Ont. attended. They took in the Calgary Stampede before coming to the anniversary party.
Bob’s other sister Elsie from Oshawa, Ont. and her daughter Elaine and son flew into Edmonton, rented a car and came to the party. There were cousins and more cousins. About a hundred people enjoyed some Polinsky home cooking for a noon lunch
A daughter of Bob’s cousin Herb, Carole brought a spinning wheel that Bob’s grandfather had made when he came to the country. The machine was 100 years old and looked in good shape. This day and age if someone was to build a spinning wheel it may not be much of a deal. They came to the country with nothing. To build a spinning wheel first he had to build a wood lathe. My brother-in-law Trevor said, “who thought up this stuff. Who thought of taking some hair off a sheep. Who thought of twisting it into a string. Who got the idea of knitting this woolen string into clothing? It is amazing what the old people were able to do.” Later that night Bob and Ada’s nine-year-old great-granddaughter Ava got the machine running and was making wool yarn. The apple did not fall far from the tree there.
Then Bev and I got to go back to Waseca for the 90th birthday party for Joyce Jeffery. I got to give her a big hug and I told her she didn’t look a day over 70. The Perry family and ours have been friends for years. There are countless picture of us all growing up together. I’m wishing her good health and many more birthday parties and she has agreed to come to my birthday party July 25 in the Waseca Hall.
Joke of the week: Four ministera decided to play a round of golf so they hired a caddy and off they went. After the fifth hole the caddy said, “you all must be preachers. I have never seen worse golf and not a bad word said.”
