It's long been a conceit in Saskatchewan that most of our people still have ties to the farm, or at least rural Saskatchewan. That's one of the reasons why long weekends and holidays see so much traffic coming out of the cities. People are going home to mom, or grandma or Baba.
Well, perhaps that was the case. Sometimes I wonder if it is still true.
I, personally, am zero to one generation removed from the farm, depending how you look at it. I lived on a farm until my parents split up when I was 10. I spent weekends and summers at the farm until I graduated high school, then helped out when I could during my university years. But it has been many years, maybe 15, since I drove a tractor or combine. While my dad still lives on a farm, he no longer actively farms.
When I did harrow and cultivate, it was on a John Deere 4020, 5020 and Versatile 835. In their time, they were pretty decent. The late 1960s 4020 was one of the first generation tractors with a cab, and it showed. I ate a lot of dirt while driving that tractor.
That's vastly different from today's tractors. Climbing into them at the dealerships, they look like they have more in common with fighter planes than the 4020 I grew up with.
But what I can't get over is the size today. In 1994 I spent a spring working with Morris Industries doing field work, testing out a new air seeder for their research and development department. The tractor was a brand new Ford Versatile 9880. While big, the current tractors are bigger still. They need to be to pull the new air seeders I see today. They make the one I tested look like a toy.
When I was a teenager I would move the equipment from field to field, sometimes along Highway 49 because that was the most direct route. Blinkers on, it was sometimes unnerving, especially when semis passed. But I can't imagine driving the behemoths of today. I see SeedMaster now makes a 100-foot wide drill. That's more than three times the size of our press drills when I was a kid, and 2.5 times bigger than our cultivator. I'm guessing folding all that up into something you can pull on the road and under a power line requires a transformation that would make Optimus Prime proud.
It's encountering these on the highway that freaks me out. What happens if another extremely wide load is going the other way, such as an oil tank, drilling rig or another tractor and drill? I saw one the other day that was so wide, that not only did it take up the wide shoulder and the right lane, it also took up nearly half of the oncoming lane. When equipment gets that large, one would think it should have pilot trucks.
The fortunate thing is that such large equipment can accomplish so much, there are correspondingly fewer of them, and thus fewer on the roads. That falls in line with correspondingly fewer farmers out there.
Yet throughout Saskatchewan, we are seeing new dealership locations popping up. Last month while tooling about the province, I saw new, recently built or under-construction dealerships in Weyburn, White City, Swift Current and the Battlefords. I don't remember a time in my life where such a building frenzy has taken place in the agricultural sector.
Last year saw an incredible crop, followed by an incredible backlog in shipping it. However, I don't know enough about that issue to comment much beyond that. When I look at the current state of affairs, the equipment and the techniques, I realize I'm a lot further removed from the farm than I once thought I was.
