By the time you read this, one of the fiercest and more lethal storms of this century will have started to fade from your memory.
Lives have been unfairly taken by a storm not experienced by many in Ontario in years.
Reluctantly, we have do deal with the after math.That’s assuming your power is finally back on and there are no trees sticking through your living room ceiling.
At the same time, the 2022 election will have faded into history, and with that, and the supposed end of COVID, we can all look forward to summer.
Life is supposed to be filled with unpredictable challenges, but normally they do not all arrive on the same day or week. Between a provincial election, an historic storm, supply chain issues, and of course the increase in fuel prices, we have had a great deal on our plates, and there is nothing we can do but salt and pepper it and then take a mouthful.
Spring is the start of another season of planting, harvesting, repairing and then planning again for the next spring, if you are a farmer.
Issue after issue coming down like a summer rain cannot be a good thing for farmers to deal with, but invariably they do.
Farmers get to make their income from gambling to a certain extent — gambling on global prices for their particular product, that the weather in all its glory will fall in line with the instructions on the bag of seeds about to be sown, that equipment will not fail the second that you need it, and that health and prosperity is always within reach.
I guess in the end it all comes down to having the right kind of attitude.
Nothing stays the same and change is the only constant you can depend on. This is a fact of life.
You may not be aware of change or the need to adapt to it if you work in an office in Ottawa or Toronto. When you go outside, the world you see will look basically the same, except for an obvious change in seasons, but farming is different.
A farmer’s livelihood depends directly on something as simple and complicated as the dirt an urban dweller brushes off their running shoes after a day outside. A farmer lives and breathes it.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood once said, “In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ”That’s nice to think about after a long Canadian winter. Dirt transcends politics, even hockey. It can exist in hundreds if not thousands of different ways, rich in whatever it takes to grow food. Manipulating dirt and getting it to grow your crops is definitely science with a dollop of magic thrown in.
The recent storm showcases what Mother Nature can do when she has a temper tantrum, and it only adds to the challenges all of us have been facing, especially if you’re hoping to go out and plant a few thousand acres of corn or soybeans this spring.
The weather, unlike world politics, the stock market, healthcare and education is impossible to change or alter. All you can do when the weather goes from springlike to deadly is to hide in your basement and hope your insurance company is as good as they say they are in their advertisements.
Listening to the howling wind during last month’s deadly windstorm, all you could do is wait for it to end and hope you have the resilience to get back out, clean up and move forward.
I like to think successful farmers have in their bloodlines that kind of character and strength to rise to the occasion when it presents them with a tree through their barn roof.
Everyone, city dweller or rural resident, suffered through the big blowout of 2022 last month and I suppose it would be foolish to think that that is the end of it.
We have survived, and celebrated, or not, another provincial election, and a Stanley Cup. We can still find a parking spot at our favourite hospital, and most of us have weathered the pandemic. Someone hopefully is keeping score of how many disasters we have had one after the other.
Maybe there will be a prize at the end of all of this.
In all of our endeavours, weather has to have the last word.
