Village Squire, 1976-08, Page 21We live with it all around us, but like a
good wife or a good husband, we tend to take
it for granted.
Yet the land, the rich earth that makes this
part of Ontario one of the most productive
farming areas of the world puts its stamp on
all of us, even desk -bound urban dwellers.
Few of us live more than a few short minutes
from the open fields that mean livelihood for a
large part of our population and lively diets
for the rest of us
There are few places where you'll meet
such progressive food producers as here and
fewer places where you'll see such a wide
range of farm produce. This farmer grows
wheat, that one beans, another has barley
and another peas for a canning plant, another
field corn for cattle and still another sweet
corn for humans. There are apple orchards
and peach orchards and even vineyards and
the crops are becoming more diversified all
the time.
Yet we town dwellers often don't think
much about all this. We don't realize that
we're into the line of year now when the
greatest satisfaction comes on the farm.
Slowly, invisibly time has crept on and the
seasons changing is marked by the beginning
of the harvest period on our area farms. First
the wheat, then the barley, then the oats and
mixed grain. Later the white beans and the
corn.
Of course there's such a variety of crops
that the harvest period goes on far longer
than that. Peas and corn for canning have
already been harvested and cucumbers are a
continuing crop. But for the majority of
farmers, harvest begins when the wheat turns
from green to yellow to gold. While the rest of
us are still thinking summer, the harvest
signals autumn on the farm. Once the wheat
is gold, winter is hovering in the wings.
Harvest means a time of hot, dirty work on
the farm, but it's a job most farmers are glad
to be doing. Until the crops are off the land
and safely stored away, nothing can be
counted gained. The crop runs the gambit of
perils from the time the snow melts in the
spring to that satisfying moment when the
grain is in the grainery. Will the soil dry soon
enough for early planting? Will the .rains and
warm weather come at the proper time to get
the seed growing? Will the frost stay away
from the tender shoots? Will it be wet
enough, and yet dry enough to make the crop
grow well but without disease? Will it be dry
weather for the harvest so the crops won't
spoil in the fields? This is the long list of
worries that nag at the farmer every year as
sure as spring follows winter.
Weather is so fickle it's hard to relax when
you have a crop at its mercy. Few of us, in a
position as we are to fairly well control the
conditions of our livelihood can fully
appreciate the pressure that weather puts on
a crop farmer. When the weather is dry, hot
and sunny, a farmer can't sit out in the sun
and get a sun tan like urbanites, but probably
worries instead that if rains soon don't come,
his crops will dry up. When the rain comes,
he worries that it's here to stay and there will
be too much ram.
Some people complain that you just can't
make farmers happy that they're always
bitching about something. The truth is that
farmers live with uncertainty so much they're
used to worry and worrying out loud to each
other.
Even once the crop is in, the worry
continues. If it's been a poor crop, there isn't
so much to sell though the price is likely high
because demand is greater than supply. If it's
been a bumper crop, there's lots to sell, but
probably the price is rock bottom meaning the
crop is about as much bother as it's worth.
The big hope is that while you, as an
individual, may have had a great crop, the
rest of the world hasn't, meaning the great
dream of good crops and high prices at the
same time. It happens seldom, just about as
often as the twin evils of poor crops and low
prices.
u
The rhythm of nature, the philosophical
feeling that most farmer develop after years
of knowing they can't change the weather,
they can only roll with the punches and hope
for the best, these are things that are
stamped indelibly on the personality of an
area like this where farming is such a
dominant industry. We may not individually
depend on farming, but the mood of our
environment gives our collective personality
many of those same traits. It's why our
culture will always be subtley different from
people in large cities where people are used
to controlling their environment, to even
control the weather in many ways through
things like enclosed shopping malls and even
huge underground cities. City people become
frustrated at anything they can't gain control
over.
Farmers realize they can cut down the odds
through modern farming practices, but they
can never live in complete security until that
welcomed moment when the grain is in the
grainery. And while they may complain about
it, most probably wouldn't have it any other
way.
VILLAGE SQUIRE/AUGUST 1976, 19