The Rural Voice, 1988-10, Page 3325 per cent of his dealer's total fire
sale. Gas and oil companies sold and
rented every spare tank they had.
Pembina Tank in Winnipeg sold out.
People even bought and rented giant
Arctic bladders, the type used by
exploration companies. Some simple
arithmetic showed most people spent
more on tanks than they saved on fuel.
And the people who bought a big
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supply of gasoline and stored it in
clear plastic or fibreglass tanks didn't
fare so well. The penetration of sun-
light caused some strange fungus to
grow. Gas tanks were being tom off
vehicles and steam -cleaned, carbur-
etors were re -built and still wouldn't
function properly. When I came back
in January ('88) two of our 4 x 4s and
the boss's Lincoln were inoperable.
But on to the weather. There was
no winter snow except one storm
which swept bare and hardly filled the
stubble. A great deal of moisture is
needed when the top 18 inches is bone
dry. I remember soil -testing one beau-
tiful warm day in December before I
came home for Christmas. It was so
dry I had to use a gravel shovel.
By the spring of 1988, the canola
market was bullish while barley was
still wallowing in the pits at $1.15 and
wheat was at $2.40. Everyone was
cleaning up canola seed and hoping
for some moisture. As it became evi-
dent that none was on the way, many
resigned themselves and planted more
cereals in June. Some gambled with
deep -planted canola. I hear they're
still looking for it.
By June, rains hit the Olds -
Bowden area and then wouldn't quit.
I ran into Edgar Willert one night and
he said he received 11 inches in June.
Red Deere got so much that new
housing starts were delayed. Some of
the late June and early July rains
filtered into Kneehill County. Talking
to the folks at Three Hills in August,
they told me it looks like half a normal
crop: canola 20 to 25 bushels, wheat
25 bushels, and barley 45 bushels.
And east of Edmonton through to Two
Hills and on into Saskatchewan is bad.
From the TV and press coverage,
we're all aware of the severe drought
in southwestern Saskatchewan. One
of the most severely affected areas is
that known as the Palliser Triangle.
Drawing a line from Fort McLeod to
Provost on the Alberta -Saskatchewan
border and on down to Estevan rep-
resents the infamous triangle.
Captain John Palliser was an
English engineer dispatched to the
western prairie to assess its suitability
for habitation and agricultural produc-
tion. In his report in 1858, he declared
this triangular area of southern Alberta
and southeastern Saskatchewan as
"quite unsuitable for agriculture and
of no value." Its rainfall, even in the
good years, is limited. Palliser warned
against attempting sustainable agri-
culture in this semi -arid area. But
with the development of railroads,
government settling programs, the
First World War, and man's ingenuity,
over went the prairie sod around 1910.
The drought and howling winds of
1933 and 1934 are still etched in many
On June 10 in
Saskatoon it rained
mud ... driving
around town one had
to keep the wind-
shield washers on.
minds. As the West is a newer land
than ours, so to speak, many old
farmsteads are still around. The old
clapboard houses have been relegated
to being spare granaries and stand
amongst the wooden granaries of the
1950s and the steel ones of the 1970s.
After helping an old-timer set the
rate on his "new fandangled" Valmar
Avadex applicator, I stole a tour
through one such old house. The door
stood ajar, hanging on the top hinge
yet unable to budge as the floorboards
had heaved with the leak in the roof.
The kitchen still contained the wood -
stove, a cupboard and sideboard, and
an assortment of unmatched shoes. A
set of bed springs was in each of the
two bedrooms and in the woodshed
hung a collection of collars, hamme
straps, and two sets of eveners — as
well as more old shoes.
Out in the kitchen you could al-
most see through the clapboard siding
and I wondered how those folks kept
THE NORTHERN FOREST_
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KE eF
PALL 'SEA'S
TRIANGLE
warm during a prairie blizzard. No
wonder they built in a little hollow
amid a clump of scrub poplar and
carragana.
The only evidence of insulation
was the three layers of heavy, canvas-
back wallpaper. There, behind the
stove, scrawled on the sagging wall-
paper, were the remnants of some
pioneer's diary: "Sept. 12 1942
carried the truck transmission to town
today to get fixed, Hot 90' F." From
where I was, the nearest town was
Torrington, 11 miles away.
Being a capitalist from the country
east of the Manitoba border, I won-
dered at the practice of summerfallow-
ing when I went west. The method of
early worked summerfallow kept
black until freeze-up was researched,
developed, and promoted by agron-
omists working with the universities
and experimental stations.
They preached the value of early
tillage and constant tillage in the
brown soil zone. The aim of the
method was to establish a continuous
moisture zone under the worked area,
as well as to kill germinating weed
seedlings.
It was good advice then. Most
farmers in the open country adopted
the method and practised what was
preached as soon as they had the
horsepower and the implements to do
the job. But working a field five to
seven times from early spring to late
OCTOBER 1988 31