- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
TFF blogger @Blaithin writes about Summer's progress in Albertaland:
There are some times where it becomes glaringly obvious to me how separated rural folks are from their urban counterparts. Usually I take comfort in this fact by thinking when the world ends and trades shut down and food is scarce and all that hullabaloo I’ll stand a much better chance of surviving than my slightly more ignorant when it comes to living, city relatives. Still… there are times when even that isn’t comforting….
The local area here is in high distress in the middle of a drought. Slightly north of where I am they aren’t too bad, farther south and east they’re in dire straights. I can only imagine what people are willing to trade for a solid day or two of rain right now. Meanwhile, there’s them city folk. The radio stations are in despair if a slight shower goes through the cities, it may interrupt their patio time! There also seems to be a lot of dread about mosquitoes appearing once it rains. Since it’s been so dry there really aren’t any at all this year. I admit that it’s a pleasant thing but I’d still change it for some wet weather. Really, the only immediate inconvenience city dwellers seem to be faced with are only being allowed to water their lawns every other day and having to deal with those pesky air advisories because of all the smoke drifting around from the hundreds of wildfires currently burning (Whole other issue that, but apparently we have Australia fire fighters kicking around to help us out. May have to go for a drive one day!)
Meanwhile, drive only a handful of miles outside of these urban centres and you’ll run into people teetering on the edge of huge bills and measly profits.
A variety of things have conspired to lead farmers to where they are currently. The starting point would have been the sorry excuse of a winter that was warm - nice at the time! - and severely lacking in snow. Enter a low water table to start off the year. Then that nice and warm winter turned into a fairly warm spring which lead farmers to chomp at the proverbial bit to get out in those fields and start seeding! I’d like to find stats somewhere saying how many more people planted peas this year just because they could plant so early and plant early they did! I believe the first seeding I seen was the end of April, almost a full month ahead of most seeding. Logically colder crops like peas and longer germinating crops like Canola were favoured for these early fields but still the risk of frost is known to go right into June. Unfortunately for some the frost did strike their Canola and re seeding was required. Then there was the fact that there’s just been no water. Shockingly enough Canola requires a fair amount of moisture in order to germinate. The peas and cereals don’t seem to have suffered unduly do to dry germination conditions but that good old yellow crop sure did. Then to top it off it seems cut worms really like dry years. Go figure. The end result has been near catastrophe for Canola crops as photos can show. Some fields even look like they’ve been left fallow. The cereals are doing better but in no way are they a guarantee either. With temperatures being in the 30’s almost daily and no moisture they’re rather stunted and heading out early. Burn off is almost inevitable without rain and it may end up being the only year farms actually want to be hailed out!
Then there’s the hay and pasture… Grim indeed. Original growth wasn’t too bad but the weather caused early seeding of the grasses in the pasture which has caused a lot of them to go dormant already. Plus it’s hard for them to grow without rain. Now that there’s cattle in the pastures they’ve eaten the grass down but are getting little to no regrowth back. The pasture north of my place is just a brown wasteland and I can’t see the cows being left there for much longer if something doesn’t change. Of course, pulling animals off pasture early means you have to have something to feed them right? So what’re the hay fields looking like in this drought. Not. Good. Yields are averaging 1/3 of last years bales and the chances of even getting a second cut are slim. This has resulted in people asking astronomical prices for hay. Anywhere from $200-$300 for one round bale. I seen a poor lady quoted over $10,000 for 34 bales for her horses. They just became a ridiculously expensive hobby!
Of course cattle prices have been through the roof and while they dropped slightly are still decent. Many producers kept back large numbers of replacement heifers last fall in an attempt to rebuild their herds and take advantage of calf prices but now that pastures are low and feed for the winter lower the ads for bred animals are growing in number. Yet people still think that, despite having to sell their animals because they don’t have enough feed, they’re going to get $3000 per head. Really, private sales are rather ridiculous right now. If a person bases market value on the auctions instead of what people posting online ads think they should get then bred cows are going for $1000 less and bales for around $115. Must more realistic considering the circumstances.
Really though, the domino effect of one thing is quite encompassing when a person sits down to think about it. If it had only rained a decent amount reproducing animals would still be through the roof, hay would be plentiful and averagely priced, crops would be good and we wouldn’t be anxious for those dark clouds to stick around longer for rain. Instead we’d want them to go away and not hail but that’s not how the year is playing out for us rural folk.
Perhaps it would be less stressful living in the city, at least when it comes to lack of rain. Then all we would have to worry about is watering our lawns, mosquitoes and good patio weather instead of atrocious feed bills, crop insurance and reducing herd sizes. Definitely a big difference in the concerns of life of rural vs urban living.
There are some times where it becomes glaringly obvious to me how separated rural folks are from their urban counterparts. Usually I take comfort in this fact by thinking when the world ends and trades shut down and food is scarce and all that hullabaloo I’ll stand a much better chance of surviving than my slightly more ignorant when it comes to living, city relatives. Still… there are times when even that isn’t comforting….
The local area here is in high distress in the middle of a drought. Slightly north of where I am they aren’t too bad, farther south and east they’re in dire straights. I can only imagine what people are willing to trade for a solid day or two of rain right now. Meanwhile, there’s them city folk. The radio stations are in despair if a slight shower goes through the cities, it may interrupt their patio time! There also seems to be a lot of dread about mosquitoes appearing once it rains. Since it’s been so dry there really aren’t any at all this year. I admit that it’s a pleasant thing but I’d still change it for some wet weather. Really, the only immediate inconvenience city dwellers seem to be faced with are only being allowed to water their lawns every other day and having to deal with those pesky air advisories because of all the smoke drifting around from the hundreds of wildfires currently burning (Whole other issue that, but apparently we have Australia fire fighters kicking around to help us out. May have to go for a drive one day!)
Meanwhile, drive only a handful of miles outside of these urban centres and you’ll run into people teetering on the edge of huge bills and measly profits.
A variety of things have conspired to lead farmers to where they are currently. The starting point would have been the sorry excuse of a winter that was warm - nice at the time! - and severely lacking in snow. Enter a low water table to start off the year. Then that nice and warm winter turned into a fairly warm spring which lead farmers to chomp at the proverbial bit to get out in those fields and start seeding! I’d like to find stats somewhere saying how many more people planted peas this year just because they could plant so early and plant early they did! I believe the first seeding I seen was the end of April, almost a full month ahead of most seeding. Logically colder crops like peas and longer germinating crops like Canola were favoured for these early fields but still the risk of frost is known to go right into June. Unfortunately for some the frost did strike their Canola and re seeding was required. Then there was the fact that there’s just been no water. Shockingly enough Canola requires a fair amount of moisture in order to germinate. The peas and cereals don’t seem to have suffered unduly do to dry germination conditions but that good old yellow crop sure did. Then to top it off it seems cut worms really like dry years. Go figure. The end result has been near catastrophe for Canola crops as photos can show. Some fields even look like they’ve been left fallow. The cereals are doing better but in no way are they a guarantee either. With temperatures being in the 30’s almost daily and no moisture they’re rather stunted and heading out early. Burn off is almost inevitable without rain and it may end up being the only year farms actually want to be hailed out!
Then there’s the hay and pasture… Grim indeed. Original growth wasn’t too bad but the weather caused early seeding of the grasses in the pasture which has caused a lot of them to go dormant already. Plus it’s hard for them to grow without rain. Now that there’s cattle in the pastures they’ve eaten the grass down but are getting little to no regrowth back. The pasture north of my place is just a brown wasteland and I can’t see the cows being left there for much longer if something doesn’t change. Of course, pulling animals off pasture early means you have to have something to feed them right? So what’re the hay fields looking like in this drought. Not. Good. Yields are averaging 1/3 of last years bales and the chances of even getting a second cut are slim. This has resulted in people asking astronomical prices for hay. Anywhere from $200-$300 for one round bale. I seen a poor lady quoted over $10,000 for 34 bales for her horses. They just became a ridiculously expensive hobby!
Of course cattle prices have been through the roof and while they dropped slightly are still decent. Many producers kept back large numbers of replacement heifers last fall in an attempt to rebuild their herds and take advantage of calf prices but now that pastures are low and feed for the winter lower the ads for bred animals are growing in number. Yet people still think that, despite having to sell their animals because they don’t have enough feed, they’re going to get $3000 per head. Really, private sales are rather ridiculous right now. If a person bases market value on the auctions instead of what people posting online ads think they should get then bred cows are going for $1000 less and bales for around $115. Must more realistic considering the circumstances.
Really though, the domino effect of one thing is quite encompassing when a person sits down to think about it. If it had only rained a decent amount reproducing animals would still be through the roof, hay would be plentiful and averagely priced, crops would be good and we wouldn’t be anxious for those dark clouds to stick around longer for rain. Instead we’d want them to go away and not hail but that’s not how the year is playing out for us rural folk.
Perhaps it would be less stressful living in the city, at least when it comes to lack of rain. Then all we would have to worry about is watering our lawns, mosquitoes and good patio weather instead of atrocious feed bills, crop insurance and reducing herd sizes. Definitely a big difference in the concerns of life of rural vs urban living.
