weathering the storm

The weather this week turned cold and windy. Clouds have moved and there's talk of snow come the weekend.

I'm glad that my work largely follows the seasons. School running through the coldest months, farm work in the summer - it helps me feel connected to the world in a time where more and more people are living removed from it.

My sister recently mocked my back-to-the-land attitude and lifestyle.

After an hour or two spent making fun of her pseudo-bohemianism I had time to sit back and think about what she said.

It appears, dear reader, that my younger sister may have been right.

But it makes me wonder how I can come back to the land when it seems that I never left it in the first place.

I suppose the answer is that Endiang, Alberta (motto: "Not quite the end of the world but you can see it from here") is not immune from outside trends after all: by extension neither are the farms. The fast-paced, consumerist, technology driven world of the urban centers exists just the same at the end of the road.

And frankly I don't find it very satisfying. I don't want a life defined by the number of digits on my paycheque, the square-footage of my house, the year of manufacture on my car.

I don't want to be made obsolete by a machine, or be reduced to the status of technician.

I want to be able to walk where I please, to see the stars at night, to be independent of municipalities and corporations.

Is that cliche? Is it naive? Should I just admit I can't change the way of the world and hold on for the ride?

Because I really don't want to.

I like the farm. I like how the work changes from day to day with the weather and seasons. I like how I am more and more able to provide for myself.

As it stands I can provide some of my own meat, eggs, and vegetables. Soon I'll be able to provide my own milk and wool. With time, maybe electricity and heat.

It's a lifestyle that makes me happy. It's a lifestyle I'm starting to think more people yearn for.

Will I be able to pull it off? I hope so. But I suspect it will be difficult in the future for people like me, people who value the institution of the family farm, to continue.

Because the powers that be seem to want us to dry up and blow away. Make way for the corporate farms to come.

For now, though, I'll hold out in my little island of sanity.

Regards from Alberta's brush plain.

a year without combines

You’d think that the third year of teaching would be easier. That starting up in the fall would take a little less out of you.

If you thought that, though, you’d be sorely mistaken.

The first three weeks of this school year have torn a strip out of me. I can feel my immune system slowly crashing; my eyes droop a little more every day. I am completely exhausted.

Not to say that the year has been bad: by week three the past couple of years I was already looking for alternate employment.

This year the sense of dread is largely gone.

But a new school means learning new names, new faces, new procedures, new locations, new habits. Teaching new courses means new curriculum, new assignments, new marking routines.

And of course, this year has come with its own particular stresses.

Schools, we are assured, need to ready themselves for the H1N1 plague we’re told will kill us all. $80 million budget cuts have everyone questioning the longevity of their employment. Talk of elections has the whole country up in arms.


What I need, dear reader, is for the whole world to step back and take a breather.

Which is why, this year, I find I really miss the harvest.


I think some farmers find harvest time particularly stressful : the potential for disaster – fires, rain, untimely snow, etc. – can be overwhelming at times.

For me, though, harvest is when I finally get to see the reward for all the evenings and weekends. Watching wheat pour into the combine hopper makes stiff necks and sore backs worth it.

At harvest time I turn off my brain and enjoy the world around me: the air is sweet with grain dust, the stubble shines in the fields.


But this year I get none of that. Our harvest is largely done. The early summer drought made sure of that.

Which, of course, means no combining this year. No wheat in the hopper. No golden stubble.


Instead we’ve a pit of silage and a winter ahead of us.

But we should count ourselves lucky. The year was not the wreck it could have been. We’ve feed for our cattle, which is something, and the chance to try again later.


And next spring, when I find myself swearing at the tractor, I’ll remind myself of the combining and reward to come.

That should straighten me out for a week or two.

for fall, too, must come

Fall is coming.

You wouldn't really know it, though, to look around.

It's as hot now as it was for most of July and August; the mosquitoes are only just beginning to hit full stride; the air is humid and heavy and wind pretty rare.

But there are signs. The crows have left and ravens replaced them. In places the leaves have turned golden, the grasses red. Thunderheads in the afternoon have been replaced by sheets of gray.

In short, fall is doing its damnedest to get here. It's just being a bit slow about it.

From my viewpoint it can't get here fast enough. I need the fall to come. I need the year to end. This year has been long, hard, and exhausting. I need the cold days of fall to refresh me.

If you're like me and long for the cold days and short nights of fall, rejoice. It will be here 'ere long.

In the meantime, though, feel free to mutter at the sun worshipping masses with me.

Happy Wednesday from the brush plain.

a little september angst

Why should a person prefer one place over another?

It's a question I ask myself a lot. It's a question you have to ask yourself when you chose to live on the farm.

I like living on the prairies. I like seeing the sunsets and the stars; the chinook arches in winter; the flocks of geese in spring and fall. I like the fields of wheat and barley; the smell of hay in summer and the sound of frogs in the slough.

But whenever time I visit the mountains it takes every ounce of willpower to stop myself packing up and moving there.

A weekend visit to Banff and Canmore reminded me of how much I love the mountain air, the mountain weather and mountain views. Maybe it's the novelty of it: Endiang, Alberta isn't exactly noted for its vertical height or majestic beauty. Perhaps if I lived there it would quickly grow old.

Then again, maybe it wouldn't.

At the same time I feel an overwhelming sense of loyalty to the old farmstead. A glance at the family tree shows that my family has stayed far longer on that patch of ground than they ever had anywhere else: prior to my grandfather's generation my forebears spent their time wandering around Europe and North America: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Holland, Germany, New York, Northern Ontario, Kentucky, Illinois, Saskatchewan, Idaho being just a few of the birthplaces that show up on the old pedigree.

The wandering stops when you get to the farm. It seems that prairie dust and slough water get into the veins after all.

Sometimes I feel like it's a cop-out to stay here on the farm, that teaching is just a way to postpone the inevitable.

I feel like I need to do this, though. I cannot just give up on a farm my father, grand-father, and great grand-father worked.

It would be easy, but I'd consider myself a failure if I did.

So, I'll give it a try. If, in ten, fifteen, twenty years time it looks like farming's a bust I'll admit defeat. Pack up my bags and find a nice, quiet mountain to hang around on.

But something in my bones tells me that whether on a prairie or a peak I'm going to end up on a farm.

newfangled gadgets

I'm just old enough that I remember the world pre-internet.

It's fair to say I'm from the last generation that can claim that.

It's funny - we don't often talk of the world pre-internet anymore. History before the internet is like history before Christ: so far in the past that we speak of it as a vaguely interesting, but ultimately dead period.

Although I proudly claim the title of Luddite, I am not a part of the ugly mob that decries the internet as evil. I will not condemn cell phones, Blackberries, iPods, laptops, et cetera. I have no intention of going back to a world without them.

Because I like the world they create. I like that I can chat with someone in Brazil, New Zealand, or India at little cost from my home. I like that I can maintain daily contact with friends I otherwise would have forgotten.

But has the world really has gotten smaller?

Or did Cap'n Jack Sparrow have it right when he suggested the modern world just has less in it?

Because no one can deny that each technological advance prods an advance in globalization. Or that each advance in globalization sounds a death knell for another aspect of local culture.

I can't help but think, though, that we're wasting the great potential available to us.

A synthesis, I think is called for. A fusion of old and new for the future.

It's something to be wished for, certainly.

"Whoa, Stu," you say, "Isn't that a bit, you know, much for the first post of the fall? And maybe a bit cliche?"

Dear reader, my apologies if I come off sounding like some UN lackey - it was a long summer and the mosquitoes have drawn too much blood off my brain.

I will speak of it no more..today... but think about it. Maybe the Amish girl on the cell phone has it right after all.