A full load

Much has happened in the last two weeks, and the pace has definitely picked up: we are in the midst of spring fieldwork and seeding. 

After preparing machinery, walking around the perimeter of the fields to remove any trees that had fallen during the winter, after loading the big truck with seed wheat, and the old red tandem with fertilizer, we were ready to go a week ago today.

Thanks to the abundant snowfall in April there is again a lot of standing water in dips and depressions through which we can drive in a drier year. This is a nuisance, since it means driving around those water holes, which takes a lot more time than driving straight up and down the field, of course. On the other hand, it offers opportunities to watch several different kinds of ducks, or catch a glimpse of a killdeer couple before they again blend into their surroundings, camouflaged perfectly. Also, even from a noisy tractor cab the serenity of a still pool of water reflecting blue sky and clouds draws me in and brings me joy.

Northern Shovelers 

Serenity was not the mood that had captured me this morning: it was something like pure, unadulterated joy, quite literally out of the blue.

I couldn’t help smiling on my way to town when I thought about the circumstances of this particular trip. In the last few days we have been working on Magnus and Courtney’s farm, about 40 km northwest of here. When I drive there, usually around noon, to give Johann a break from driving tractor for a few hours, I often have to bring things from home. Sometimes, when I have the pickup, I take diesel in the Tidy Tank; sometimes there are tools and other odds and ends.

Today, I had a list of errands that would have made the pickup the preferable mode of transportation, but all I had here was the Corolla.

Magnus had asked me to bring all the leftover bags and half bags of canola from last year so that he could use them up. Since I also had to pick up a newly repaired cultivator tire from the tire shop, however, the trunk space was used up, which meant I had to stack the canola bags on the rear seat. It just fit. The front seat was taken by my own bag with lunch and tea, camera and notebook, glasses and whatever else one might need for a shift on the tractor, plus Johann’s lunch – still room enough for the hay fork, a small torch, and a few odds and ends, but it was getting pretty crowded by now. 

I was almost out of the door when I got another phone call from Magnus, ‘could you please pick something up from Hammer Equipment (a machinery dealership in town)?’ Oh, sure – what’s one more errand, after all? I was just hoping that it wasn’t something bulky, since it would soon start to infringe on my own space in the car.

Thus I left home, my poor little car even closer to the ground than usual with its 150 kg of extra weight in the back. Gravel roads are treacherous at the moment: they have been dry for quite a while but still seem to be soft, and every once in awhile something akin to a dinosaur spine or a mountain ridge has pushed up in the centre, or a little volcano-like mound seems to have erupted from the depths underneath the road. Woe to the vehicle whose driver hasn’t kept her eyes open: to hit one of these bulges could easily shave off the oil pan or do other serious damage. By now I know the dangerous areas on the five kilometer stretch between home and the highway, and we were fine, my Corolla and I.

Meanwhile I listened to CBC Stereo’s “This is my music” on the radio, a program where Canadian musicians talk about the music that has influenced them, played a role in their lives. Today it was Angela Cheng, one of Canada’s foremost pianists, whom I had heard only a week ago at a concert with the Edmonton symphony orchestra in the same concert they were to play at New York's Carnegie Hall on Tuesday of this week. Then, she had played in a triple concerto by Canadian composer John Estacio, together with violinist Juliette Kang, and cellist Denise Djokic, the artist at work with passion and great competence. Today, she let us have a glimpse of Angela Cheng, the woman, talked about her childhood in Hong Kong and her daughters, and among the many beautiful pieces of music she had chosen for this program –mostly classical, of course - there was a song by Michael Bublé. 

And this is what made me smile: the image of me driving to town in a car filled to the brim, enjoying the chance to learn more about a woman I admire, listening to Michael’s beautiful smooth voice, sun dancing on the surface of a pond by the side of the road, the swallows, returned from their winter quarters about five days ago, showing off their skills with easy grace, the greening of the landscape – how could I not smile on a morning like this!