Had I written this post last night as I had intended, it would
have looked a lot different. I had just come in from a very satisfying
afternoon in the garden, bringing with me another 10 l pail of cucumbers and a
small bowl of strawberries which I had picked embraced by the wonderful scent
of sweet peas, most prominent at that late hour when the air is still. I had
gathered the laundry off the line by the bush across from the house, looked up
at the little squadron of small ducks flying overhead to their nightly roosts,
in the corner of my eye caught the quick wing beat of two bats out for an evening hunt. A deep feeling
of peace and thankfulness filled me: a time of abundance indeed.
I had planned to write about the beginning of harvest: almost
two quarter sections of barley at Magnus' and Courtney’s farm with excellent results,
again so relatively early in the season, with wheat there and barley here
almost ready to go, too. Or the apple harvest here at home, where the first
tree alone yielded 250 lbs of apples which Carl and I had picked a few days
earlier, using the tractor with front end loader to reach the higher branches
heavy with fruit.
I didn’t write anymore last night, however, and little did I
know then that it would take only twenty-four hours to give the word
‘abundance’ a very different meaning.
The predictions for rain – real rain, something we had craved for the last very dry weeks –
had showed up on the Environment Canada weather site at the beginning of the
weekend already. By now we weren’t quite sure anymore if we really needed it
with harvest underway. Maybe it would be better to have at least wheat and
barley in the bin. It hadn’t rained for so long now, and the crops had been
hanging in better than we could have hoped; it wouldn’t make a huge difference now.
This is not how it works, of course.
We were all feeling a bit restless throughout the evening:
clouds had started to build up, and far-away lightning had been flitting across
the western horizon at regular intervals, though no thunder could be heard yet,
and the lightning was no more than an amorphous flash, not yet bolts. The
forecast had become more and more ominous, amounts of rain predicted anywhere
from 10 to 30 mm. Half past midnight I saw the first real lightning, and at one
a terrible racket broke out: this were either huge drops of rain or … Even
taking the noise-amplifying qualities of a metal roof into consideration we
realized very soon that this was more than mere rain, and when we switched on
the outside light on the deck our fears proved to be correct: a hail storm was
underway. With sinking heart I watched how the tender leaves of basil and
oregano in their flower pot were being torn to shreds before my eyes, but
marveled at the resiliency of the hibiscus right beside it; it hardly seemed to
be touched. Peering out the window to the west we gazed at a lawn rapidly
turning into a field of white pebbles, the deck chairs piled up in the rose
bed, water spouting out of the drain in a thick stream.
I hated to think what the garden would look like, but
already felt the stoicism take hold: there was nothing we could do, and I had
enjoyed it as much as possible, taken from it as much as I could inthe short
days I had spent at home during the summer. The fields, however, were a
different matter. We never had a hailstorm of this force so late in the season,
and now, grains ready to harvest, canola close to swathing everything was at
its most vulnerable and, of course, would not have time to recover any longer.
The insurance would kick in, but to see a promising crop destroyed like that is
heartbreaking.
We slept fitfully, eager to survey the damage as soon as it
was light enough to do so. The garden had suffered greatly, as expected: beans,
cucumbers and squash leaves were a tattered mess, the beautiful dark brown and
crimson heads of the tall sunflower bent down and shredded, hollyhocks broken
off at the base, just like the one dahlia that had managed to withstand the dry
conditions and just started to bloom. How fortunate that we had picked all of
the early apples; with their soft skin they would have all been apple sauce
material (or, humouring Carl, been turned into apple wine). The other two trees
looked better than expected, maybe because the tall spruce trees right next to
them had kept them from the fiercest attack of the storm. The flower pots in
front of the house had not fared so well. Here, only crushed stems and
broken-off leaves and flower heads were left.
A quick survey of the wheat on the home quarter revealed no
more than what we had expected: heads with missing kernels, the knocked out
kernels scattered on the ground. It didn’t seem to be as bad as it could have
been, though, and the wheat was still standing. To our great surprise and utter
delight the inspection drive to the fields four to six miles away showed that
none of them had received any hail damage, with the possible exception of the
barley, but it was hard to tell. Most of it was still standing, which was
another happy discovery. In our minds’ eyes we had envisioned acres and acres
of hailed out, swathed grain, and none of that seemed to be necessary. That was
a lot to be thankful for!
While the hailstorm had lasted only about fifteen minutes
the rain continued. By morning we had 34mm (almost an inch and a half), and it
only quit long enough for us to finish the inspection tour before it continued
with renewed force. It rained and rained and rained all day, heavily at times,
and when I went out to check the rain gage around 5:30 this afternoon I emptied
72 mm – almost three inches! It slowed down after that, but still we received
more than four inches in far less than 24 hours. Everything is water logged
now, the lawn a series of small lakes. When I went out onto the road to see
what things were like the ditch beside the road was a gurgling stream, full to
the brim. Two small dark shapes took off from the edge right in front of my
feet: two brave (or desperate?) mice, more afraid of Leo and me than the raging
water, obviously. They safely made it across and scrambled to higher ground on
the other side. Maybe the pocket gopher who has built a widespread tunnel
system under the garden will be uncomfortable enough now as well and feel an
inclination to move elsewhere. Nowhere in our area, however, does it seem much
better than here; further north and west, in fact, amounts up to 150mm have
been recorded. An instagram photo I found on facebook gives an impression of the state of things in our town of Westlock.
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| (Photos by Kelsey Stasiuk) |
Abundance – it can take many shapes.
Meanwhile, the lovely warm scent of apple butter in the making is drifting up from the kitchen.
Talking about abundance ...
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| Before the storm |
