When it's spring time in Alberta ...

It’s been a very long time since I last posted anything, and right now we should be about as far removed from harvest as we could possibly be: it is spring, even in Alberta, after all! 

While this is true for our farm it sadly isn’t for many other farmers here: the wet conditions in the fall led to a lot of crop being left out unharvested last fall. Some went out late in the fall, even in December yet, when there was not much snow and the weather dry, and combined as much as they could, others took advantage of a few good days in the last week or ten days, but still there are many fields with canola swaths, some with wheat and even barley, some uncut and now flat on the ground after the spring snows, of course. Even if it could be salvaged much of it will be mouldy or contaminated by deer and mouse droppings.

We haven’t been faced with those particular challenges – we’ve had our share of those twice previously, years ago – and had been hopeful that we could start our field work reasonably timely. These hopes were dashed a few days before Easter when we received 50mm of moisture, about half of it in rain, the other half in snow. The ground was still saturated from the wet fall, and this made matters much worse than they would have been in a drier year, of course. Again the puddles slowly went away, wet areas in the fields started to dry up – until the next snowfall about ten days later. 

The water pools on the lawn are still big enough for Leo to bathe in

We usually say that we cannot even think of field work until the ‘lakes’ in the lawn have dried up, but about a week ago a few warm, windy days made it possible for field work to start, even though low areas still had to be left out. We have about one fifth of our acreage seeded now, but after about 20mm of rain these past few days we have to wait for things to improve again. We haven’t had a spring this wet in a very long time, and the gravel roads are in very bad shape, some of them nearly impassable with a smaller car. 

 

Beautiful day in late April

The upside to this is that everything is wonderfully green. Ducks and geese must be revelling in the abundance of water, and the frogs have been muttering their hearts out from every little pool of water for weeks. I have been enjoying ‘my’ forest where every walk brings new discoveries.A few weeks ago I watched the courtship dance of two red-tailed hawks, and after a few walks where they complained about my presence it is now very quiet: she is likely sitting on the nest, not drawing any attention to herself. Robins, chickadees and white-throated sparrows are singing, and already green walls have grown up where I could look far between the white trunks of the poplars: the underbrush is hiding animal trails from view. By now, however, I know how to find many of them since I am becoming more and more familiar with my trail, recognize oddly shaped trees and family groups of others, know where tree fungi have grown like footholds on a climbing wall and which trees are most favoured by the woodpeckers. 

Things change every day at this time of year. The first wildflowers are in bloom, and when I knelt down to inspect some small plants more closely on yesterday's walk a sudden sweet scent enveloped me: the creeping stems of sweet woodruff with their whorly leaves crushed under my knees. The most stunning find, however, just like every spring, were the clumps of golden marsh marigolds that had pushed up all along the edge of the swamp. For me, this means it is now truly spring.

Arrow-leaved coltsfoot