Tough Times

I am writing this post from my uncle’s house in Edmonton.  I was supposed to arrive home for Reading Week last night, but the weather had other ideas.  I’m currently stuck here, awfully thankful for relatives who routinely take me in at a moment’s notice.  All I can do is wait for the snowplows to clear the roads and the ice from the freezing rain that we got last night to melt away.  By the time I post this on my blog, I will be home.  I’d do it right away but my computer is playing dumb and won’t connect to the internet here.

It’s not such a bad situation, but it certainly isn’t the way I envisioned my weekend starting out.  I thought I’d be at home helping Dad with chores right about now.  I suppose that’s how life is.  We think everything will be nice and rosy and then something completely beyond our control comes up and we just have to wait out the storm (or the storm’s repercussions).

That’s how it is with farming.  Farmers are eternal optimists.  We have to be to survive.  In a tough year, you’ll always hear the farmers saying, “It’ll be better next year.”  We’ll always look ahead and see what good will come next year, even as we keep in mind all the bad that could happen.

Oooh!  I just got the internet connection figured out! 

Ok, where was I?  Oh yes, optimism.  I think we as humans also like to be optimistic about what we don’t know.  We like to think that only good things happen in industries that we are unfamiliar with.  Sometimes, we do assume the worst, though.  A lot of people don’t know what goes on in farming.  I think they envision farmers out in their fields bonding with their cattle, nurturing their crops, being surrounded by all sorts of baby animals in the spring, and making plenty of money at the end of the day.

It’s not quite like that.  It’s hard to bond with cows that just won’t go where they need to go.  Sometimes, we get angry and need to go take a lunch break to cool down.  Sometimes, the cows try to kill us.  We cull those ones.  Sometimes, they just get stupid and tear down fences.  As for nurturing the crops, I think we spend more time fixing the broke down equipment than walking through the fields running our hands over the full heads of grain.  We do get to interact with a lot of baby animals, but even that can be hard.  Why?  Sometimes, no matter what we do, the babies just don’t survive.

One of my cows calved the other day.  My dad told me about it over the phone.  She had twins.  One of them had died inside of the cow and it made her calve too early.  The other twin lived only a couple of hours.  That was hard news to take.  I depend on my calves to pay for my schooling.  Losing one is never easy, regardless of whether I needed the income or not.

Speaking of selling calves, I’m sure you’ve all heard that a case of BSE (mad cow disease) was found on an Alberta farm.  I found that out yesterday morning before class.  Had I been standing up, I think it might have taken my knees out from under me.  You see, I was planning to sell my calves this week.  With cattle prices reaching record highs, I was hoping to be able to make enough money, combined with what I will make over the summer, to not have to worry about paying for school next year.  Now the reporters are saying that this likely won’t affect the cattle price.  I hope they’re right.  Unfortunately, I know that market prices are based on how people currently feel about beef.  If they panic, if borders close (which they shouldn’t unless more cases or BSE are found), if people just stop eating beef, the prices will crash and some farmers will lose everything.  Even though I try to be optimistic and think that it’s just the one case and it won’t affect the price too much, I worry that something big and terrible will happen, because it has before.  It’s scary to think about.

I don’t want whoever reads this to start worrying.  That won’t solve anything.  We just have to keep looking forward.  Hope for the best and plan for the worst.  That’s how we survive the tough times.  We look forward to the good times because we know that they will come again.  It’s how life works.