Ron Settler's crop report and poem

I was in Manitoba's Interlake last week, where at least half the acres will not get seeded this year because of too much rain. This is the third year in the past four years that have been like this for them. Many other parts of the Prairies have too little. Ron Settler, a regular contributor to Grainews, reports on the dry conditions on his farm near Lucky Lake, Sask. 

He writes:

Our weather has been drier than usual. I took this photo (to the left) about June 1 and since then the slough has dried up completely. It's usually full year round. There were a couple of despondent ducks paddling around in the puddle the day before, but they didn't stay around for my picture the next day. A couple of blackbirds posed for me however.

We've been comparatively lucky for rain. We had a good snow cover over winter, half an inch of rain in May and almost an inch in June so far. The forecast is for another half to an inch today (Sunday, June 21) but it hasn't got here yet. We received three quarters to an inch June 6 to 8 and it was a great help for germination. There have been rumours of a bit of reseeding of some of the early crops however.

To the west of us it is not so good. Kindersley has received only seven tenths to date. I heard of some farmers from Eatonia (south of Kindersley) whose last good rain was July 2008, and they had Little snow over the winter as well. Some of the winter wheat they seeded last fall still has not germinated. In the Eston-Elrose area (40 to 80 miles west of us), I heard some of the farmers were hoping for another 10 days of dry weather then they could write the whole crop off and summerfallow everything for next year. The heat and drought has apparently damaged the crop enough already that good rains may not help much.

Even with the rain we have had we are still dry. There are areas of our yard where the grass has not really greened up yet. We also have gumbo cracks in our lawn up to one inch wide that have been there since last fall.

The Farmer's Prayer

Ron wrote this poem which, if you read his articles in Grainews, fits with his practice of buying older equipment and keeping it running with his own mechanical savvy.

My equipment is old, I shall not want.

It seeds my crop

And harvests it in the fall

And does all the jobs in between

Give me this day my daily breakdown

(But please make it small)

And forgive my haywire fixes

As I forgive those haywire fixes done before me.

Lead me not to dealer’s showrooms

And protect me from payments I cannot afford.

For this is my way of farming

It keeps me seeding and combining

And fixing and fixing

For ever and ever

Amen