September 2010 Archives

A lot of us might think our kids (or someone else in our lives) have a hole in their heads, well for those of you who have followed my reports of injuries suffered by a young man from southeastern, B.C. in an ATV accident, I am glad to say the literal hole in Bryce Bostock’s skull has been patched.

Tuesday, in a two hour operation, doctors at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary replaced a slab of skull, roughly the size of your palm, removed about four weeks ago from the left side of Bryce’s head so his badly swollen brain had room to expand, in hopes of preventing serious damage.

And so far, the whole process appears to have worked, amazingly well. The doctors opened his skull during emergency surgery September 5, kept the bone plate preserved somehow, and Tuesday – 24 days later -  put it back into place, pinned it, and sowed up his scalp.

Late Tuesday afternoon he was sitting up in bed, visiting with his parents and looking for food. He’s walking and talking, in good spirits, able to laugh, anxious to get home, and doesn’t appear to have suffered any permanent damage, although he’s still in rehab most days to get all his motor skills fine tuned. He was able to beat his Grandma Marg at multiple games of crib this week, so either she is a really lousy player, or his head is working quite well.

I know everyone is just thrilled for Bryce and his family that this tragic event continues to grow toward such a very positive outcome. And I think many of us who have watched this drama have been equally impressed at how well the B.C./Alberta and Canadian medical system has worked.

Within two or three hours from the time the accident occurred in a relatively remote area of the BC Rockies, he was undergoing emergency surgery in a major hospital 500 kilometres away, with a massive team of doctors and nurses providing treatment, and since then has just had such excellent care. The system ain’t perfect, and maybe in some cases it has failed those who need it, but boy it would be hard to be critical of how well it so far has worked to pull Bryce through this near-death experience.

Thank God for the vision of Tommy Douglas who couldn’t have known in 1961, when universal health care was introduced, how important it would be 50-years later to a 16-year-old kid from Cranbrook. The system may be a bit weak in satisfying Bryce’s veracious appetite, but Pizza Hut can look after that.

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I had the bjeezus scared out of me Saturday afternoon. I ran into a small fleet of UFOs (Unfamiliar Farming Objects) near Nanton, south of Calgary.

There I was out on a beautiful fall day, having a routine look at manure spreading operations - sure, maybe I was a little excited, who wouldn't be - but, I rounded a corner on this quiet country road, and there they were. Four of the big green suckers roaring around in a wheat field. I had never seen anything like it - at least this year anyway.

Unbelieving my eyes, I stopped to watch. Getting braver I got out of the vehicle for a few photos. I hid behind a steel fence post as not to be seen. They seemed to  be going in circles and they were mad. They were chewing away at this crop, spewing dust and crap out the back and shooting seeds out a side discharge pipe into a supply pod that resembled a Bourgault 1100 grain cart.

I suspect they were on a reconnaissance mission, collecting samples until the Mothership from the planet Viterra arrived. I have read about these landings in the  UFO bible - Western Seducer. 

I was scared, but didn't feel really threatened until one of the aliens made eye contact and waved. I got the hell out of there.

If I had been closer to Vulcan, Alberta I would have half expected something like this. They already have one spaceship anchored there and everyone knows Vulcanites are a little weird. But in Nanton? It was always so nice there.

I am safe a home now, but I just wanted to warn everyone. If this nice weather persists there could be more of these sightings across the Prairies. Keep the children indoors, and if approached by any of these aliens, the Seducer says don't feed them until after dark.

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I had a call yesterday from Ed Molzan who farms in southwest Ontario – west of London, south of Sarnia, near a little place call Alvinston.

As a long time reader of Grainews (25 years) and as a soybean grower (for 60 years), Ed called to let me know he had the earliest soybean crop ever in six decades.

In the past, the earliest has been the end of September, and he said it wasn’t uncommon not to start soybeans until Thanksgiving. Due to weather conditions he has even had to wait to combine the crop in November and a nice January day. This year combines were rolling in the third week of September.

Last year he had a record soybean yield and this year a record wheat crop, for him. He figured the beans were looking like a 60 bushel crop earlier, but expects it to average more like 45 bushels. Still not bad, he figures. He produces soybeans for the human food market. So if the commodity price is $10 a bushel, he gets a $2 premium making it a $12/bushel crop.

“Good enough that I’ll have to tell Revenue Canada about that one,” says Ed, who is 72.

He told me about the 1973 crop that yielded about 30 bushels per acre, but the price zoomed up to $10 bushel, so on 100 acres of soybeans he made enough to buy a new $30,000 combine. He credits the advice received from Roger Murray, who at the time was in Winnipeg working his way up the management chain of Cargill. Ed visited with Murray at a meeting and he was advised to hold on to the beans that fall because the $4 price would likely improve over winter. Murray retired in 1997 as president of Cargill Europe.

And while Murray couldn’t handle the work schedule, Ed is still at it. He has some health issues, which doesn’t allow him to do as much as he’d like, but his son helps with the field work.

The other ‘mature’ farmer who made the national news this week was 82-year-old Ray Como who is/was still farming at St. Albert, just west of Edmonton.

Ray went to check on the serial numbers of parts inside the engine compartment of his 1980 combine, got caught upside down in the compartment and hung there for 21 hours before he was found the next day by his son-in-law.

I saw Como on the news the other night. He thought he was going to die there, and is thankful to be alive. He figures it may be time to retire from farming and enjoy life with his family.

My only thought for both these guys, is do what you’re doing for as long as you can, as long as you are enjoying it. Go for it.

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(To be honest, sometimes I throw out a tiny misleading headline like that, just to catch people’s attention.)

The point is, I just read Jerry Klassen’s beef market column which will be appearing in the early October issue of Grainews, (apparently I have to read it, that is part of my job), but aside from being a generally more positive outlook on the beef market ahead, I am always surprised by the various factors that affect the price of beef (or any ag commodity, for that matter).

And I should know this stuff. Over the years I have sat through (dozed through) dozens of market outlook presentations. Jerry sends his column in by email, but if he was speaking to a crowd, like other market analysts, he would probably have a nice power point presentation, with many graphs and charts that would show how a particular influence on the market has trended since Christ as a baby. And sometimes these analysts have charts with more numbers on them than a Los Vegas bookie sheet, and it is all supposed to mean something. (I always get a kick out of it too, when the presenter throws up one of these bzillion number slides and says ‘you probably can’t see this in the back’ – no kidding, you can’t read it if your anywhere past the third row – but that is another comment for another day).

Back to my point about Klassen’s column - yes the world recession had a big impact on the beef industry in Canada, but often I don’t think about the details. The news is all about world banks and multinational corporations folding and billions and trillions spent on bailouts – all this big scale stuff.

But fact is, the price that Bob Rancher gets for a fall calf at the auction mart in Assiniboia, Sask., for example, so much depends on whether Joe Blow in the US has a job or doesn’t. If he doesn’t have a job, he and the family likely stay home and open a can of tuna for dinner. If he keeps or finds a lower income job they may eat once in a while at McDonalds, and if it is a little better job they might go to The Keg. It is all those individual buying or eating habits that ultimately affect the price of beef here. And I don’t often stop to think about that.

Klassen describes a bit of the increasing beef consumption due to reduced unemployment rates. There is a five per cent increase in the spending on away-from-home food – more eating out - and restaurant receipts are up too just because summer holidays are over and more business people are traveling again. A bunch of little things that burger by burger, or steak by steak make a difference to this North American market.

I've read too, for the mustard growers in Canada (and maybe the beef producers too), if the economy is in a slump, fewer people go to baseball and football games, so they eat fewer hotdogs with mustard.

With higher unemployment, fewer people buy new cars, and that impacts the amount and value of beef hides needed to make leather seats. If the packer is getting less money for hides, that’s less money paid back through the system to the producer.

North American beef production continues to contract with no sign of expansion, and there are all these little signals about increasing beef consumption, so overall that bodes well for prices. One reference Jerry made, which was a bit surprising, concerned expected increases in feed grain prices. I thought with all this late, wet fall there might be all kinds of cheaper feed grains, but maybe not, and maybe Canada isn’t a big enough producer to make a difference. Of course, I often figure, too, if it is raining on my street it is raining everywhere in the world, and that isn’t always the case. I will have to keep reading Jerry’s column to see how this plays out. It is just like a soap opera.

In the meantime I think the message for all true Canadians is keep your job, eat more at The Keg, go to sports events and have a hot dog, and buy a car with leather seats. It is the least I/we can do for Bob Rancher at Assiniboia.

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I just finished talking to a few Prairie farmers for a regular feature I do for Grainews called the Farmer Panel. It will be published in early October. I don’t think any of them had any earth-shattering news, but it is always interesting for me to talk to farmers about what they are doing and why they are doing it.  I hate writing about it – that is the work part – but I love to talk.

Linda Nielsen of Starbuck, Manitoba (just west of Winnipeg) was just so relieved to have finished combining a crop produced under a crappy, wet growing season. How wet was it Linda? She even had a muskrat living in the flooded wheel ruts in a canola field.  While all the way across Western Canada to a northwest point in the B.C. Peace River region, Martin Moore, near Fort St. John, was joking about whether he would live long enough to see another ‘good’ farming year in that part of the country. After another exceptionally dry growing season, rain and showers finally did come but now the moisture was holding him back from harvesting what little crop there was out in his fields. It is a business where I am sure many feel, “boy, I just can’t win.”

(Photo captions: Crazy farmers the Nielsen family of Starbuck Manitoba – Linda, husband Dave, kids Erik and Kylie, mom Helen, brother Andy taking a break from harvest for a field dinner supplied by Richardson Pioneer).

Brian Corns, who farms at Grassy Lake, east of Lethbridge in southern Alberta had a nice crop in the field, but weather was holding him up. Bill Rusk at Nipawin and Tim Charabin at North Battleford, in northeast and northwest, Saskatchewan, respectively were stalled because of rain and frequent showers. And at Dawson Creek, B.C. Ross Ravelli had been able to pick away at harvesting part of his crop, but again rain was holding him up from combining fields likely to produce 50 per cent of an average yield.

I didn’t sense any pessimism among this group of producers – frustration with the weather, yes, but all were thinking, to some extent, about how they will approach things next year. Maybe it is a little bit of the Vegas or Lotto syndrome – you play this game long enough and sooner or later those winning numbers have to line up.

So along with talking with these guys, for a different project, I also spoke with Chris Procyk, a bright young fellow, who works for the Southern Applied Research Association and the Southern Alberta Conservation Association in Lethbridge, and he and his wife and soon-to-be expanding young family are making plans to head back to Saskatchewan next year to join his dad full time in the family farm at Fillmore, south of Regina. What is he thinking – is he nuts?

Chris was born and raised on the family farm. Took off a few years ago to seek fame and fortune and pursue a totally different career. But, damn it all if he didn’t get caught up working in the agriculture industry, and now he thinks he wants to farm. I have often heard farmers and management consultants say farm kids should work away from the farm for at least five years, just to experience some other life before they make up their mind about a farming career.  And Chris agrees. It is the old ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ influence.  He says when he was a kid working on the farm it was just work, but since being away and going home for a stretch each year to help in the busy seasons, he’s decided he really loves farming and that’s where he and his wife want to raise their family.

I suppose we could start a fund to pay for their psychiatric counseling in hopes of restoring them to sanity, but in reality, my gut feeling is ‘go for it Chris!’

I left the family farm about 40 years ago, and there were many times over the years it crossed my mind to go back to the family farm. But, damn this fame and fortune stuff. Once you get caught up in this magical world of agriculture journalism everything else just seems so mundane.

Truth is I love what I do, and I don’t know if I would have been a great farmer anyway. There is something very satisfying to me, in this job, to be involved with three views of the agriculture industry. There is the right way to do things, the wrong way to do things, and then when I talk to the actual troops who are trying to catch muskrats with the combine, or wearing dust masks at seeding I learn about “this is what works for me.”

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Soil scientists and crop advisors have for years preached from the agronomy pulpit about the value of soil testing, but for farmers in those parts of Western Canada where it was really, really wet this year, it appears to be really, Really, REALLY important to consider soil testing this fall.

After all this rain, in most areas except for the Peace River region, the fact is you just don’t know what’s down there this fall, or where it is, for that matter.

Nitrogen is always the big one, but there are other important nutrients too. How much has leached down through the soil and where is it sitting  - at 6”, 15”, 24” or deeper?  Find out.

Soil scientist, Cynthia Grant with Agriculture Canada in Brandon, Manitoba says there’s even a big question mark about soil nutrient levels on fields that weren’t seeded this year. Usually on fallow fields producers assume in a year of rest soil nutrient reserves improve. But, Grant says with saturated soils and standing water on fields, even that is unknown unless a soil sample is taken.

“With such abnormal conditions, we have to expect at lot of variability,” she says. “Many producers, under more average conditions, go along sort of on auto-pilot and assume there are certain nutrient levels in the soil. Last year was unusual too, but in many respects it was still more normal. This year conditions were very different, so there will be much more variability.”

She says with most farmers knowing the high, medium and lower yielding areas of their fields, soil testing needs to be done in those various production zones.

In Alberta, soil specialist Ross McKenzie with Alberta Agriculture has similar advice. He says once the crop is off and the soil cools heading into fall, it will be important to make a soil analysis through that top 24” to learn what nutrients are sitting where.

With wet conditions this year soil nutrients can leach down into the soil profile and in the case of nitrogen, under wet conditions it can also be lost to the atmosphere through volatilization and denitrification. So under these extreme conditions it is impossible to guess at nutrient reserves.

Elston Solberg, a soil specialist with Agri-Trend Agrology says even as nitrogen (and other nutrients) leach down into the soil profile, they are not lost to next years crop.

“Even if nitrogen is sitting 2’ down, crop roots can easily grow 3’ to 4’ deep in the soil,” he says. With soil sampling through that 0” to 24’ soil profile producers can manage their fall or seed applied nutrients to support the crop until it reaches those deeper reserves.

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 Man, those kids in the Wasa, B.C. 4-H Club are tough. I bet you don’t get membership there just on good looks and a great brownie recipe.

It was great to have a brief visit with Bryce Bostock at lunch today.  He probably wouldn’t be a chatter box with me at the best of times – more of a strong, silent type – but he was able to give me a good report of how he was feeling, and explain what he’d been doing so far this day – a little more than a week after suffering a life-threatening head injury in an ATV accident.

He still has this mini railway track across the top of his half-shaved head – 167 steel staples (stitches), where they had to cut and remove a piece of skull to release pressure on the brain and insert monitors. At least I think it was related to the accident. He might just be going through a punk or goth phase these days. Some kids are into that.

He had a smile and told me he had been for a pretty good walk down the hall (with some assistance), had a shower, talked to his dad and Josh on the phone for a bit, and ate some ‘real’ hospital food for lunch. (I think that "real hospital food' is what they call an oxymoron – look it up, Bryce). He read me the handwritten note in a card that a friend from Cranbrook had sent his Mom. He felt good, no real aches or pains. He’s bored out of his tree, but what’s a guy to do. He’s stuck there with his Mom and Grandma and he’s heard all their stories.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, he said he is moving to the third level of ICU where he will do more walking and start on a few exercises to get his muscles going. He may even do a bit of writing to improve that penmanship, (but let’s face it, I think this bunch has used up all its miracles for this year.)

Unfortunately his vocabulary revolves around some four-letter words. “Food” and “Home” are a couple I can print. If I didn’t fear getting into deep trouble I would gladly smuggle the kid in a burger and a shake (guys with appetites have to look out for each other). And as far as the ‘Home’ word is concerned, well, there is no firm timetable, but it appears the prospect of getting Bryce back into his bed in Cranbrook is being measured now more by a couple or a few weeks, rather than months.

That’s good, because I hear his chores at home are piling up.

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I made a trip to the Drumheller Penitentiary Sunday to visit a rancher friend who is serving time. Apparently Revenue Canada caught him in a lie on his income tax forms. He claimed he made a nice profit in the beef business! 

But, it was a good morning for a drive through farm country found in a region called The Badlands. Generally, everything looks pretty good, at least at 110 km per hour. Quite a bit of canola is swathed, wheat and barley fields are turning ripe. It appears just about every thistle seed in the country germinated  and flourished, this year.

Not a soul working in the harvest on this drive. Either crops aren’t ready or it is too wet. I did see a couple combines being readied for action. There was a frost warning on WeatherBug, but I see that is ended.

Remember a few years ago when there was a big emphasis on farmers to plant field shelterbelts to stop wind and conserve moisture. Drumheller area is one of the few places where I still see any left.

It was kind of neat to see parachutists dropping out of the sky near Bieseker airport, although it looked like they were landing in a nearby wheat field, about a mile from the airport. Maybe that was planned, or maybe it was just a German invasion that was about 66 years too late.

The woman selling Taber sweet corn in Bieseker for $8 per dozen, said she didn’t know how much longer she’d be there. Supplies were tight and if there is a frost…

A very productive trip.

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It maybe wasn’t the best year to showcase grazing corn – or any corn for that matter, but even with only an estimated eight ton yield per acre, central Alberta rancher Ian Murray, says a demonstration field of forage corn will still provide several weeks of grazing for his cattle this winter.

Murray, (pictured)  who farms north of Acme, about an hour north of Calgary, told about 30 producers participating in a Foothills Forage and Grazing Association field day September 9, he plans to build a perimeter fence around the corn and then use a hot-wire across the field to limit feed the stand this fall and winter. It is the first year the long time advocate of year-round grazing systems has grown corn.

Working with Pickseed, Murray grew a couple different varieties of Roundup Ready, low heat unit varieties. Pickseed 2230 RR (pictured) is a 2075 heat unit variety, while Pickseed 2501 RR is a 2250 heat unit variety. Total cost of the corn seeding (seed, fertilizer and herbicide) was about $173 per acre.

The corn was seeded May 12, with an Archer corn planter. He applied 100 pounds each of nitrogen and phosphorous, according to soil test recommendations. And because of wet conditions, he was only able to make one application of glyphosate during the growing season. And it showed.

Cool and wet growing conditions, for a crop that needs heat, and a heavy second flush of weeds for a crop that doesn’t do well with competition, combined to produce what might be described as a mediocre 6’ to 6 ½ ‘ stand of corn. And then to add injury to insult, an early frost had stopped maturity of the kernels at the milky stage, when ideally they should be at the dough stage.

But, as Pickseed representative Kevin Shaw pointed out, producers shouldn’t judge any crop by a single very good or not-so-good year. Although the Murray demonstration field hadn’t achieved its full potential, mostly because of the adverse growing conditions, Shaw says it is still a valuable feed source for cattle.  (See more about grazing corn in the October issues of Grainews).

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 I don’t have much time to write this morning, I have to pick up Bryce, his dad Mark, Josh, Mike and Russell as we head out for a quick game of touch football before stopping at Burger King for something to eat. Maybe we’ll catch a movie too. Don’t wait up.

Okay, those may not be the exact plans for the day, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the possibility of doing it all isn’t far away. Noon time reports today, have Bryce awake, and improved enough that breathing tubes and some other lines have been removed, and he’s able to talk.

I warned his spiritual ring-leader, Aunt Sherry, and everyone else yesterday, ‘if we keep up this serious prayer stuff, the kid is going to be over here in the family room eating our food’. And the risk of that is growing by the hour. I’m planning to pre-eat before we join the family for dinner tonight, there may not be enough to go around.

Certainly a tremendous report this morning, that emphasizes ‘oh, what a difference a week can make.’  It was just a few hours from this point, last Saturday, that he was seriously injured in an ATV accident. In my total uninformed medical opinion he has done remarkably well since that brush with death. His youth, good medicine, the power of positive thought and prayers have combined to work a miracle as far as friends and family are concerned. In my ministry to farmers and the downfallen of the world, I often have to remind them “God doesn’t necessarily make life easy, but He/She does give us the strength to deal with it.”  (Oh, man…move over Billy Graham.)

But, it is ongoing good news. Realistically, I/we shouldn’t get the cart before the horse. There is still a journey ahead. They still have to go through the fridge in the operating room and find that piece of skull they removed last week and get that back into place. (I think I have some Crazy Glue here some place).  And they’ll still need time to make sure everything is working properly. But, let the optimism and the prayers continue.

I do have one longer term concern for Bryce. If he gets through this mess okay, he may have to face the next 20 years of his life tied by a rope to his mother. And that could get a little awkward on dates and stuff.

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The kid obviously needs to work on his penmanship, but after five days in a coma, and still with more hoses connected to his body than on the air distribution system of a John Deere seed drill, no one seemed too worried about the style of the scribble – the message was clear.

Bryce was awake and with his mouth still full of tubes he wrote his first note to his parents at about 6 p.m. Friday. Four little words scribbled at the bottom of a blank white page that stirred more emotion and meaning for this family than a hundred volumes of Shakespearean sonnets. Bryce’s first thoughts, simply stated -  “I NEED TO EAT”.

A week ago, before this accident happened, that note might have drawn a casual glance of disregard, ‘so what else is new?’. Being around these people for the last few days, stories of Bryce’s appetite are legendary. He brings his lunch to work in a small wagon; during a pancake eating competition at a friend’s house his closest rival passed out as Bryce hit the 22 flapjack mark and looked for more; a steak, three baked potatoes and six smokies for dinner, aren’t much more than an appetizer. So it’s obvious the liquid diet he has been tube fed since September 5 just wasn’t cutting it. But, it will likely still be a few days before he’s able to pay his final respects to a pizza.

I’m sure that wobbly note will one day be framed by the Bostock family. It has been a long six days, of what could still be a long journey of recovery. The first couple days were dominated by the nagging fear of whether he would even make it. Then there were a couple days of minor, but important gains, but his fever was high, he had pneumonia, the pressure on his brain really wasn’t where it was supposed to be – those signs of good solid progress just weren’t happening fast enough.

Most of Thursday was still a flat day as he lay in a medically induced sleep. But by nightfall all indicators had improved. Maybe the rest, medication and prayers were working. There was a new growing optimism in the waiting room.

Friday morning doctors removed the sedation that was keeping him asleep, and by 2 p.m. he was awake. Groggy, still drifting in and out of sleep at times, but he knew where he was. He knew his mom and dad, his sister Kendall, best friend Josh, Grandma Marg, Grandma Cathy. He remembers the accident, he knows he has a dog name Buster, and that his truck is white in color. Pretty well all the essentials were covered.

And then there was this young girl, Megan who appeared with her mother, who somehow perked his attention. Who could this little visitor from Cranbrook be? I don’t recall anyone, during my frequent and harrowing hospital stays, driving five hours to bring me chocolate chip cookies. I think there is something suspicious going on here.

But, it was a different room tonight as the fine, albeit late, dinner arrived for the family. (The late meal thing is a whole other story. How could anyone take food to the wrong hospital?) There were still a few tears around (these mothers, aunts and grandmas seem to have a real problem in this area) but these were tears of happiness and relief and renewed optimism that he’s going to be okay.

He’s not on home plate yet - not by a long shot - but he’s certainly rounded second base, and at the moment, God willing, it looks like a clear run ahead.

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I know I should be more like my responsible co-workers and be posting reports here that help farmers grow better crops, or harvest more pounds of beef per acre, but ideas for this column usually come from what’s on my mind at the moment. And this morning before I head off to a Foothills Forage Association field day I was thinking briefly about priorities in life.

The events with this Bryce guy over the past few days just bring home a message of how people’s lives can change on a dime. As odd as it sounds, it would probably do everyone good to spend a day just listening and watching in the waiting room of a hospital Intensive Care Unit. You think you got problems today? Well just look around.

I am feeling angst for Bryce and his family, and I am not dropping in at the hospital to learn everyone else’s business, but I went with Bryce’s mother, Joan, to his bed in the ICU yesterday, and it is like walking through a portal into another dimension.

There are hospital gurneys everywhere, rows of curtained rooms running off in all directions, some rooms are quiet as a patient lays alone, or there may be a couple family members sitting quietly beside the bed. And then you run into a cluster of doctors consulting on a case, and everywhere nurses are buzzing about checking and adjusting equipment. Around just about every bed was a small forest of electronic equipment monitoring and controlling body conditions I can’t imagine.

It is incorrect to think ‘this is not a good place’, because quite the opposite - miracles and recovery are taking place everywhere. But, at the same time, you have to realize for someone to get here, likely something bad had to happen. These just aren’t old people whose time had come.

In one curtained room was a ranching family from Stettler in central Alberta, who for the past 10 or 12 days had been maintaining a vigil over a young man who had serious injuries after a horse rolled on him. In another bed was a young woman fighting for life due to anorexia. In another bed was a young man who suffered serious injuries in a car accident in the city a few days before.

My biggest concern of the day had been guilt over having fries for lunch because I really should be working harder to lose that next 10 or 15 pounds.  My wife and I are fine, our kids are fine and busy with their lives, but that isn’t the case for everyone.

In reality, we can’t just sit around all day holding hands with healthy family members talking about gratitude. But it is important to keep life in perspective. I have a bunch of work to get done before the next deadline. It may be raining today, which means the plans of a farmer for combining that field are on hold, again. And after managing that cow herd all year, the rancher has a nagging question of whether calf prices will be decent on sale day.

Those things are all important too. But somewhere in the back of your mind you have to remember there could come a day when the most welcome and joyous words you’d give anything to hear are “Mom and Dad what’s for supper tonight?”  And with that every other problem seems pretty manageable.

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It doesn’t take much to make some people happy. Just a look is all they need.

Young Bryce, who has been in a medically-induced coma for the past few days, following a serious accident Saturday, awoke briefly from this prolonged sleep shortly after 12 noon Wednesday and recognized his family.

And minutes later as that sensational news made its way across the hall to where grandparents and other extended family were gathered in an ICU waiting room at the Foothills Hospital Calgary, boy, I don’t think you could have traded the joy of that moment for even a lifetime worth of winning Loto Max tickets.

ICU nurses were cheering, and family members of other ICU patients generously applauded the moment they themselves were still waiting to feel.

Realistically, the teenager who banged his head and nearly drowned in an ATV mishap in the mountains of southeastern B.C. is a long way from packing his bags and heading home, he still has to recover from a serious head injury. But he was awake. He was unable to speak because he was still hooked to breathing, feeding and monitoring apparatus, but he could communicate.

Although his hands were restrained he still managed to give his dad, Mark, the two-thumbs up sign, and another glance brought tears of relief to the eyes of his mom, Joan, and there was an affectionate look for sister Kendall, who stood there with the baseball cap that rarely leaves his head. And there was a special wide-eyed greeting as he set sights on his best friend Josh, who has been his confidant in life for 16 years and was with him on that fateful tumble down the steep embankment, a few days before.

And after four days of some of the most intense strain of worry that parents, grandparents, family and friends never wish to experience, seeing his eyes open, having him nod his head and watching him wag those enormous feet, was all they needed for the moment. They were tangible signs that prayers and medical science had got him to an early, but important step on the road to recovery.

He wasn't awake long today before doctors decided to sedate him again, to help deal with a fever. It is a reminder there will be ups and downs, and minor setbacks along the way, but the important point is that all signs are pointing in the right direction.

It is way too early to tell when he will be back at school or hunting elk, loading ammo into an awesome potato gun, or grooming another steer for the Wasa 4-H Club show and sale. And maybe even a tad longer before his Mom agrees he’s ready for another ATV ride. But that will all come in time.

He was awake and just a look from those young eyes,even for a few minutes, restored the hope and promise of plenty of good and many better days ahead.

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I spent most of the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend in the intensive care unit (ICU) waiting room at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary joining family members from south eastern B.C. in a vigil for a young man, who just a few hours before was a vital, living-the-moment teenager, but now lay hooked up across the hall in an intensive care unit bed, fighting for his life with a serious brain injury.

It had started as an excellent weekend excursion as two dads took their teenage sons on an end-of-summer camping trip into the familiar hunting and camping back country of the upper Bull River region. The dads, Mike and Mark, were making supper and the boys who are cousins and best friends took the ATV down the trail a bit to a point where they could access the river to get water for the camp. It had been raining. The trail was slick, the ATV slid over the embankment, rolled several times before coming to rest on the river’s edge.

No hijinks or reckless behavior – just a snotty trail that sent the machine over the bank.

Josh managed to stay with the ATV, Bryce was thrown out, hit his head, ended up in the river. A bad head injury and he almost drowned. It is hard to imagine, let alone describe the fear and anxiety that swallowed the next couple hours as they worked frantically to get this man-sized kid up the river bank, into a truck and on his way out for medical treatment.

It was a long haul both in distance and emotionally on a wet and winding logging road to a point many miles below where they met paramedics and the ambulance. After initial treatment at the regional hospital he was airlifted to the Foothills in Calgary, where they performed emergency surgery to open his skull to provide room and relief for his swollen brain. They used a treatment often heard of today – a medically induced coma – to put him at rest and give his brain time to heal.  The waiting began and continues.

It is a serious situation, but how do you describe it. On one hand the outlook is good. It is a moderate brain injury as opposed to severe. Vital signs are good. He has a top medical team, and  he is a big, robust kid who wears size 15 shoes, at the bottom of a muscular 6’3” or 6’4” frame. He looks almost bullet proof. And everyone has God working on his case, as well. He has everything going for him.

Will he be all right? The one qualifier that applies in so many situations and with which no one can argue “only time will tell.” Damn those next 72 hours, if only medical science could somehow narrow the gap on that.

While every moment is an essential moment in healing and recovery, they are also the cursed moments of silence and thought which has anxious parents, grandparents and a large extended family also thinking about a full range of “what ifs”. Everyone is full of hope and faith that science and God will prevail, but there is also the persevering corrosion of the unknown.

His mother, Joan, would give anything to hear him ask, “Mom is there anything to eat?” The kid eats like a forage harvester. His dad, Mark, would give anything to be talking with him about the next hunting trip. And younger sister Kendall, would even welcome sibling torment and teasing.  But they will have to wait for the process of recovery to happen.

The event is such a brutal reminder about a couple basic facts of life. We never know what the next second holds. Your world can change in a flash. And we must stubbornly hold with the faith that all will be well.

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