Musing

A Dry Land

Early morning.

The heat of the previous day kept on through the night. For the third week in a row we’re starting the day with heat. As a result of the drought the landscape is more brown than it is green; Fall season brown but without the oranges, reds and pale yellow/greens, or the crisp air.

The dogs and I are out on the prairie. The dry grass crunches beneath my feet as I walk, Meadow Brome seeds catch in the hair of the dogs as they travel. Smoke from distant forest fires in the North is in the air creating a sombre scene. The ongoing heat is tough to dismiss from my thoughts, my worry. Given the heat we’ll make do with a shorter hike this morning and try again in the evening. A spray of grasshoppers fans out in front as I walk. They hit my jeans, occasionally one lands on my forearm and involuntarily my arm twitches wildly to fling it off.

Early morning.
Standing at the front widow the scene looks the same. The brown, dying landscape enveloped by a haze. The temperature dropped last night though. I step outside amidst the swirl of Kelpies eager to be off for the daily scree across the prairie and I am pleasantly surprised to discover this is a haze of fog not smoke. The air is noticeably cooler. The dogs and I cross the yard and melt into the pasture, in short order we come across a sheep trail and follow it. It will be a long hike this morning.

Not so many grasshoppers this morning and the legs and bellies of the dogs are wet, as are my hiking shoes. The faintest hint of moisture is in the air and it is so lovely to breathe it in. Not a rain at all but just a foggy mist. A wonderfully pleasant foggy mist that has added a teasing layer of dampness to the grass. There are little droplets of water hanging on the grass.

I wonder if this is the prairie calling for rain.

Early morning.
Another foggy haze, greatly preferred over the prior days of high temperatures and smoke. Dogs and I disappear into the pasture, the sound of lambs and ewes calling one another travels to our ears from the pasture next door where the flock grazes. It will time for a move soon. The ewes are grazing though paddocks quicker than ever and the un-grazed grass in front of them is already dry and gone yellow. Not much feed value there. The hollows and the wetland bottoms are providing the best grazing now.

The Kelpies are wet and moving with energy of the cooler air. I have my camera along and when I have my camera I look deeper and further. I look around at nothing in particular and everything at once. This is my daily scene, my back forty, what message does it have to show and share? The grasses are holding droplets of moisture and the bottom of my pant legs are soaked. There has been no rain here for a long time but this morning it is as though it had rained. This morning is more wet than the one previous; this morning is more wet than dry, and therein lies the hope. The prairie calling for rain.

Hope. Cross your fingers. Hold on.

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Prairie Land Intangibles

Country Roads on a misty June morning; naked grain land on the left, earth covering grassland on the right.

It matters a great deal that there be intangibles we cannot get our hands on. And it matters that we get to know these intangibles and learn to honour them because they are the internal nudges, they are the link to our own inner nature; a nature many woman have been told has no place in agriculture.

That grassland landscapes and people who steward the land with mother nature in mind are still here, matters a great deal more than we might give thought to.

It also matters that we grasp and explore the link between land and animal, sink our teeth into the natural connections and risk rearranging the pieces of our thinking about what it means to farm the land.

It matters – now more than ever.

Traveling back roads on a misty June morning. Naked grain land in foreground, grazing land at the rear.

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A Spring That Looks Like A Fall

The pastoral prairie scene before lambing commences in dry prairie land.

Lambing on pasture requires enough food and water be present for the ewe where ever she lambs. The prairie grass will come through, it already is although its still hidden by the old overgrowth. There’s enough grass to get through lambing. But we are dry here and have been for a couple years. This year water (or lack of it) will be a factor. The ewes will have to travel for water no matter which pasture I set them to lamb in. And hauling water will be nearly a full time chore during lambing.

As I watch the ewes I let my mind drift with the pastoral scene, forgetting about lack of grass and water. My excitement/desire for lambing has waned the last couple years, I think in part because the purpose of it is shifting; because I’m wishing to re-write the purpose. To move away from being a producer of market lambs and being hand-tied to a segment of agriculture I feel increasingly insecure about. The new purpose however, isn’t quite solidified in my mind. Or maybe the whole apathetic feeling is just sixteen years of familiarity doing its thing. Either way, I’m in a stage of uncertainty and I’ve been here for a little while now.

The scene of the beautiful dry land is attractive, reinforcing the marvel of how Mother Nature is both the devil and the advocate. And that land can be nurturing and neglectful, as wholesome as it is hindering. The state of the prairie land right now causes me great angst and yet being in the midst of prairie land is also what restores me, in daily doses and in deeper uncovering’s. Being in this place of uncertainly is where I must be to see the way through and there is no point in wishing it all away. And even if the land does not hold the answer this time, this land is where I need to be in order to map out the purpose.

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