“If only grandpa could see this.” How often have we said this when we were introduced to something new? When our first old, articulated Versatile tractor arrived and I could pull a 24 foot disk up any hill on the farm, I remembered my dad with our little gray Ferguson pulling a six foot disk on a cold spring day, sitting out in the open because there was no cab on the tractor. I thought of my dad and wished that . . .
he could have had the comfort of a nice seat, a heated cab, and even a radio to listen to. My grandfather never drove a car or a tractor or even had a license.
When Christopher Columbus sailed off from Europe in search of what he thought would be India, many of those watching him sail off into oblivion thought that once he sailed off the edge of the earth that he would never return. Well, even though he called the residents of North America “Indians,” he wasn’t in India and the earth was not flat.
When my grandpa watched the first automobile being pushed up the little sand hill in front of our house he said “These horseless carriages are a nice toy for the rich people in town, but don’t sell the horse and buggy, they are just a fad.”
When the new paper mill was built in our county we thought that it was wonderful to produce Kodak paper. Because it was used to make paper for pictures, we thought that the need would only grow. By the early 1990s, digital cameras began replacing conventional cameras and shortly after that, your cell phone could take very good photographs. Even though the local paper mill changed its paper making process, the profitability of the plant dropped and it was closed. Kodak had hung their hat on cameras and the photo paper industry but within a few years, they too folded up.
The world’s largest change has been accelerated by a little virus called COVID-19. Even though the lowly cow had been with us on earth for thousands of years, she was recently being blamed for ruining our atmosphere with her belching and farting. When COVID-19 shut the entire transportation industry down (cars, trains, ships and planes) the atmosphere mysteriously cleaned itself up. The air quality in the most heavily populated cities improved so people could actually see the sky again. Since the same number of cows were still burping and farting, the finger started to point at emissions from fossil fuel burning. A fully loaded airplane going to a southern holiday destination emitted twice as many pollutants per passenger as a car carrying four passengers.
General Motors produced over 600 electric cars in the 1980s and after a few years they bought them all back and crushed them. Many of the owners loved the cars and didn’t want to give them back. This year, as of March, 2021 there are dozens of companies building electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, trains, tractors, semi-tractors, boats and even airplanes.
The first oil well in Canada was found while trying to find water at Oil Springs, Ontario in 1858. When the oil in Ontario began drying up, Alberta became the center of oil production in Canada. Thousands of people and oil companies made untold billions of dollars from Canada’s oil industry. Several years ago we noticed a significant reduction in oil refinery construction. I wonder if they knew something that wasn’t made public?
Most of us are old enough to remember blacksmith shops, harness makers, wooden wagon shops and horse dealers slowly disappearing from our towns. We have watched the lowly paper bag be replaced by a variety of plastic bags only to make a comeback because our countryside and even our oceans are being polluted by millions of tonnes to plastics that don’t deteriorate. Our world is slowly but surely being populated by super weeds and super bugs that started from one weed or bug that is resistant to a weed killer or bactericide.
We have witnessed or read about many changes in our lifetime but it’s not over yet. An old farmer friend of mine once said, “No matter what the government does to you son, the best will survive.”
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
