We have heard and even use the term, “It’s too late” more often than we have to.
Sometimes it really is too late. Last week, I was . . .
50 miles away from home going on a parts run for the farm when I realized that my dental appointment started 15 minutes earlier. I had forgotten and it really was too late to turn around and travel an hour to the dentist. All I could do was call and confess that I had forgotten.
When a beef farmer notices two months after he put the bull out with his cows that the bull was gay and had not bred any cows, it’s too late to get the calving cycle back to normal. It takes nine months after the cow gets pregnant before the calf arrives. Next fall, the calves the cows raise will be two months younger and a lot lighter to sell and not much profit will be made on them.
In the fall, if a dairy farmer does not have enough fresh cows (which give the most milk to calve and produce that fall milk, which is usually higher priced and all dairy farmers are looking for) it is too late to fix because there was not enough cows bred nine months before.
If after the election is over, we realize we voted in the wrong party, it will be another four years before we get a chance to vote again.
Often things happen that will prevent you from getting the maximum but even if you slept in too long and will be five minutes late for the start of church, if you hustle, there will still be an hour left and both the church and the reason we attend will still be there.
This past summer was very dry and the rains seemed to fall somewhere else and not in our county. Most of the crops look off- colour, short and will probably yield less. The second and third cuts of hay were well below normal. The pastures were eaten bare and are not re-growing because of a lack of rain. Many farmers were feeding cattle on pasture with feed that was already in short supply because of poor second and third cuts. Now we are getting some well needed fall rains to green up the pastures and maybe even give the farmers a small third or fourth cut. The cut will be small but greatly needed.
Because of the widespread drought across most of Canada and the northeastern United States, feed is in short supply and expensive to buy and transport. Cutting hay this late may weaken the hay fields and cause some winter kill but it’s a chance many farmers will have to take.
Global warming or climate changes are subjects that are often at the centre of heated discussion. Even though temperatures and global warming have been observed and recorded for 200 years, corn varieties are being grown in our county that 50 years ago were only planted 100 kilometers south of here. In our county now we can see thousands of acres of soybeans growing in fields where our fathers never planted beans because the growing season was too cold and too short.
Some people and even politicians deny that there is any change in our climate. I often think that there must be financial reasons for their decisions. Is it too late to fight climate change? Our scientists tell us that the sooner we start to slow down or stop global warming the better. Our kids and grandchildren who will have to live or die with our decisions also think that it is late but never too late to try.
All the crooked deals and lies that politicians of the past have made and told have been overshadowed by concerns about the future temperature of our planet. It’s time to quit thinking about, me, me, me and start thinking about what kind of a planet we want to leave to our grandchildren. We are only the caretakers of our grandchildren’s world.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon
on land that has been
in his family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
