Its happening again

Its Happening Again

FTLComm - Tisdale
August 16, 1999

Last September I was pretty shocked when the leaves began to turn colour and this morning when I went to look out, I spotted leaves on the ground and then above, a tree has decided "that's it for this year."

On Thursday while shopping with my wife I

noticed the appearance of Halloween candy in the food stores and pointed out to her that this seemed a bit premature, but then we have all come to expect the spring and summer catalogue from Sears the first week of January and the "back to school" sales promotions started hitting the shelves of the retail outlets on July 2nd.

There is a time of everything and everything in its time, well you know the saying and yet time is the governing factor in the way we perceive things. This unusual appearance of yellow in a tree in our front yard is largely the result of some very cool summer temperatures and the sequence has triggered this tree's response to end its growth cycle for this year.

On Saturday morning we drove from Tisdale to a lake South of Melville and between Springside and Melville we spotted large numbers of trees turning colour, only it was not a true fall colour change. What we were seeing was drowning trees. The sloughs and ponds in that area are way out of their normal shores and the trees which grow around them are now inundated with water and they are more then likely dying. One of the other things we noticed besides the huge number of waterfowl in the country was extreme variations in crops with many ready to harvest and many looking like they would in late June.

We all know about the devastation to grain farmers in the South East, we talked to one farmer who had things under control and his crop is coming along nicely. He is a cattle farmer and his

entire crop is for cattle feed so the excessive amount of rain is a blessing for him as he has lots of hay and his oats and barley are just great. Cattle producers are not at all in the same situation as grain growers as they have solid markets and reasonably prices. Though input costs are high they are not exceeding the return and the cattle producer can wait on the markets to improve as he is not as cash strapped as the grain farmer with his high costs of fertilizer and expensive chemicals.

Its Happening Again FTLComm - Tisdale August 16, 1999 Last September I was pretty shocked when the leaves began to turn colour and this morning when I went to look out, I spotted leaves on the ground and then above, a tree has decided "that's it for this year." On Thursday while shopping with my wife I
noticed the appearance of Halloween candy in the food stores and pointed out to her that this seemed a bit premature, but then we have all come to expect the spring and summer catalogue from Sears the first week of January and the "back to school" sales promotions started hitting the shelves of the retail outlets on July 2nd.
There is a time of everything and everything in its time, well you know the saying and yet time is the governing factor in the way we perceive things. This unusual appearance of yellow in a tree in our front yard is largely the result of some very cool summer temperatures and the sequence has triggered this tree's response to end its growth cycle for this year. On Saturday morning we drove from Tisdale to a lake South of Melville and between Springside and Melville we spotted large numbers of trees turning colour, only it was not a true fall colour change. What we were seeing was drowning trees. The sloughs and ponds in that area are way out of their normal shores and the trees which grow around them are now inundated with water and they are more then likely dying. One of the other things we noticed besides the huge number of waterfowl in the country was extreme variations in crops with many ready to harvest and many looking like they would in late June. We all know about the devastation to grain farmers in the South East, we talked to one farmer who had things under control and his crop is coming along nicely. He is a cattle farmer and his
entire crop is for cattle feed so the excessive amount of rain is a blessing for him as he has lots of hay and his oats and barley are just great. Cattle producers are not at all in the same situation as grain growers as they have solid markets and reasonably prices. Though input costs are high they are not exceeding the return and the cattle producer can wait on the markets to improve as he is not as cash strapped as the grain farmer with his high costs of fertilizer and expensive chemicals.