Last year at this time, snow still had not fallen and St. Paul and area residents were enjoying the mild weather of fall, the result of the El Nino effect. But weather forecasters warned that the shoe would drop yet, and so it has, rebounding with cooler and wetter conditions that saw our area blanketed with snow in the last couple of weeks.
For most people, this is just an annoyance, an inconvenience as they scrape their windshields in the morning and remember to book appointments to change out summer to winter tires. But for others, the early snowfall is not just an inconvenience, but a tragedy as it cuts into their very livelihood, with many crops left unharvested in the fields, resulting into a deep cut into farmers’ bottom lines and incomes.
St. Paul’s more diversified economic base is often pointed to as a strength of the area, as it allows the community to weather the storms, such as they are, of the boom-bust cycle of oil and gas. So the woes of farmers are really not just their problem, but the problems of us all, as it will prove to have a ripple effect that adds to the challenges of local individuals and businesses in 2016.
Perhaps it is not said enough, or loudly enough, but for the difficult job they have, the chance that they take every year as they depend on the weather smiling down on them, farmers deserve our appreciation now and throughout the year for putting foods on our tables.
Even as farmers deal with the fallout of this year’s early snowfall, many of them will be already thinking ahead. It’s the perennial hope farmers and Albertans share – the hope that next year will see better.
