Holy Monrolly! Or as Ed Sullivan used to say, “ This is gooing to be a reeallly, reeeally big shooow!” The RBC Cup is coming to Lloydminster May 14. The Bobcats are playing at 7:30 p.m. MDT. I would like to wish Gord Thibodeau and the Bobcats all the success as they play for the national championship. Tickets are available by phoning 780-871-0900. This will be really good hockey.
Another beautiful week of sunny spring weather. The only fly in the ointment was the days we had smoke from the Fort McMurray forest fires. One noticeable thing was the stiff wind. The outlook for the coming weeks is more of the same, bright sunny warm weather. I have no hoar frost rains marked.
I can’t help but marvel how fortunate we are to live where we do. Other than some sneaky SOB that steals your truck in the night, this is a great place to be. No earthquakes. We have not had a tornado in years. No forest fire that burns you out of house and home. No one blew up a car bomb when you were grocery shopping. There are no land mines on the road when you travelled. Nobody bombed your house. Yes, this is a pleasant and beautiful place to live.
A drive through the Battle River valley south of Waseca should be part of everybody’s agenda. There is a lookout spot at the top of the hill on the north side. The river does a double horseshoe, but one is not used as the river made a new channel after the last flood. The leaves are out on the trees. This is eye candy, free for the taking. I like that green.
My heart goes out to the people of Fort McMurray who have lost their homes and all their possessions. Many lost irreplaceable keepsakes. There is nothing that can be done about what happened. It is burned and gone, done!
I would hope somebody would have the common sense to not build like that again. Now the burning is done, get some Cats in there and push back the stumps and debris. Make a fire guard, half a mile back. You can’t fight a forest fire. When a spruce tree burns it puts up flames a hundred feet high. It makes its own wind and burning embers travel to the next tree. Soon you are in the middle of a forest fire with nowhere to go. If you can get the fire on the ground, a grass fire is much more manageable. It is all very fine to have your home in the trees but, if a forest fire comes, it burns up your house, too.
Then there is the design of the house and the materials used to build them. Make the roof steep so burning embers will slide off. Asphalt shingles would not be my choice.
And then there is that fiberglass siding. I don’t know who invented that stuff but God bless his little wooden brain. My neighbour Gerald said it’s just like stapling gasoline to your house. The fire comes along, your fiberglass siding starts to sag and melt and then catches on fire. Then your house is on fire and the wind carries the heat to your neighbour’s house and his fiberglass siding catches on fire. And so the fire grows all down the block. That stuff should be banned.
Then there is the spacing of the houses. There is lots of room at Fort McMurray. Make them build with 50 feet between houses. Just common sense.
On the home front, sprayers are running, guys are seeding. Some of the crop is already up. Some of the outfits are just like a train with seed carts, the air seeder and maybe an anhydrous tank or a liquid cart. The tractor looks so small in front you wonder how it could pull it all. The drills are getting so large they can really cover the acres in a day. An important person in the operation now is the person who hauls seed and fertilizer to the air seeder and moves trucks to the next field. At the rate they are going, a lot of people will be done in a week and a half.
The cows are all just about calved out. The way those young calves can run and play makes me tired just to watch. Nothing makes a rancher happier than a healthy and happy bunch of calves.
On the oil field, I see some service rigs out working. The oil patch is not dead, just badly wounded. Service rigs out is a good sign things are starting to improve.
Joke of the week: A banker was driving home for Thanksgiving when he got lost in southern Saskatchewan. He stopped and asked a local cowboy how far it was to the next town. “I dunno,” said the cowboy. “Do you have a place around here that a person could get cellphone reception?” asked the banker. “I dunno,” said the cowboy. “Which direction to town with a drug store?” asked the banker. “I dunno,” said the cowboy. “You sure don’t know much, do you?” said the banker. “Well at least I’m not lost,” said the cowboy.
