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Just to put a picture on what the drought means in concrete terms, four summers ago I was paying 3.50 a (small) bale for hay for my horses, delivered. It wasn't top quality hay and the producer was a neighbour who understood the value of keeping the same price, year after year, for the opportunity of having a purchaser you could count on.
Then the year before last we had a drought. It wasn't a province-wide drought but hay bales were going up to $8.00 a bale, and I saw some trying to sell high quality horse hay for $10.00 but I don't know if they got that. Some hay producers were trying to unload that hay at lower prices when the following spring rolled around. I ended up paying 7.00 a bale plus a cost for delivery as my neighbour had no hay to sell, and I had to search around like everybody else.
Last summer was dry but not a drought. I paid 5.00 a bale from my regular supplier.
I was fortunate enough in June that my regular supplier sold me hay at 5.00 a bale. There was still hope for rain at that time which was why his price was that low.
This year I've seen low quality, rained on bales going for no lower than $8.00 a bale, and I'm betting they were baled in June as I'm not seeing how any place could have produced grass hay after that. I've also seen $10.00 bales. And a guy from New Brunswick who obviously read of the drought here offering loads of hay for sale. He didn't state a public price but my mind shudders.
I also saw on Facebook a farmer breaking things down for some cityish horse people, who live in bedroom communities and have a horse or two to feed and who were objecting to farmers' "greed."
He had a picture of one large round hay bale. Thar was the sum total of 8 acres of hay. After breaking down the cost of seed, fertilizer, spraying for grasshoppers, his cost for that one large bale was almost $940.00. I haven't followed the prices of large bales as I buy small bales, but maybe 6 years ago I was paying about $100.00 for a very large bale.
My brother is selling all his calves and I don't know what else.
My lawn is dead because the water table was low to begun with and this drought is so extreme, and with the towns next to me drawing on the same aquifer, I'm worried about the well running dry.
Wondering how this is going to progress in future years? Is this the new normal?
We've had one of the wetest summers on record here in Southwest Ontario with lawns not browning off at all as they did for decades of summers before in the 70's, 80's and 90's. This is hard to figure.
We're having cool nights and already seeing the odd tree changing colours.
It seems to me we've already badly screwed the pooch on controlling greenhouse gas emissions and climate change or whatever you want to call it is not so predictable but actually a continuing process of "what's next"?
Farmers of all kinds are going to have to hedge their bets and in so doing, if that drives the price of food up, well, we're just getting what we deserve for continuing a process of turning farm land into paved parking lots and further adding to the environmental damage.
Wondering how this is going to progress in future years? Is this the new normal?
We've had one of the wetest summers on record here in Southwest Ontario with lawns not browning off at all as they did for decades of summers before in the 70's, 80's and 90's. This is hard to figure.
We're having cool nights and already seeing the odd tree changing colours.
It seems to me we've already badly screwed the pooch on controlling greenhouse gas emissions and climate change or whatever you want to call it is not so predictable but actually a continuing process of "what's next"?
Farmers of all kinds are going to have to hedge their bets and in so doing, if that drives the price of food up, well, we're just getting what we deserve for continuing a process of turning farm land into paved parking lots and further adding to the environmental damage.
China and Central Europe has seen catastrophic flooding at the same time that Western Canada and US are parched dry. Boston just saw its second wettest July on record. All of that rain is supposed to be shared evenly but has not been. I suspect the jet stream became so wound down that precipitation is having a hard time moving around and so just stays around one place and continues to rain and rain and rain at that same place thereby leaving other places bereft of precipitation. This is time for major planning in anticipation of the continuous climate change but I just don't see any political will to do it anywhere, to do it right that is.
The flowers withered and/or what developed withered. I was talking to someone yesterday whose mother picked half a point, where she usually picked 28 ice cream pails worth.
We had about 2 lovely inches of rain yesterday. That won't help for this year's crop but pastures will hopefully start growing.
What's bothering me is that there's hay flowing south out of the province, and I'm thinking these may be under contract. So I have no idea what the solution is but everything in my being says you can't have hay leaving the province at a time when conditions are this bad.
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