Waiting For Snow

FTLComm - Kelso - Sunday, January 20, 2002

Saturday it was time for a road trip as I left Tisdale at 8:00 in the morning and did not arrive back home until 11:30 that night. During that time I rolled into Archerwill at dawn, through the Qu Appelle valley a mid day and down to Wawota, then at the bottom of the page out to Kelso. There is no question, the

story in all Saskatchewan is snow, well at least some form of precipitation. You can still use a snow mobile in these fields between Archerwill and Rose Valley but by Wadena the fields are nearly bare. From Kelliher to Melville and Melville to Whitewood there are almost no signs even of snow drifts in the ditches and from Whitewood to Wawota and out to Kelso the cattle are out grazing on fields some of

were cut and left unharvested for the cattle to eat. Reports from the desert South of Shaunavon where ranchers there are pretty desparate. Darryl Coupe is one of them and he has thirty cows with caves that have no community pasture available and Darryl is looking for some one who can board them for the rest of the winter. If you want to help Darryl out contact his brother-in-law. Cousin Ken who farms East of Langbank says he has enough feed for his own herd but is hoping to see some snow. Darryl on the other hand hasn't had snow in his part of the world for three years is looking at the desparate situation with the little damn on a creek that provides them with water for his herd and the pump system has to be kept moving downward to provide water for their household. Kelso is in the wooded mixed farming zone of the South East of the province, South of Moosomin (the picture below is taken looking North of Wawota on the grid) and was very wet last spring with planting delayed because of the heavy winter snowfall. But this year as you can see in this picture the dust is flying up from the pickup ahead of us and there is just a little cover in the ditches. Last night as I drove North up #35 there was steady snow from Leross North to Wadena and it pretty well let up by McKague. Today we are blessed here in Tisdale with steady snow throughout the day and toward Prince Albert. With very cold weather approaching the La Ronge area and still some cloud over the grain belt perhaps we will get a little white stuff but what we need is a mountain of snow on every field. Around building and the villages the wind piles it up so that we have about a foot on the lawn (just over an inch of rain) but in the open fields the cover is around six inches.