A Canada Winter

The youthfulness of children, memories, and the young at heart melt the frozen grip of the dreaded season. Not all find it so terrible, just take a walk around the block before it thaws and you will hear snowmobiles and the shrieks of hilarity from kids sliding
down the hill. Our hill one winter was the chicken coop roof. The drift reached the eaves as the wind build it up one flake at a time.

The memories of Canadian winters are not all fun and good times. One comes to mind when the storm blew in and our family experienced the term “snowbound” first hand. To our fortune, Father had correctly predicted it by watching for and noticing the sundogs a couple of days previously. He made sure we had furnace oil, feed delivered for the cattle, chickens and so every mouth on the farm had something to eat for a week. The quarter mile corner drifted five feet deep with solid pack hard
enough to hold a D-9 Cat as it whittled away at it two days later.

Creativity and resourcefulness reigns in times like this. No time is wasted during a real Canadian winter in the country. Baling twine supplied a new use for raw material to braid a rug for the dog or just parking my boots after making the moonscape like round trip to and from the barn.

Mail was a long awaited sign of relief from the incarceration of what seemed like house arrest. The seed catalog was like a Bible for the spiritually famished pagan. It brought assurance that Spring was not far hence on the calendar and under the frozen ground buried by the days and nights of blizzards and an inch of ice.

When the sun shines during these winters it gives more light than on a smoggy July day. It’s a good time to start some seeds. Seeing the seedlings poke out from under warmed soft earth sterilized in the oven between Mom’s baking buns and bread sparks more than hope. Pride in our strength and courage to call it another winter sprouts thoughts of a good crop of grain and new spring calves.

While these memories flooded into a greying head, the stove cooled off so I will need to leave you start a stew as I reload the wood box and stoke up the
stove.