EPISODE 417 DROUGHT…2021…ADD DROUGHT TO THE LIST OF CATASTROPHES THIS YEAR

alan skeoch

august 2021

DROUGHT…THE BIG POND HAS NEARLY DRIED UP.

When mom inherited our farm in 1958 or 1959 there was a large pond in the centre….loaded with

all kinds of life forms from snakes to frogs to leeches…to sticklebacks to water spiders to bitterns

to all manner of ducks including a secretive cluster of wood ducks who still hang around unseen.

In subsequent years we increased the wetlands … Ron Saunders dug a deep pond extension where

Grandad got his best hay and then Ron used his back hoe to make a nice pond near where the barn

once stood then, even later,  Jim Sanderson brought in his giant excavator to deepen one

of our most hidden swamps now a glorious shaded pool.

Glad we did that.  Those new ponds are the only real  deep wetlands this year.  The drought of 2021 has

dried up the big pond.   Now it has become  a hideous hodge podge of dead tag alders and shrivelled 

water lillies.

Lucky the new ponds…..i.e. ponds created in the last 50 years…are deep.  The turtles have a place

to live… the big snapper we rescued a year ago…and the painted turtle that seemed to believe

cars and trucks would avoid him or her sitting in the centre of the fifth line and heading slowly for one of our

deep ponds.  We hope our resident turtles greeted the new arrivals.

A bit depressing to look at the big pond today.  But my depression was lifted when a wild momma

turkey appeared with her near grown cluster of progeny.  They scattered and gobbled when they saw me.