Living From The Farm – How Revolutions Get Started

By Delila Jahn-Thue

 (Niagara At Large is pleased to welcome a voice from another region of this continent to our table. It is a large continent, but at the end of the day, we are all in this together.)

Christmas was a relaxing break from what has been a winter of great change in this farmhouse.

 When I’d finally finished dehydrating, pressure canning and sausage making, it was almost Christmas so I started washing, repairing and painting walls.  Instead of being floored by the enormity of the task ahead, I kept filling a pail with water, grabbed an old cut up towel and started scrubbing.

Quite amazed by the cobwebs and fly crap that had accumulated while I’d focused elsewhere, I refocused and change happened fast.

 Farmer uncharacteristically authorized work in a few other rooms which I finished fast, before he could change his mind. Now our dining area glows in warm lemon yellow.

Farmer came home, stood in the hall, and surveyed the damage. I braced myself.

“I hope you’re done with the yellow,” he offered.

The guest room (my office,) living room and bathroom also caught fresh paint. Farmer suddenly commented on how he’d like to get at the baseboards that were never installed after our last renovation. Never say never, except: never give up hope. Yes, this lesson can be more widely applied.

During long baths once kids were in bed I finished This Crazy Time by fellow Canadian Tzeporah Berman. I cried like scientists at global climate change [CC] conferences, realizing just how insulated from the real impacts of human industries I really am. The more I learn, the more amazed  I am that I didn’t know.

Most disheartening on the global climate crisis is the fact that Canada not only reneged on Kyoto, but has been doing its best to kybosh all climate change progress. Instead, my country is renovating earth with new toxic lakes and wins this distinction: 

“The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center lists 207 nations by order of carbon emissions. The tar sands has higher emissions than 145 of them.”

Birds slicked up in the tar sands

Tar sands, located under the boreal forest, require removal of earth lungs (trees) first before sand is loaded into trucks. Between 2-4.5 barrels of fresh water are contaminated, producing just one barrel of soon to be burned bitumen.  

Canada’s carefully branded “ethical oil” produces toxic waste waters that form lakes, growing at 2.2 billion gallons of contaminated water per day.

But it creates jobs, doesn’t it? Oil company workers must rake dead birds off the lakes.

Ask the Mikisew Cree First Nation (living near this get rich quick scheme) about the rare cancers they’re dying from. They’ll tell you that “government and industry had refused to address the issues.”

But because of CC, please remember to turn your thermostat down: 300 million cubic feet of natural gas is used daily to extract bitumen.

Meanwhile, “Unlike most developed countries, Canada’s global warming emissions are still skyrocketing and fully half the growth is coming from Alberta” writes Berman.

Ever think Canada was green?

Any “climate change” mention sparks war here so I cried in the tub. 

Like so many, my Farmer views global starvation and unrest as a result of “those people” who “only know how to live like that.”

So focusing here, while we still get winter in Saskatchewan, some continue to flatly deny the existence of CC. Until we’re burned out, fracked out and poisoned out, the oil bed of Canada may not be able to admit the CC connection.

 Believe in it or not, CC is also fingered for tripling tornadoes in Saskatchewan during 2012, causing unprecedented flooding, storms and drought in various areas of the world. http://tcktcktck.org/2013/01/around-the-world-2012-was-the-year-of-drought-and-heat/39794.

 I’m thinking renovating is messy industry: drywall mud, dust and paint splatter…

What if Farmer’s wife joins the protestors?

Delila Jahn-Thue is a teacher, columnist: Living from The Farm and author of Advice Between Kingdoms – How the Hays Moved Trash Mountain (Balboa Press 2012).

She is involved in ecological causes including farmers’ rights, water quality and creating rural recycling opportunities. Passionate about the land, Delila travels to communities and schools sharing awareness of how our daily actions affect the land that feeds us.

We encourage you to visit Delila’s website at Livingfromthefarm.com .

(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this commentary. Remember that NAL only posts comments from individuals who share their first and last name with them. Thank you.)