Those who follow my columns know that I like to share the story of my love for Estevan. There is a lot to love here.
Estevan became a whole new world to me, very different from everything I've known before, and it’s a world I developed deep feelings for over the last 10 years. Being an outsider, I had an opportunity to have a fresh look at many things happening in the community. I could see how strong and proud people here were, I witnessed how once they set goals they – you – work hard to achieve and even pass your targets.
I've heard many stories about how this city was built, how it set examples, how it sparked the union movement and how people here would lead by example.
I've learned and seen many occasions when instead of waiting for a helping hand, this, in reality, very small community would get organized and get things done. Be it something crucial like the new nursing home fundraising, or just something fun, like the Festival of Lights, for example, nothing was impossible.
I don't know about every corner in Canada, but I didn't see much of the same in Winnipeg and definitely haven't seen anything like that in other parts of the world I've been to.
Of course, my original motivation to stay here was a different love story, but eventually, I found it easy to fall for Estevan. However, my feelings go beyond personal connection, and the Energy City borders and people here. Every year around this time I get a reminder of another thing that I absolutely and irrevocably fell for 10 years ago. As odd as it is for a person born and raised in a beautiful huge metropolitan city, it is farming.
Calving, seeding, baling, harvesting and everything in between, all of it is a lot of hard labour that despite efforts doesn't win in battles against nature's and the market's unpredictability and comes with pressure and stress, but it's also incredibly rewarding.
With the mixed farming operation that my husband's family is running, every year when the first calves start popping and more and more of them are running around corrals at the farmyard, I feel more alive than ever. Even though I don't get to be at the farm much these days, when I end up there, helping to tag or bottle feed calves or just checking on the cows, I feel really happy.
I don't know if people who've been doing it all their lives still see and feel the magic of it, but for me, working at the farm feels like doing something very real, absolutely needed and important. It's different from anything else. It's something that makes me feel fulfilled.
I've been working different jobs since a young age. My first gig was to arrange and glue envelopes with conference invitations, paying about one cent an envelope. My grandpa once took me to a film studio and for a few days, he and I were acting as a part of a crowd shot for a movie. I've been a real estate agent, and a tour guide, I've helped organize conferences, worked as a tutor and a waitress, and of course, throughout most of my life, I've been a journalist. While many of my jobs were indeed interesting, and I also absolutely love my profession, only farming gave everything meaning.
Farming allowed me to feel that we not only were producing something, but we were producing something that other people genuinely need. Everyone needs to work and most people do. Cities are busy, and people there work from morning till night, but did you know that 75 per cent of Canadians work in service? (It was actually one of the questions for a citizenship test).
While services are needed and are important for the economy, that type of work doesn't assume the creation of anything. Other industries produce things, some more valuable than others, but there is a difference between producing a purse and growing food.
We may not like living without comfort, but we can't live without food. And the way farming works today, even a small family farm one way or the other feeds hundreds, probably thousands of people a year all over the world. It also sets the base for other industries, as leather and wool are also agricultural products.
Even though agriculture is the world's biggest industry, for most of my life I didn't think about it and assumed my food was growing in stores. Only after I came here, to southeast Saskatchewan, only when I had this first-hand experience, when I started learning to deal with cattle and work the land, did I realize what it takes to grow food. I felt respect and gratitude for people who've been doing it for generations, I felt pride for being a part of it now, and I felt endless love for the region populated with many farmers tirelessly working in any weather and on any day so that the rest of the world could keep going.
