Ho ho ho Green Giant

(Reposted from another blog I write in) I have created this blog in order to have a place to put some thoughts I have on environmental problems and  possible solutions that are facing Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and the World. This will focus mostly on the politics, some situations going on in my own home town or surrounding area and other stories I have to tell about some experiences I have had growing up in small town Manitoba.

   I did not live on a farm per se, I lived in the tiny hamlet of Mather. A tight knit community of people who have known each other, or each others families for many years. I remember the cold winters heading to hockey games in many of the other surrounding towns. Mather did not have enough boys to make a team on its own, so we joined together oftentimes with the neighboring towns of Clearwater, Crystal City, Cartwright and sometimes Pilot Mound.
    There were few people around my age in my hometown, so I spent a large amount of time, either indoors playing video games, or out of doors exploring.

   The video game stuff is boring, so I will tell you about some of the things I did or found while I was out and about in my sleepy hometown as a teen.

   Going out in the winter, as bitterly cold as it could get was always a fun time. I did not realize at the time how much freedom and enjoyment I got out of doing something as simple as building a snow fort in  a mound of snow, having a snowball fight with my brother and sisters, sliding down the large hill in the north part of town. Winter was a time of hockey and play, the occasional snow day, the random chance at having a free day off of school, was always something I would hope for, because I found high school to be stuffy and boring.
  I would climb to the top of the roof of my house and hurl myself into a pile of freshly fallen snow, leaving behind an outline in it like the cartoons I watched and still laugh at to this day. I went ice fishing with my grandfather on Rock Lake. I do not remember catching many fish, but I remember the warmth of the tiny shack, the good food,   and just spending time with my grandfather.
   Mather rink was always a source of great fun for me. When I was growing up they still put tournaments on, curling and hockey. There was always a large amount of people and usually a large amount of food as well, which I always enjoyed. The curling rink has since been knocked down and the skating rink is having difficulty keeping the heating bill paid. There is talk of destroying the rink, I would hate to see this happen as it is one of the few natural ice rinks around my area. It was built by members of the community a long time ago and it is a piece of mine and many other children history who grew up in my area.
   It is a structure that dominates the town, a large silver dome poking up like an armadillo in the middle of the town. the sun shining off of its great back, the dome has stood the test of time. Even though inside there are problems with heating the side-building as far as I know the dome itself is in decent condition all things considered.
My hometown has had its rail line removed, the elevator was knocked down a few years ago, and it is slowly starting to have most of its major landmarks removed. This is a town that does not have many landmarks or even buildings to begin with. The elevator the rink, the store, the town hall, the post office, the hair salon, an car garage and the seed plant.
   I spent many nights walking laps around this town. looking at the stars and the moon if it was there.

In the summer it would get hot,it would also get busy for my father, who is a truck driver by trade, philosopher at heart. I always disliked working with my father as a youth, but I now see all the things he tried to teach me now as something I value greatly now as an adult.
  He taught me how to change tires, oil, how to grease machines, how to shovel grain, how to work. He never asked me to do anything he had not done or could not do himself. Safety was always important, even though sometimes I would have preferred more masks for dust.
  I have always seemed to just barely avoid situations where I could be seriously hurt or injured.
  I have never broken any bones, had a serious illness (other then a bout of pneumonia that was cleared up over a weekend). Considering some of the stuff I have done it is amazing.
    Climbing the tv antenna on our house to my roof was always something I enjoyed doing, much to my mothers chagrin. From up there you could see most of the town, and out behind farmland stretching out across the plain.
  The clouds during the day, the stars and moon during the night just watching up at the sky was always a relaxing time. I miss that now that I am in the city. No one looks to the sky anymore because all you see is the orange halo of the many many lights needed to keep the darkness at bay.
   In our quest to remove darkness, we have removed the stars from the sky.
In the fall harvest and school would begin. Again I was not a big fan of school. I was not ready to learn, I did not care about getting good grades, or doing well on a test or studying. I wanted to be at home, I wanted to have fun. I wanted to be a kid.
   Fall was another busy time of year for my dad, he would often get me to come with him to different farm yards and places. He would attempt to teach me about the local geography so that I would know how to navigate the area when I was older. We would talk, the majority of the time was spent driving form one place to another, to load took perhaps an hour or an hour and a half where as some places we had to drive to it took 1-2 hours.
  It was something I again took for granted. I had no idea how much that time I spent with my dad would affect me when I grew up.
  I am now very similar in mannerism as my father, I am perhaps a bit more outspoken, a bit more outgoing, but his humor and his warmth is always something I try to emulate. His amazing work ethic is again something I try to emulate.
   He would wake at 6:00 am or earlier and not be back home some nights until 7 or 8 pm at night. As a result  I did not see much of him during the day and he was too tired at the end of the day. So going to work with him was the best way to spend time with him.
  To this day he still does things that I would have trouble doing. I was home recently for Christmas and we had a situation where the breaks got stuck on a set of trailers we had just loaded and were trying to move. He said "get me a pipe" in a gruff annoyed voice, and proceeded to lay down under the trailer. I fetched the pipe and gave it to him and he began to use that bar to get the brakes to release. This was work that was, on his back, over his head, and with a pipe that was not light. My father is now around 52 years of age, and he used that pipe to get the brakes to release so we could continue working. I am unsure if I could have been able to do that. I never got the chance to try, but  the amount of respect I have for my dad cannot be measured in words.
   So I seem to have gotten off topic as I usually do. I will try to keep this blog on topic as I want to discuss different problems that are going on. Water rights issues, farming local and corporate, the effect agriculture has on society as a whole and how it can save the world if done in a correct manner. GMO and self terminating seeds are another issue I want to research and talk about, as these are topics that are of much debate in any situation.