So many people have been struggling with their gardens this year.

As always, there would be a combination of factors. Where we are, we had a weird spring with hot days, but cold nights, resulting in it taking longer for the soil to warm up enough for seed germination . We also had drought conditions and heat waves, while other areas had very cold summers. All of which we’ve had before.

Then, there’s this.

We’ve had bad wildfire years before, too. I remember in one of our early gardening years, we had drought conditions and also a lot of wildfires. There was so much smoky in the air that particular matter collected on our glasses. I would wash mine off with soap and water, but one of my daughters just used a cloth, as usual, not realizing what was on her lenses. She ended up scratching her lenses, both inside and out, before she realized what has happening.

So yeah. We’ve had it all before.

This year, however, has had the most fires in 30 years. We currently are not under any air quality warnings, but the fires are still burning. As I look at the live fire maps, we still have 94 fires that are “uncontained”, 13 are “being held”, and 14 that are “contained”. We’ve had 4 new fires in the last 7 days.

That’s just one province.

The mountains in south and central BC, all across the territories and northern prairie provinces and into Ontario, is a mass of fires. Then there are the more isolated fires in Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. Every province and territory in Canada, except PEI, I think, is dealing with wildfires.

So while we’ve had all these conditions before, affecting our ability to grow food (small or large scale), when it comes to the smoke, this year really kicked it up a notch.

Between that and… politics, shall we say… food prices are looking to keep skyrocketing.

It’s been a rough year all over.

The Re-Farmer