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THE HAIL STORM - "Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories" 1924 by H.B. AdsheadPart 4 of 5
While the size of the hail was as small as marbles and as big as walnuts, yet we picked up a few that measured three inches across or nine inches around, made up of five or six smaller stones frozen together in fierce whirling they had undergone in the cloud before striking the ground.
Alas! the poor little chicks in the coop were all either drowned or chilled to death. In the garden, upon which we depended for our winter vegetables, not a potato to be seen, of the cabbages, only a few torn pieces of leaves driven into the ground, and what of the flourishing grain field that but an hour since had proudly lifted its leaves to the sun? Only a black field of earth was left, with nothing on it except a surface indented all over with holes like huge smallpox marks, where the lashing hail had been driven deep into the soil after having cut to pieces the grain so that not a vestige was visible.
And what of the luxuriant prairie grass, with its beautiful colors of wild flowers that spread like a thick carpet over the ground but an hour ago? Nothing left but the top of the prairie sod, not a pound of hay could we cut there now for winter use for our cattle, and walking next day along the edge of "Sleepy Creek," we counted dozens of little dead ducklings floating on the bays of the creek. And the horses came up to the farm with lumps on their back as big as walnuts, where the hail had struck them, and woe betide any settler coming from town, if he were caught with his team in that terrible storm of 1899.
Reading by Barry Freeman Desktop Commuications
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The Strom, part 5 of 56 July 1899
Olds NWT Canada
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THE HAIL STORM - "Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories" 1924 by H.B. AdsheadPart 5 of 5
Every year some district gets hail... On more than one occasion have seen the farmer in his wheat- field, when it was near maturity, pluck a few heads of wheat, rub it in his hands, blow away the chaff, and look joyfully at the fast ripening kernels and say - "Ready to cut in a day or two," and before an hour had passed, it was but a broken and bruised field of empty straw.... he wondered how the bairns were to be fed and clothed until another crop could be reaped or how the store bills now due were to be met.
The advertisements and glowing descriptions of the Canadian West are pictured in pamphlets, lectures and even in Government Atlas', but none of the difficulties or hardships from hail or frost or drought are mentioned. Only one side - the pleasant side, is told and described, and it is not to our credit that the difficulties and set-backs and even hardships are not fairly and honestly told to prospective settlers. Partial truth is the worst form of deception.
A dramatized reading of H. B. Adshead's story published in Pioneer Tales and Other Human Stories. 1922, p39-40
Reading by Barry Freeman Desktop Commuications
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Adshead left Olds in the 20's to work in Calgary. |
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