For even longer than the almost-106-years that Saskatchewan has been a province, the weather has tested the fortitude of its rural residents.
Drought, hail, tornadoes and the infamously long, cold winters have shaped the character of rural people. Whatever challenge Mother Nature could throw at our farmers and rural residents was met with an even stronger sense of resilience that things would be better next year.
This is how Saskatchewan became Next Year Country.
Again this spring, Mother Nature is testing to see just how tough Saskatchewan people truly are.
But while this is a province that's had more than its share of trials and tribulations in the past, there's something about this spring's flooding in the southeast that may be testing the Saskatchewan spirit in a whole new way.
After all, it's tough to keep that indelible belief in next year country when spring floodwaters don't even give you a chance at this year and when even more flooding begins to threaten to take away all you have.
If one only takes a cursory glance, it might not even seem all that bad in this province - or at least, certainly no worse that a typically bad year. According to the last weekly crop report before the June 18 Crop Insurance deadline, 82 per cent of Saskatchewan's 2011 crop has been seeded - actually, better than the same time last year when only 73 per cent of the seeding had been completed.
The source of the problem was rain and thundershowers, but that really just underplays the problem. The intensity of these of these showers in southeast communities in the southeast have produced 100-millimetre-plus rain storms that have often flooded what little crop has gotten into the ground. (A testimonial as to how the weather tries ones patience in rural Saskatchewan is the fact that while 29 per cent rated topsoil as "surplus" 57 per cent rated it as adequate, 12 per cent short and two per cent very short.)
It is also in the southeast region where only 44 per cent of the crop has been seeded.
Admittedly, southeast Saskatchewan is not the only place struggling. If misery loves company, rural Saskatchewan folks there can look east to their cousins in Manitoba where estimates suggest that number of unseeded acres will top the provinces record of 1.5 million acres and may be closer to two million acres. That is likely to translate into $750 million to $1 billion in potential lost revenue in that province.
It certainly appears that farmers in that province - hit by the same wet spring and many of the same vicious rainstorm systems - will be tested as well.
But the situation for Saskatchewan's southeast is particularly difficult because it's not just farmers now struggling with unseeded acres and now washed-out crops. From smaller communities like Roch Percee and Radville to cities like Weyburn and Estevan, rising waters have begun to these villages, towns and cities hit and hit hard.
In Roch Percee hammered by the rising floodwaters of the Souris River, it may now be a fight for the community's very survival. As many as three quarters of the homes in the valley community may be damaged beyond repair, forcing people into the heart-wrenching decision of perhaps having to rebuild somewhere else.
Basement water damage is more the rule than the exception in Radville and those in Weyburn and Estevan are still coming to terms with exactly how much devastation this spring's rising waters have caused.
This is a very different problem than the drought of 1930s or the isolated nature of tornadoes, or even the cold, wet springs as recent as last year. The flooding in Saskatchewan's southeast may also be eroding the natural optimism of the Saskatchewan people have developed.
This spring will surely be a test of their fortitude.
Murray Mandryk has been covering provincial politics for over 15 years.
