With harvest in full swing across the region, families, friends and neighbours are once again out in the fields trying their best to get the crops in for another year.
The Craig family is one such family, working long hours these days on their section and a half farm northeast of Olds. The farm has been in the family for about a hundred years.
Mountain View Publishing photographer Noel West spent an afternoon with the family last week, seeing first-hand what goes into the hands-on job of farming in 2013.
“It was going very well until we had the rain (on Sept. 18),” said Louise Craig. “That has slowed us down and everybody else. In farming, everything depends on the weather. That's something you always have to live with.
“We all want to get the crop off before the snow flies. It's hard work, but a farmer is a farmer.”
Louise and her son Darcy were combining wheat on the farm last week, helped out by a neighbour, Randy Jensen.
As it has always been in the district, the success or failure of area farms means the success or failure of area towns, she said.
“If the farmers don't have money, the towns won't have money,” she said.
There are more than 1,800 farms and ranches in Mountain View County, covering more than 3,800 square kilometres.
