A few times this month, I’ve joked “I think Wiarton Willie is a charlatan.”
U.S. readers might be asking, “Who?” Wiarton Willie is to Punxutawney Phil as Mr. Dress-Up is to Mr. Rogers, as Schitt’s Creek is to Arrested Development and as Coffee Crisp is to… well, nothing compares to Coffee Crisp. Willie is the Ontario groundhog whose Feb. 2 shadow sighting (or lack thereof) predicts how the rest of winter will go. We’re currently on our fifth Willie. Canada has a few other groundhog forecasters (Merv, Sam, Fred la marmotte), but Willie is the most well-known.
But being the most famous does not mean you’re the smartest. Since he got the job in 2022, results have been mixed. Which begs the question: what even is a long winter? Winter 2023 (which Willie predicted would be short) wasn’t any longer or shorter than usual, but was one of the darkest on record, followed by a spring of false starts – summery days one week, a blizzard the next. In 2022 (also predicted to be short), we had a colder-than-average March followed by a sudden warmer-than-average April. This column was written after two record-breaking snowfalls, and edited the next week in what I like to call “denim jacket weather.”
Unpredictability is part of agriculture. You probably wouldn’t get into farming if you wanted predictability. When we talk about things we can’t control or predict, even based on previous years’ models, weather is often the first thing that comes up. Major/unseasonable rain and snow events have caused delays in planting and spreading, sometimes resulting in impacts on yields and environment. Fortunately, we’ve seen a few reactive good decisions. For example, after the 2021 floods in British Columbia, the province enacted emergency spreading rules, allowing those who had accumulated an excess of manure or whose systems were facing potential overflow to spread manure when they otherwise might not have been able to.
Now we are dealing with another uncertainty: global trade has come to the foreground for producers on both sides of the boarder. Concerns over exports, imports, input costs and currency exchanges make it hard to know what next five years will bring. Sometimes it’s hard to know what the next five days will bring.
One thing I love about manure is that it feels more predictable, and not just because you’re not dealing with costly imported fertilizer. Every year, we get more research showing manure works, which hopefully results in more manure-converts. In Ontario, we even have an alpaca farm spreading the word about manure (see Page 26).
We’re also seeing more research on how to get the most out of manure and extract even more value – our sand separation feature on Page 20 dives into the advantages of separation systems for those whose cows sleep on sand. Despite the uncertainty in the world, it truly feels like manure is on the up and up.
So cute animals make bad meteorologists. Wow, who would have thought? It’s fun to gather ‘round a groundhog and party, but we’re all past the days of listening to everyone but the real experts. In times of uncertainty, look to those with the credentials – not the groundhogs. •