Creating smiles with wheat field sharks

Wheat field sharks have caused much curiosity outside Dublin, Ont. this summer.

The fins were the idea of Anne Melady, who sharecrops the field with a farmer.

“I was up at Erin last year and saw someone with two fins in their field. It gave me a smile every time I went past,” she said.

The four shark fins make it look like the aquatic predators were swimming in the field, far from the ocean in land-locked Dublin.

“All winter I would think of it and since we were putting in wheat, I decided I would put these up.”

The creation of the sharks was a community effort. Melady drew the four fins out of a quarter inch sheet of plywood. A neighbour helped her cut them out and another neighbour put a bracket on the back that allows the fins to turn in the wind.

She says the fins have given her lots of pleasure.

They’ve been posted many times to social media, including by Ontario dairy farmer Tim May who has a popular Facebook page.

Her sister-in-law in Manitoba saw it come across her social media channels.

Melady removed the sharks at wheat harvest and put them in the tributary to the Bayfield River behind where she lives – to give people more smiles.

“We need them in COVID times.”