On The Positive Side

Well, last night's storm created a bit more bin space as some humorous farmer used to say. My oat field has hardly any oats left in the heads. Most threshed out on the ground by the heavy rain and hail. So there will be less trucking to do through the mud. Less dusty oats to handle.
Canola? Not sure if theres any positives in that. There will be less grain but the same amount of straw to handle. By some miracle the swaths did not blow apart in the strong wind that flattened all the grass.
 Wheat? Again, the only positive there is that the crop was not beaten into the ground. A bad hail storm can do that. Most of mine will still be able to be cut and go through the combine. Reduced yield of course and we won't even talk about quality. It was suffering already before this last big rain and will likely downgrade to feed now. (Less than $5 a bushel).
No broken windows which is almost a miracle the way it was hammering on the glass.
Could always be worse. We could get frost to further downgrade the grain quality. Or snow to lay it flat on the ground so as to be impossible to pick up. Guess it is a good year to have some kind of crop insurance.
More rain in the forecast so the combines staying in the shed.

Short Drive In the Merc Fall 19

Though I've lived in this country all my life it still amazes me the extremes we get in weather. Last week so cold I needed jacket, toque, coveralls working outside. Even had the furnace running in the mornings and evenings. Now today it was almost too hot to work. Temp well over 80 degrees by noon. We sure need the heat though. That oat hay I cut the end of August is still absolutely soaked. The ground under it is mud and in places there is water standing. True its a creek but it was dry enough to seed this spring. I need to turn those swaths or the under side will never dry. But that ground won't support a tractor. Canola swaths are still wet and showing mold inside from all the rain they've had on them. Standing wheat looks almost harvest ready until you look closer and see the green heads. By this date last year most of that wheat was in the bin and dry. No green.

Oats I have only observed from a distance but they are sure to be too green to  harvest yet. Lucky I didn't swath them or they would be soaked like the hay swaths.

Much as I don't like the heat, we need another week or two of it if there is any hope for harvesting. Sounds like we only get a few days before the next rain.

On the positive side, here is a couple of minutes of rear bumper video on my old favourite 52 Mercury from yesterday. Autumn colours are starting to show.

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Lets Try Some Baling

The day after turning the oat swaths I had to try baling as it was supposed to rain the next day. It baled easy but that hay was so damp I didn't dare bale anymore as it would surely heat. I've done it before and had some bales get pretty hot with no significant damage but one of these times I'm thinking its going to backfire and spoil the feed. So today the swaths have another inch of rain on them. They can't get any wetter.

Raking With 2140

Strange weather continues and crops very slow to ripen. The oats I swathed over a week ago got an inch or more of rain on them and I thought maybe if I turned them over with the rake it would help dry so I could bale. It was tough going at times with the rake wheels plugging up on the wet straw but I managed to get it mostly turned. They needed a good wind and heat to dry down enough to safely bale but I guess it won't happen. I tried a couple of bales this evening but they came out damp and I quit. Figured it was no point baling wet hay and having it spoil so I'll take a chance the swaths will eventually get some drying weather before winter sets in and I can bale them.

The standing wheat? Forget about it. Still way too many green heads in it. More rain forecast for this coming week so its still a waiting game.

Canola Swathing 2019

Its a cold windy day trying to rain. Turn on the lights and furnace and do a little video editing. This time yesterday I was swathing canola with the AC on to keep the cab cool enough. Typical Saskatchewan. Freeze one day and sweat the next.

Good to have the canola all done as a lot of it was over ripe and shelling out on the reel as I worked. As usual a day late for the job.

The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (Not)

I'm talking about that annoying stupid "back to school" ad in which the parents are so glad their kids are going back to school. Hard to believe but those back to school ads still bother me even after all these years away from it. To me it meant the end of summer and freedom. Back to resume the twelve year sentence, five days a week. I survived it.
In other news "climate change" continues to slow down crop development and harvest thanks to too cold temperatures and rain now that we don't need it anymore. August daytime highs in the 60s?!?
I better stop complaining. Next week it could be in the 90s knowing this country.
Glad I got some grain hauled out and summerfallow worked a week or so ago when the weather was closer to normal. Some video of it here. And remember, watching on a screen tends to flatten out the terrain making Saskatchewan look flat as a pancake. Maybe some parts but not here.

New technology vs old technology

I am still typing this on my two old damaged keyboards of the ten year old laptop. The new one I got last week works very well, when it decides it wants to. Sometimes it refuses to recognize the wireless internet stick and becomes useless so its back to the old ones. I guess it will get sorted out eventually, or go back to the store. At least I can still blame any spelling errors on the keyboards with the missing letters.
My old tech machinery worked well today swathing a field of canola with the 30+ year old swather. Later, when I decided to haul a load of bales with the 55 year old tractor, it fired up on the first of the starter after "hibernating" since mid May. No frustrating computer controlled functions on these old timers and sometimes I'm glad there isn't.