Price of Beef

FB won't let us share news on there platform anymore so I'll just have to make do with here and Twitter, or "X" as somebody re-named it. Seems the climate fanatics think we can save the world by stopping raising cattle and eating beef. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/markets/first-they-came-for-the-cars-then-the-cows/ar-AA1kW92J?ocid=socialshare&pc=ASTS&cvid=fd68ba94f03a45e18e3dd927debac42f&ei=40 Ok, guess blogger follows the same rules and won't make it easy to share.

Bad Luck or No Luck At All

Thats an old expression that comes to mind lately. Although I should not complain too much as I have a lot of help to try and keep the wheels turning. Two combines here on the farm, either one of which should be able to handle the 700 odd acres of crop without a problem. And yet here I sit with both broke down and the last 40 acres of canola swaths still in the field. Cloud and showers in the forecast for today so it will be just a matter of covering things up to protect them from the rain and then try to fix the problems when weather permits. The canola swaths have been a nightmare to put through either combine. The self propelled IH did pretty well but suffered from the abuse of these big canola lumps hitting the feeder and finally something has #@*ed up inside the feeder house causing me to park it. Too dark the investigate much so the John Deere pull type was put into duty after some hydraulic hose replacement to at least cut oil consumption by half. It worked pretty well in spite of numerous feeder house plug ups that are very time consuming and strenuous to unplug. Luckily I have my nephew available most of the time to help out. Due to John Deere's ridiculous belt drive system for the feeder chain it is impossible to turn it backwards by hand because the belt just slips. One man needs to turn the lever while the other holds pressure on the belt so things turn. Otherwise its hand work with hooks and saw to remove a handful of straw at a time. My grandfather Nevard would be shocked to see me using his mitre saw to cut canola stalks out of the combine feeder area but thats what I'm doing. The John Deere gave out on a beautiful harvest day suffering a breakdown of a bolt in the shoe area. Its fixable but going to take time. The showers forecast will give plenty of time to work on it. Of course it is located on the second farthest away field so repairs involve plenty of driving back and forth for tools, parts, etc. There can't be much good weather left at this time of year. Will I finish before winter sets in? Will the grain be dry?

Fall Winter

Its supposed to be fall but feels more like winter today. Temp struggling to hit 40 with fine rain and raging NW wind. I went to work on a few things on the combine but soon lost my enthusiasm in those conditions. It has been parked for six days waiting on some decent weather. I'm down to my last field but it is the worst one. Good as far as crop yield but a bit of a nightmare to get through the combine. I did my best trying to swath the nearly six foot tall canola but still left intermittent lumps of swath where it plugged going through the swath opening. Some of these piles are so big and knitted together that I just lift the combine header over them and drive on. Not worth the frustration and exertion of unplugging the feeder chain yet again. Not to mention the time lost. The stress on the combine and operator is high. Next year better be a shorter variety of canola that my swather can handle. I'm even seriously considering putting the sidelined IH 1660 in the field hoping it might handle the lumpy swath better. Just need to rig up an oil leak catcher at the gear box and keep on adding oil to replace what leaks out. Supposed to be a nice weekend and then a few days of good weather. Will it be enough for me to finish? I wouldn't bet on it. The last day it took me 5 hours to do a 12 acre patch of canola swaths. At that rate I'll need a week of good weather to finish. Signs of snow falling this evening. Its cold enough. Sask Energy will be happy as my furnace is running.

Garden Progress June 13

I've done a couple of these garden updates already but never got around to editing and uploading. So finally one makes it to yt. The month of May has been a blur in fast forward and the garden has not had the attention it needs. Potato bugs are making progress, as are the weeds. Its either too hot, too many mosquitos or I'm too busy with other farming stuff. The fancy new rain gauge was free thanks to a post I made on fb that drew the attention of a site that records rainfall and wanted me to become a reporter. Today's forest fire smoke is the worst I've seen so far even with a strong South wind blowing. Too windy for crop spraying so maybe a chance to catch up on garden work.

March 19 Snow Levels

Preview looks ok, lets see if it works. Spring is officially just a couple of days away but you'd never know it around here. Below normal temps and very little melting going on. Just enough to cause doors to freeze up and become even harder to open than normal. Like great uncle Jack used to say, "We get 6 months of winter and 6 months of poor sleighing".

Winter Continues

Hope it ends soon. This latest storm left such hard drifts of snow that the snow blower could hardly cut into it. Just finished and a bearing broke on the auger drive so the blower is down til I can get it apart and a new bearing installed. At least it is not super freezing cold like it has been. I can still move snow with the blade on the bigger tractor but that leaves huge ridges and piles of snow that just catch more snow. And eventually we run out of room to pile snow. Diesel fuel is not getting any cheaper last time I checked. Picture from yesterday's activities. At least the scenery was nice.

Jigsaw Puzzles

I've enjoyed wasting a good many hours of my life putting together jigsaw puzzles over the years. I recently found that there were online jigsaw puzzles that could be made out of my own photos. I can see where that could be pretty addictive. Heres one from 1958 from right here in sunny Saskatchewan. https://jigex.com/NHyoa

Outstanding Scenery

Just had to shoot some video today showing the amazing "hoar frost" scenery we have been seeing most of the week. Its been a rare break from the miserable winds that we get way too much of in a normal winter. Fairly mild too for us. I needed to get to town for mail and groceries anyway as it must be a couple of weeks since I was in town. Still working on getting over the last of this cold I've had since the beginning of December. Its definitely one of the longest lasting I can ever remember and I have gone years without having a serious cold. The sunshine and blue sky today definitely adds to the photos and videos. Kind of the Paul Simon "kodachrome effect" in which we are made to think all the world is a sunny day. Ok, I was trying to post the scenic video here but either my Sasktel internet is way too slow to handle it or else blogger is getting stubborn. I'll just try to post the link. https://youtu.be/IDXVZ_8y5V0 And maybe a picture?