The title pretty much says it all. There will be a lot of farming related posts here as well as some ancient family history and photos. Another family history blog I have is at....
http://nevardblog.blogspot.com/
I think it was 1965 my uncle Don bought the 730 Case tractor. It was close to new, at least as close as we had ever got to a new tractor except for the ones on the dealer's lot. At 57 horsepower it was a good sized tractor around here for the time.
I learned a lot about working summerfallow in the summer of 1970 when I went to work for him. Somehow the old 730 survived that episode with only a few scratches and dents. And the summerfallow got worked, sort of.
The 730 is in semi retirement now getting occasional exercise on the rotary mower or some blade work. I was going to do a little snow pushing with it this morning until I realized that the dozer blade itself was buried under a snowbank. I wasn't about to start digging it out so the tractor got a rest and the snow remains.
And Roosty6 made another video :-)
Of course everybody is on google earth. Some visible, some not. Some on street view and some in their vehicles. I am in a "vehicle", actually tractor. I noticed an unusual pattern on one of the fields of Winstanley Grove from 2000 feet up. The field was obviously in the process of being worked so I only had to look a little closer to see my tractor and cultivator at work. That would put it at about 2:00 pm in the afternoon of August 21 of 2012.
Of course hardly anybody works summerfallow anymore as it is considered an inefficient and outdated practice these days. Wasting fuel, eroding the soil and releasing the dreaded carbon to the atmosphere that will eventually destroy the world. I figure I'm pretty well balanced though when you zoom out and see the huge "carbon sink" on the rest of the 800 acre patch. Those poplar bushes, according to what I have read, absorb a lot of carbon. So I would hope I am at least carbon neutral and can continue my summerfallowing if I choose to.
If you zoom out a bit on google earth you can see the rest of the hundred acre woods that starts just to the left of this photo.
Readers of the other blog, Nevardblog, will recognize the name Winstanley Grove as the homestead of great uncle Arthur Nevard. That little clearing in the trees at lower left of the photo was his yard where only the remains of the cellar hole containing the collapsed walls of his log house remain.
What would the great uncles and grandfathers say seeing a picture like this? Just shake their heads in amazement I'd say.
Ok, it was only 28 miles round trip but it was the longest drive for me and the Merc since 1969 when the car was unofficially retired. I'd had hopes of taking the Merc to the local museum car show for quite a while but was not sure it would happen right up til the actual day. A week of damp and rainy weather left little hope. I didn't want to drive the rusty old car on muddy gravel roads.
The day dawned sunny and clear with a wind drying up the somewhat damp roads. I had a volunteer willing to drive the "new" Chevy II along as a support vehicle. Not everybody can drive a "three on the tree" nowadays.
I loaded up the Chevy's trunk with tools, spare gas, tow rope, and assorted other stuff for whatever possible problems might occur and we set out.
Is that 40+ year old fuel pump going to fail? Fall victim to that old flathead malady of vapour lock? Yes, I had a pail of water along for that problem too. Were the loose rear wheel bearing and whining rear axle going to pile up on the trip? That leak in the radiator going to get worse?
And how about the five gallon fuel tank? Enough to drive 13 miles surely?
With all the improvements to make it street legal I still had not got the "teapot" carburetor working as it should. It requires judicious pumping of the gas pedal to accelerate without stalling. And you never know when the 14 year old tractor battery under the hood is going to give up the ghost. But keep the pedal down and the old flathead ran smooth and steady once up to speed. I watched that heat gauge pretty closely and it did run higher than I'd seen it on my short runs, but not enough to cause trouble.
The well used oversize Michelins rode pretty well with only a hint of wander in gravel. With no working speedometer I could only guess but found out later I'd been crusing around 50 mph a lot of the time. Not bad. Averaged over 15 mpg too which really surprised me.
At the destination we parked among the rest of the antiques and looked right at home. Although that nice shiny Fairlane beside me made the old Merc look a little weathered and worn.
No, I did not win any of the people's choice awards and that was no surprise as there were a lot of very nicely restored cars and trucks there. Got a few comments on the very smooth idle of the old flathead V8.
The trip home was uneventful and the road was dry enough that I was getting a little dust in the interior through the various rust holes not yet patched.
For those that are not yet tired of viewing this old Mercury I have a few minutes of video uploaded at youtube showing the trip.
Meanwhile I have a bit more summerfallow to finish, hay to rake and bale, and the last field of canola is almost ready to swath. Weather permitting, hopefully, all within the next 48 hours.
It seems the wonderful big crops we grew in 2013 are not going to be a good thing in the new year. Grain movement seems to have ground to a halt as the railways apparently make more money moving oil and potash than they do moving grain to the ports. I heard this morning that there are something like 40 grain vessels waiting on the west coast for grain that just isn't there. And of course the meter is running all the while those boats wait. And guess who pays? The good grain prices at harvest time have taken a real nose dive with little or no hope of improving.
Getting rid of the terrible and oppressive Canadian Wheat Board last year was the answer to many farmer's prayers but all that marketing freedom is not going to help us much if the railways can't move the grain . It will be a good year for new grain bin sales as farmers will need extra grain storage space while last year's grain sits and waits. Maybe the market is telling us to not grow more grain this year. Spending big bucks on more fertilizer and herbicide to grow a bumper crop does not look too attractive. There is even talk of , heaven forbid, summerfallow which is a bad word to the average modern, efficient farmer. It just reflects the depth of discontent that is out here in farming country right now.
Even Kevin Hursh is not too optimistic.
I think I will bet on cultivator shovels and glyphosate for this coming growing season. At least for a good percentage of my acres.
As the picture indicates, this summerfallow field got a little out of control and the deer were finding it to be good pasture. It made for a nice photo as the sun came out from under the clouds about an hour before sunset. By the time I finished the field the moonlight was reflecting off the beaver ponds. It was one of the jobs I was able to get at while waiting for the weather to dry up enough to resume harvest. We have fallen victim to bad harvest weather. Rain. And then days of intermittent cloud, not enough wind to dry, just kind of at a standstill. Then when the crop is almost dry enough to bin safely, rain strikes us down again. Not a good place to be when over half the crop is still in the field.
And we are not alone. Similar conditions happening in the lazy farmer's part of the world . As we approach October with shorter, cooler days, less drying, the harvest window closes a little more each passing day.
The deer may have plenty to eat this winter.
It is finished. In it's relentless quest to trim down spending our federal government has decided to eliminate this tree planting program
Most of the trees and hedges planted on this farm came from the Indian Head based shelterbelt program that supplied these seedling trees for free to landowners. My Dad and I planted hundreds of these trees around this yard over the years. There are even rows of ancient maple trees that my grandfather planted. On a cold and windy morning like this those hedges provide much appreciated shelter.
When my grandfather came here in 03 there were no big trees. They actually had to have logs hauled in from further north to construct buildings. Frequent prairie fires prevented the poplar trees from getting too big. No fireguards or big fields of summerfallow to stop them. Have we come full circle back to those times? Summerfallow fields are rare now, only found on land owned by inefficient and obsolete farmers like myself.
Field hedges that were planted to break the relentless prairie winds are now a nuisance for gps and auto steer equipment . Plus the never ending application of glyphosate (roundup) to the fields on windy days like today will surely kill those hedges anyway.
Since I am here it must be raining. Been a dry week which meant I had to keep busy in the fields with no time to waste on the net.
I even finished seeding a few days ago. Got caught up with harrowing and rock picking, despite losing the rock picker in a muddy crossing in the field. Even there I got lucky having a decrepit old logging chain in the tool box which was just strong enough to pull the rock picker out backwards . The hitch was broken but still usable enough that I could finish the job.
Working stubble (summerfallow) took priority (I think) over spraying the recently emerged canola. The stubble fields, especially the last one, were overdue for attention and if I'd left them another day or so I'd likely need to cut and bale the weeds before trying to cultivate.
Yes, I still use the outdated and obsolete practice of summerfallow on some fields. Fact is I just could not get them seeded in the short window of opportunity available so they will be cultivated for summerfallow this year. If I had a nice hundred thousand dollar high clearance self propelled sprayer I could have had the weeds under control early enough to seed the field. I'll put one on my list of things to do for next year.
Working summerfallow is not a bad job in a comfortable tractor with the company of the always entertaining CBC radio. Some of the news stories are a little disturbing though. Don't these protesters have anything better to do than harrass and annoy working people?
Now canola fields need to be sprayed right quick and the wheat won't be far behind that. Grain needs hauling but some of the bins are still inaccesible due to wet ground. Only a couple of weeks til I should be cutting hay although I know it will be longer than that.
Its no wonder that spring and summer go by so fast.
Check out the video. I hope that little Whitetail fawn made it past the cultivator . I didn't even see it until watching the video later. As someone commented, deer are a pest that cause crop and vehicle damage but its hard to see an innocent little creature like that knocked down and killed at that stage of it's life.
