Nevard Blog: New Years Day Wedding

Nevard Blog: New Years Day Wedding
Yet another test linking to my other blog.

Gorges' Grouse: W.C. Stiles Ice Pond

Gorges' Grouse: W.C. Stiles Ice Pond
I'm experimenting with linking posts. It seems to have worked for me.

Watching Movies and Youtube

Am I getting old or what? I recall my parents, grandparents complaining about loud noise when we were kids. Never seemed to be a problem for me in those days. Now, sometimes the world is just too noisy.
What brought these thoughts on was watching a recent (2010) movie last night, "The Book of Eli". A pretty good movie overall except for the annoying (to me anyway) feature that it seems most of today's movies have of varying sound levels. The dialogue can be so low with people almost whispering at levels that just wouldn't work in everyday conversation in the real world. So we crank up the volume to hear them better and suddenly some special effect or event comes crashing through the speakers that would nearly wake the dead. You don't dare fall asleep during a quiet spell of these movies or you risk being jarred into a state of startled wakefulness that is not only disturbing , but annoying too.
Turn the volume down and suddenly we need to become lip readers again to understand what the actors are saying.
While I may have some age related hearing loss after 40 years around farm equipment I don't usually have a problem hearing normal conversation.
Funny how that doesn't seem to be a problem on youtube videos. Set the volume and its usually sufficient for whatever is happening on the screen. And speaking of youtube, I've been watching a series of interesting farmer-created home videos at
farmin in Montana
Just a farmer with a webcam recording daily events on and off the farm but its strangely addictive and he has a lot of subscribers already. I wonder if they are the type of videos the lazy farmer would make if he was into that type of thing?

New Year

Well, made it through Christmas and New years. No resolutions here though. Just keep on doing whatever seems to be working. We got lucky with weather over the holidays. No storms or bad roads although a little frosty. Actually had water dripping through my ceiling one cold morning. Turned out there is enough heat escaping through the ceiling and roof to melt the snow which then freezes at the lower edge of the roof backing up the water which then leaks under the metal sheets. I had to climb up on the roof and shovel about a ton of deep snow off to solve the problem.
I broke the bale spear on my front end loader lifting a hay bale today. Weak metal I guess as I doubt that the hydraulics on a 47 year old tractor lifting small round bales should over-stress a spear thats designed to lift any average round bale. I improvised with the remaining stub spears and a chain to get the hay bales out. Another project for the repair shop I guess.
This post was mainly intended to test if I can post those fancy blue links like the lazy farmer
Ok, I think I have it figured.

Dressed for winter, I spent an afternoon putting oats through the old hammer mill for cattle feed last week.

2090 plowing

Snowmageddon,well thats what they are calling it down east anyway. And the news footage from the last few days does look pretty impressive. Long lines of traffic stalled on the highways in deep snow and people stranded in their vehicles for up to 24 hours. You wouldn't think this could happen in Canada where we are used to this kind of weather.
Not so bad here in Sask. where we received more snow on top of the above normal amount we already had.
It the link works you can watch a short video I shot while plowing snow today. Farmers love to plow, be it soil in the summer or snow in the winter. Theres something satisfying about watching the snow roll off the angled blade up front of the 2090 Case, almost like soil turning over behind the blades of a tillage implement.
Its getting really deep in the fields for the time of year. The oddest thing is that the ground under the snow is not frozen, something I don't ever recall seeing at this time of year. Normally that ground is frozen solid and will support whatever weight we put on it. Today I was breaking through the surface in places and saw mud under the snow.
Maybe there is something to this global warming/climate change talk.
Its certainly a change from this photo I took back in February of 1971. The municipal graders had pushed through with the v plow up front and a wing on the back to angle back the huge ridges of snow. That 39 Ford stood pretty tall but there were places you could not see over the snow ridges when sitting in the drivers seat. Yes, winters were tough when I was a kid....

I voted for this photo in the Stuck in the Muck contest. To vote visit stuckinthemuck.com

I voted for this photo in the Stuck in the Muck contest. To vote visit stuckinthemuck.com

I know the lazy farmer likes White tractors.

The Trivial Round, The Common Task

A quotation from one of my ancestors when he was pretty much saying
"business as usual". Thats about how its been here.
My old standby, the Massey Super 90 has been in the workshop for the past
week due to a water pump failure. I was lucky to be able to get a new
(rebuilt) one without too much trouble but I've had to use the bigger 2090
Case and it's dozer blade to put round hay bales out for the cattle which
works ok but not as handy as the front end loader on the Massey.
I've just about got all the pieces put back together to use the Massey
again. Had to burn a little furnace oil to get the shed warm enough to
work on it though.
I was a little shocked to find that magpies had literally pecked a hole
in the back of my poor decrepit old bull the other day. He is too slow
and quiet to shake them off and they just perch on his back and help
themselves. Normally I won't shoot a magpie but this was too much. I was
able to put a patch on his back with some cloth and some carpenter's glue
which I was surprised to see still in place 24 hours later.
The magpies come to eat leftover chop out of the feed trough but any
time I got close enough for a shot they would fly off. I finally set up
a "snipers blind" in the hayloft with just a narrow opening for the rifle
barrel leaving me completely hidden. In a couple of hours I had eliminated
5 of them and thought that was about all. This evening I see there are
at least that many more back again so I guess its back to the shooting
blind tomorrow.