Cooling Canola

I combined this canola almost a month ago, testing dry, but I was concerned it might not be cooling down safely. Decided to take a load out today to get a better look and temperature test. Turned out to be ok. It was a nice day compared to some we have had although the temp never got above 15F.

Calves, Checking Crops and Fixing

The title almost says it all. Just discovered the last of the 2018 calf crop arrived this evening. The cattle had not been back to the yard in a few days but did turn up this evening when they saw me out there with a pail of oat chop for them. Surprisingly a little new born calf was galloping along with the other bigger calves. I had almost given up on that last red cow having a calf this year.
I finished putting around $300 worth of new parts into the 41 year old haybine to get it working again. A few new sprockets and a bearing should (hopefully) be all it needs to cut the rest of the hay crop. Nine head of cattle don't need a lot of hay for the winter but they do need some.
Crops are looking pretty good and really advancing. We've been getting some "just in time" rains to keep them growing.
Here is some video of a crop tour from last week as seen from the top of the 52 Mercury. Driving by oats, canola and wheat.

Here is another photo from the weekend activities. It was quite a workout but many hands make light work as they say. Thats about all I can say about it for now. 

More Lazy Farmer

No, not Budde Shepherd . This is a link to some actual original newsprint clipped from an old paper and pasted into a scrap book many years ago.  They are in pdf but of course copyright rules prevent me from posting them here.
Its rained again. At this rate I will be swathing canola before I have completed the first cutting of hay.
We did get a break to at least get the old crop canola hauled to market last week. All the rain means the gardens are doing well in the area.

In spite of some hot days I managed to get the new (to me) shed on site and leveled. Its not big enough to hold a vehicle or tractor but it will hold some of the important junk I have cluttering the actual work areas of other sheds.

I sort of wasted a day at an auction yesterday. The machine I was interested in was just too huge and complicated looking so I passed it by even though it went cheap enough for what it was. On the positive side I did win the free draw at the end of the auction and came home with  fifty dollars. Enough to pay for the new carb kit that is in the mail for the #Mercury .

Happy Canada Day

Although it was already two days ago, here is a photo of what has become sort of a Canada Day traditional gathering of friends and family. It was pretty cool, cloudy and windy so I passed on the actual trail ride.

Funny , with all the threatening weather we have had lately, in fact there has been hardly any measureable rain. Just light showers that keep everything going but make it very hard to make hay. I was lucky enough to get most of what I have cut baled up last week. So far holding off cutting any more as there are showers forecast almost every day this coming week. 

Crops progressing nicely with canola blooming and wheat heading pretty much on schedule. I took these recent photos of wheat. Of course it was a good opportunity to exercise the 52 Merc. Can't let it sit too long and have the valves get stuck from inactivity. 

Baling, raking, taking pictures

plus a few other things made for a busy day. I was reluctant to cut any more hay seeing as rain is forecast and I don't want it to get soaked. But some that I cut the other day looked almost dry enough to bale so I figured get it done before the weather changed.
The Cockshutt 40, usually so reliable, failed to start. The 15 (or so) year old battery seemed too weak.So the next best candidate was the Cockshutt 50 beside it. Weak governor action, armstrong steering and a weak pto clutch but it got the job done. Made a few more good quality square hay bales to re-stock the hay loft for next winter.

Had to do an inventory check on the spring harvested flax before making arrangements to sell it. Between it being low bushel weight and high (12%) dockage it is not going to be a big money crop.
I took this photo  while on top of the flax bin as the canola is starting to bloom pretty good right now.

Did a little hay raking with the Super 90 Massey late in the afternoon. Hoping by turning the swaths they might just be dry enough to bale tomorrow. Some of it had only been cut down for 24 hours so there is still some drying needed before it is safe to bale. Hopefully, weather permitting, I will get it done tomorrow before rain moves in. 

The Big Slough

When I was a kid the largest body of water near the yard was known to us as "the big slough" and it was a favourite place to visit and look for frogs, throw rocks in the water and whatever else a kid can dream up to mess about in the mud and water.
Today the big slough is probably twice the size as when I was a kid. Overflowing into the neighbour's field actually and it has water killed most of the trees that used to grow around it. I took this picture of it earlier this week while cutting silverleaf and thistle patches in the pasture. This pasture is one of the few remaining pieces of untouched original prairie wool in the area.

In 

other news, the flax is blooming and looking good although the usual lot of re growth weeds is starting to show up. Typical for flax. The canola is nearly finished blooming except for a few late emerging patches. We have had some good rains lately to help fill out the crop. I took this shot on the driveway about 9 days ago when the bloom was pretty impressive on the canola. Out for a drive in the rusty Merc. Outstanding sky that day and the Gopro camera does a great job of capturing it.

Deck Chairs on The Titanic

About as useless as re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Meaning that what you are doing is really not going to affect the eventual outcome.  Its an old expression that came to mind the other day while moving wheat and canola to a different bin.
Even at the unattractive spot price there are not many places buying canola, or any other grain right now. Most blame the railways. That has worked for years .
I needed to make room for granular fertilizer and the bin was full of canola. The only other reasonable option was to move this canola to the other farm some 8 miles away where there was adequate space to store it til the price goes up (or more likely down).
The snow is going away slowly with daytime temps in the high 30s and we are starting to see some bare ground in places. Early spring maybe? No excess water? We can only hope.

Early Start

Its not hard to get up before the sun in winter time in Sask. but today I was on the road long before sunrise, if in fact we could have seen the sun rise. It was snowing and blowing some and did not look too favourable for the job ahead but after numerous cancellations due to weather it finally got done today. Two semis of canola headed down the road by 11:30 am .
We are a little below normal snowfall but you would never know it by the amount I had to push to get to the bins at the "hundred acre woods". A good two hours of blading and piling. Numerous trips back and forth down the winding trail through the woods to make it wide enough for long trucks and trailers to get through. A bigger blade would make the job go faster but then I would also need a bigger tractor behind it.
Comfortable working at these warm temps (in the +20s).
Heres a shot of the last truck headed out in the distance while I wait to cross the highway with the grain vac.

Trail Riding With Roosty6

Nice day for a trail ride/crop tour yesterday. 13 of us on various forms of atv and off road vehicles, although we did mostly road driving. Still plenty of places where water is over the road for those that like to play in the mud. Sometimes the short cut is not the best way to go. At one point I had to pour water out of my shoes after encountering a deep spot in the road. Apparently the beavers decided that road needed a ditch cut across it.

We crossed the rail trestle of the abandoned rail line and some of the more adventurous ventured right down the steep banks to see the creek flowing through the crumbling concrete tunnel. On foot of course. It is far to steep to drive, almost too steep to climb on foot but we made it. Maybe not as fast as I did 47 years ago.

Alf's Cabin, then and now

Cutting hay today and as the tractor bounced through the depression that marked Alf Goff's cellar under the log cabin I thought of this old photo. Taken in the 1930s by his sister, Kate Hobetzeder, Alf stands at the door of his log cabin.

Sure was good to work in the cool and dust free cab watching all that grass pollen and mosquitos outside. Although I am feeling it a bit tonight. Is there more pollen than ever out there or am I just getting more sensitive to it?
Just finished spraying crops and chem fallow yesterday so now I can get at cutting hay. Late of course as everything is this year. Crops are surviving and some actually looking not too bad after all the excess rain. Although you'd have to drive a long way to see a good field of canola. Reports in today indicate there are at least two million acres of flooded crops in Southeast Sask. due to recent heavy rains.  According to what I read in  this news story maybe we are part of the problem?
Crop spraying was long, drawn out and stressful with more mud and water to drive through than I ever thought possible. I left some terrible ruts but never got stuck and the weeds are dying.
Spotted this moose cow and calf in one field of flax.

Into Each Life A Little Rain

.....must fall. Its an old saying that came to mind this morning. Only light mist and clouds out there but its enough to stop harvest. Although it only barely resumed yesterday afternoon before a late evening rain shower shut me down. Anyway, another maybe 500 bushels off the field and into the bin. I don't want to harvest tough or damp canola. Even the dry stuff can get "interesting" when it starts warming up in the bin as one of mine did last week. It gave me something to keep busy with by moving 7 loads from one farm to another to circulate and cool it down. Not that I really needed any extra jobs to keep busy, considering . Bin space is in short supply this year due to the high yielding crops , plugged grain terminals and shortage of grain cars to move grain out.
Potatoes still in the ground to dig, plus a load on the trailer to unload. Numerous loads of hay bales to haul. I tried the gravel truck for that job yesterday and found it was quite unsuited for the job. Only held 3 bales and one fell off on the way out of the field so I guess it is back to the trailer. Some of those first oat bales I rolled up were so damp that they are heating inside. Thought it best to get them off the field seeing as they are surrounded by combustible material (the rest of my oat crop).

Yesterday's evening rain shower provided some good scenery but a rainbow over a combine is something I am never too happy to see. About an hour after this shot we were heading for home in the rain.

 

Harvest 2013 begins

Well I had great intentions of editing another video for youtube tonight. Shot some scenes of moving machinery on the weekend , getting the swather out of the back of the shed, driving 2 cylinder vintage John Deere, etc. Then I remembered that I left the Gopro camera out in one of the vehicles. And since it is pitch dark out there now, I still haven't fixed that yardlight, I guess I won't be going out. Chances of meeting up with a skunk, racoon, or some other form of wildlife in the dark I can do without.

Stay tuned, the video will happen.

In farming news, harvest has begun. I spent the last two days swathing canola. One of the cleanest, tallest, heaviest crops I can recall. It was hard to swath but hopefully will reward me in a high yield. Crop prices have dropped but I don't usually expect to win the lottery of high yields and prices together.

Fields have really dried up and its hard to believe I had 16 inches of rain in a month back in July. Dark clouds built up this afternoon while I was swathing and finally turned into quite a thunderstorm this evening. Now, to swath cereals or not? If forecasts are right we will have a warm September and the cereal crops should ripen naturally not requiring swathing.

 The canola as it stood last week when I was trying to decide if it was ready to swath.

Dust In The Wind and other meanderings

Thats the song that came to mind looking at this picture from today. The rocks are so thick in some parts of this field that I need the rock picker following the air seeder as in this photo . Well ok, not quite, it just happened we were close together at that point in the field and I took a quick photo.

That relentless wind of the past few days just won't quit. Field surface is getting dry and I stir up quite a dust with the air seeder planting canola. The price of said seed is a bit astounding .. If anybody had told me years ago that I could lift over $500 worth of canola seed without extreme exertion I would have never believed it. $7000 worth of seed in the back of a thousand dollar pickup, amazing.
Oh well, making a little progress even though I seem to be a ten oclock scholar most days not getting the seeder in the ground til way late in the morning. Seems I spend as much time getting ready to work as actually seeding. Fuel to haul, seed and fertilizer to load and haul miles between farms eats up a lot of time. A couple of my weedy fields I actually try and avert my gaze as I have to pass by them as I know the weeds will get to grow a little higher before I can get to them.

Harvest Progresses a little in spite of the weather

Up until this afternoon I was making some progress being near the ten percent complete mark after only 3 days combining.
Today it all went downhill. Threatening clouds interspersed with just enough sunny breaks to give me hope. After driving to the field to fuel up the combine this morning I discovered that a hole was worn through the cone on the combine. After 3300 hours I guess it has done well. Spent an hour trying to patch it up with a bolt which may or may not be successful. Then decided the canola green count was too high and figured I'd try the wheat instead. This required a trip home (5 miles at 4 mpg) to change to the straight cut header on the combine. Back to the wheat field, all the time watching the ever increasing clouds in the west. The wheat threshed ok but sure isn't yielding like it should. Another trip home for a moisture test revealed that the wheat was not quite dry. I might have kept going except that rain started falling inducing great haste to empty the grain tank of the combine into the truck to prevent it getting soaked. More frantic trips up and down the road with truck , tractor and grain auger as we had to set up at a different bin in a different yard. Luckily the rain quit during the unloading process. The most annoying part was that by the time I got within a couple of miles of home the roads had dried up and dust was billowing out behind the grain truck even though rain water still dripped off the body. No rain here at all.
So the combine sits out in the field at the mercy of the rain and fuel thieves
Maybe like little orphan annie I will sing, "the sun will come out tomorrow", or not.

More Trail Rides

For the second weekend in a row I have been out with family and friends on the quads, bikes, trike, touring the area looking at crops and other items of interest. We don't go very fast but we go pretty far, to quote an old song. Great weather and scenery and good company and before we know it we have made 60 km or more.

Crops are variable with some great looking wheat that might be disappointment if it has as much disease as some are saying. Canola is so uneven on some fields with flowering patches amongst far more advanced plants. It will be a challenge to know when to swath . There was one field in the process of being swathed.
I got my swather out of the back of the shed on the weekend in preparation for the soon to be swathing season. Great to have indoor storage but having to move 3 trucks, a tractor and a pull type combine to get at the swather takes a bit of time and effort. Sharing one battery between the trucks and tractor, one truck with no spark, then a flooding carburetor, all help keep the mechanical skills honed.

Watched late at night for the Perseid meteor showers, saw nothing. Shot some interesting video of some little Merlin hawks near the house. Don't often get to see them being fed by the adults.
Merlins

Days of Summer

Keeping busy on the farm is never hard to do. The above photo shows just one of the little jobs. Moving a grain bin from one side of the farm to another in hopes of replacing the wooden floor.
Most of the grain is now sold thanks to good prices and a grain vac to take the work out of loading grain in a steel bin on a stifling hot day. Last year's flax still sits waiting on me to make up my mind. I'll need the space (assuming this crop makes it) by harvest time but til then I am watching prices as I think there is potential for it to increase. Although 13.20 per bushel is still a mighty good price. Maybe I am just greedy but I don't see much flax planted this year and there should not be an over supply to push the price lower.
Heavy rains, threat of hail and tornados every few days keep it interesting. The extreme heat has let up which is a relief. A new disease (to me), has hit canola fields in Sask. Aster yellows and if it is as bad as some say, we will not have a big canola crop this year. I see signs of it in mine but the crop still looks good. Nothing we can do about it.
Flax, not quite flowering yet but looking good and clean. That group 2 herbicide I used on wheat for herbicide resistant wild oats seems to have done a great job. Cleanest field I have seen in a while . Oats just headed out and looking better than last year.
New potatos from the garden taste great and I guess the old ones in the bin from last year will be left for the cats.
Theres still acres of hay I could cut and probably will cut some of it just to make sure I have more than enough to get through winter. I've put some money into new parts on the haybine  which should inprove cutting performance. Its a learning experience.

Moving Canola July 11.

Heres a little video of what I did yesterday. Known in the industry as "turning grain", I moved some of last years canola from several smaller bins into a bigger hopper bin. It was a good day for it although I made some mistakes with the camera taking interesting pictures of the ground as I walked instead of what I intended. The canola dust bothered me a little but not nearly as much as the grass pollen did today as I sat out in the mosquito-ridden hell that is Saskatchewan outdoors this summer.
The open station IH swather offers no protection from the weather , bugs or grass pollen. I used to laugh at people who talked about "hay fever" until the past few years when I have become much more intolerant of grass pollen.
Its like a bad head cold. Between the sneezing , runny nose, itching eyes and wrists (that could have been mosquito bites) I was about at the limit of my endurance.
This swather does not do well in certain types of grass. The knife builds up with material and begins to hammer out a warning that , if not heeded, could lead to expensive destruction of the knife drive gearbox. Slow down! Although at times I was hardly moving at all. A sitting duck for the hungry mosquitos. It was a good windy day that would normally keep the mosquitos and pollen dispersed and offer some relief. Unfortunately there is so much bush on Nevardland where I was cutting that a lot of the time I hardly knew the wind was blowing.
By 7:30 I had enough and drove up onto the transporter to enter the welcome confines of the cab of the Case tractor and drive home in relative comfort.
There is quite a bit more hay I could cut there but I've already cut more than enough to keep my small herd fed for the winter so I will not be in a hurry to go back and cut the rest.
Easterly winds blowing and clouds in the west hint at rain in the near future. Not a good thing for drying hay but I can't control the weather.

Seeding Begins

This is where I spend most of my daylight hours lately. Its late but still within the normal planting window of opportunity.

Moving Grain April 9

Spring slowly approaches here in Sask but the snow is slowly melting producing lots of mud and water. A beautiful sunny day seemed like a good opportunity to move some grain from one bin to the next just to make sure it was in good condition . Using the "auger train" method saves moving a loaded grain truck around a muddy yard and doing even more damage. Several other tractors were involved in the preparation for this event but only the old 830 Case made it to video.