At Last

Yes, as seen in the photo , finally calf number2 has learned how to feed itself. I kept it alive by feeding it milk replacer for 5 days. It just did not have a clue what to do even though the cow was co-operative. So that is one chore off my list.
One of the first real snow storms of winter hit on the night of March 6 giving us a few inches of new snow and giving me a few hours of tractor time clearing up the yard and driveway with the blade. This late in the season and I have not yet had to install the snow blower on the old Cockshutt 40. That is a first in my memory.
This year's dry fertilizer arrived by truck today so I won't have to worry about getting it here in April when the frost is out of the ground and too soft to drive a truck some places.
It got a little interesting when the grain auger quit half way through unloading the fertilizer . I was desperate enough to actually consider welding the u joint back onto the drive shaft but after finding it was just a key dropped out of the shaft we were able to install a new one and finish the job. There is really never a good time for a grain auger to break down.
There is still plenty of time for a good old March blizzard like the one that hit last March 22.

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.