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. 

Thanks A Lot Cargill

You have increased our "carbon footprint" (if you buy the whole carbon myth) considerably and unnecessarily. That load of oats you rejected and sent back to us yesterday was only 1.2 points above dry and could not find some way to blend it in to a train load of oats?
So the oats got a 75 mile ride and are back in the yard for now. 50 plus miles on my truck moving grain vac, auger and people back and forth between farms. 20 miles on the tractor (at 15 mph) plus whatever fuel it burned running the vac and auger.
I know my time is not worth much but wear and tear on machinery plus fuel used costs money. And the grain is already too cheap.
This grain is contracted and as much as I'd like to, we can't just walk away from the deal once your name is signed on the dotted line.
Anyway, not a total loss as I got the long slow drive on the tractor with plenty of time to enjoy the scenic cloudy, damp skies and drizzle. Canola swaths lying in the fields along the way. Moisture levels bouncing back and forth from tough to damp to off the scale.
Harvest month 4 begins next week. When will it end?

Breaking Records

Apparently a few high temperature records were broken this past Saturday in Sask.. +17C or so which is somewhere around 60 in "real Fahrenheit degrees". Of course it was not that hot right here but I think we were pushing the 50 mark. I heard talk of shorts, tank tops and flip flops from some but that is just crazy talk to this cold blooded person. Although I did take off my parka and worked outside in my coveralls quite comfortably.
Back to the parka for a short ride on the trike to check the fields. There is still enough snow to make it heavy going with the almost 30 year old worn out tires but I got where I was going.

I found there was still about a foot and a half of ice on the sloughs. It looks like a lake in the photo but there was only about 3 feet of water under the ice at that point. Those familiar with the area will recognize it as "the ravine" as named by the pioneer homesteader of that quarter.
It covers a few acres right now but in the driest year in recent history (1961) it dried up enough that my dad was able to seed oats and grow a heavy crop there.
Considering the dry trend we have seen here all winter with no change to that pattern in sight, maybe we are headed for a dry growing season here. It will be pretty ironic if we still have water in the sloughs while the crop on high ground shrivels and wilts in the dry weather.

Crop Circles

Actually it was a large crop rectangle that I discovered in my latest oat field this morning. I had not looked at the field since I seeded it in early June. Now out on the trike inspecting to see if it was time to spray for weeds I was shocked to find a large rectangle of almost bare ground. The air seeder had gone over the field and for some reason this patch of ground had no seed applied. Operator half asleep maybe and forgot to hit the switch for the seed auger? Can't blame it on aliens I guess.
If it was just one pass I would have ignored it but this looked to be about ten percent of the whole field and located on the high ground that was not flooded so bad by last week's four inch downpour. I couldn't leave it bare all summer. Lucky I had not emptied the oats out of the truck box yet or disconnected the air tank from the seeder and parked it in the shed. In short order I had the Magnum hitched up to the air seeder, augered a few bushels of oats into the tank and headed out to seed. This field has really suffered from too much rain. Every depression contains either water or mud and dying plants. Anyway, the crop in the rest of the field was big enough (as were the weeds) to spray. With another inch of rain possible for tomorrow I needed that job done today. And so it was done by sundown. Leaving more ruts with the sprayer and flattening more crop into the muddy ground, I wondered if I might have been better off just leaving the weeds to grow.

Small Victories

I think that is the name of a song or something but it seemed appropriate for today. This calf in the picture is (I think) going to be a success story for today. Last night I figured it didn't have much hope after struggling for an hour to get some milk replacer into it (with no success). It had plenty of strength to fight and no interest in drinking milk.  I couldn't leave it outdoors with the cow as heavy snow was predicted. It stood a better chance in the shelter, even with an empty stomach. The cow showed no interest in joining it in the pen so they spent the night on opposite sides of a corral panel fence.
This morning the cow was right there calling loudly for her calf and the calf was up and showing interest in her. A pail of chop and some hay enticed her into the pen although its always a bit of a struggle to keep the wrong cows from crowding in with her. That calf didn't take long to find out where his breakfast came from and soon everybody was happy. Another night indoors is in order since although the storm is over, the temp has dropped to 0F and I don't want her taking the calf away to spend the night in a snowbank.

On the mechanical side it seems there is hope of keeping my 42 year old International truck on the road. The brake shop has located some supposedly good used front brake drums, relined the worn out shoes and with a little luck I should get the new wheel cylinders on in the next few days too.
Nice to hear the price of oats has risen to near $3.90 a bushel. This would be even better news if I hadn't sold a good portion of mine for $3.75 last week but I'm not complaining. This grain marketing is always a gamble.

Combining Oats with the IH 1660.

Harvest continues
I am too tired and it is too late to do a "real" blog post so here is a bit of video from today giving you the view from my "office window". Great weather, fair crop, beautiful scenery, really can't complain about much today.

Weed Spraying Drives Me Crazy

                 Oats coming up nice and even.
Its not really news but spraying crops for weeds is a stressful time due to the weather affecting every move I make. If it is too windy, too hot, too wet, too dry, too many threatening clouds in the sky, threat of frost, etc., the list
goes on. It is a rare thing to get a windless day in Sask.It is equally
rare to get a dry quiet day but this past week we had two such days.

On one of them I was ready to go. 800 gallons of water and three jugs
of cheap herbicide (thank you Monsanto) and I am off to the fields.

By mid day the wind was pushing the limits of my comfort zone but I had
good buffer zones between neighbour's fields so went ahead.

12 hours and 38 miles of road driving later I had sprayed 200 acres of
canola. At 14 mph I spent about 3 hours on the road between farms and
that is enough time to spray another 80 acres.

The temperature was pushing the 80 degree mark and wouldn't you know, that was when the a.c. compressor failed to cut in so it got pretty warm
in the tractor cab. Good thing I brought lots of water to drink. Later
that evening the ac worked fine.

Now a couple of days of wheat field spraying await me.The wheat is about the right stage , unfortunately today is unsettled and threatening rain with
gusty winds so its a no-go I think. If conditions are not right by 6:00 pm,
forget it. It takes a good half hour to get to the field and then 3 hours
to spray out the tank which would put me into darkness. GPS is a big help but it won't show me where the sloughs and bushes are. Sprayer booms are no match for a good solid poplar tree and I don't need any more repair time spent on the sprayer.

Looking at the long range forecast I see one good day out of the next seven
so it looks like the weeds will get to grow bigger while I sit and wait.

I could go out and cut grass but no, its too wet, raining now. Maybe clean
the last of the seed oats from the bin onto the truck, but no, sure as anything
a rain shower would come up in the middle of that job.
Finish changing those cultivator shovels while kneeling on the wet ground. Yes that sounds like a plan.

Tractor and sprayer parked, waiting.