Fall Winter

Its supposed to be fall but feels more like winter today. Temp struggling to hit 40 with fine rain and raging NW wind. I went to work on a few things on the combine but soon lost my enthusiasm in those conditions. It has been parked for six days waiting on some decent weather. I'm down to my last field but it is the worst one. Good as far as crop yield but a bit of a nightmare to get through the combine. I did my best trying to swath the nearly six foot tall canola but still left intermittent lumps of swath where it plugged going through the swath opening. Some of these piles are so big and knitted together that I just lift the combine header over them and drive on. Not worth the frustration and exertion of unplugging the feeder chain yet again. Not to mention the time lost. The stress on the combine and operator is high. Next year better be a shorter variety of canola that my swather can handle. I'm even seriously considering putting the sidelined IH 1660 in the field hoping it might handle the lumpy swath better. Just need to rig up an oil leak catcher at the gear box and keep on adding oil to replace what leaks out. Supposed to be a nice weekend and then a few days of good weather. Will it be enough for me to finish? I wouldn't bet on it. The last day it took me 5 hours to do a 12 acre patch of canola swaths. At that rate I'll need a week of good weather to finish. Signs of snow falling this evening. Its cold enough. Sask Energy will be happy as my furnace is running.

Garden Progress June 13

I've done a couple of these garden updates already but never got around to editing and uploading. So finally one makes it to yt. The month of May has been a blur in fast forward and the garden has not had the attention it needs. Potato bugs are making progress, as are the weeds. Its either too hot, too many mosquitos or I'm too busy with other farming stuff. The fancy new rain gauge was free thanks to a post I made on fb that drew the attention of a site that records rainfall and wanted me to become a reporter. Today's forest fire smoke is the worst I've seen so far even with a strong South wind blowing. Too windy for crop spraying so maybe a chance to catch up on garden work.

March 19 Snow Levels

Preview looks ok, lets see if it works. Spring is officially just a couple of days away but you'd never know it around here. Below normal temps and very little melting going on. Just enough to cause doors to freeze up and become even harder to open than normal. Like great uncle Jack used to say, "We get 6 months of winter and 6 months of poor sleighing".

Winter Continues

Hope it ends soon. This latest storm left such hard drifts of snow that the snow blower could hardly cut into it. Just finished and a bearing broke on the auger drive so the blower is down til I can get it apart and a new bearing installed. At least it is not super freezing cold like it has been. I can still move snow with the blade on the bigger tractor but that leaves huge ridges and piles of snow that just catch more snow. And eventually we run out of room to pile snow. Diesel fuel is not getting any cheaper last time I checked. Picture from yesterday's activities. At least the scenery was nice.

Jigsaw Puzzles

I've enjoyed wasting a good many hours of my life putting together jigsaw puzzles over the years. I recently found that there were online jigsaw puzzles that could be made out of my own photos. I can see where that could be pretty addictive. Heres one from 1958 from right here in sunny Saskatchewan. https://jigex.com/NHyoa

Outstanding Scenery

Just had to shoot some video today showing the amazing "hoar frost" scenery we have been seeing most of the week. Its been a rare break from the miserable winds that we get way too much of in a normal winter. Fairly mild too for us. I needed to get to town for mail and groceries anyway as it must be a couple of weeks since I was in town. Still working on getting over the last of this cold I've had since the beginning of December. Its definitely one of the longest lasting I can ever remember and I have gone years without having a serious cold. The sunshine and blue sky today definitely adds to the photos and videos. Kind of the Paul Simon "kodachrome effect" in which we are made to think all the world is a sunny day. Ok, I was trying to post the scenic video here but either my Sasktel internet is way too slow to handle it or else blogger is getting stubborn. I'll just try to post the link. https://youtu.be/IDXVZ_8y5V0 And maybe a picture?

Still Alive

Yes, I'm still alive but have not posted anything since July. Blogger can be difficult sometimes but seems to work tonight. Wow, is it winter, and early. Going below zero (F) tonight and enough snow drifts around to make it heavy walking around the yard. I've shovelled the bare minimum needed to get around and open doors. Everything is starving it seems. Cattle eat up the hay in the feeder real fst and complain for more. Two missing cats returned home to make a total of 7. I have doubled the cat food rations along with some baked potatoes. They clean it up nd will come to the house and sit outside the door accusingly as it they are starving. Ground up a load of oats for cattle feed yesterday. Although it ran over into two days as I got an unexpected late start. The tractor ran out of gas just after sundown and I was not about to try and finish in the dark. The cold Northwest wind was none too encouraging plus I had a bit of a headache and sore shoulder after slipping in the grain hopper tank and landing hard. Finished the job up this morning after feeding hay. The old tractor sat out all night on the belt and was none too eager to start necessitating a trip dragging the big batter booster and cords across the yard to finally get started. The starter drive is getting so bad on this old Cockshutt that I might have to resort to crank starting soon. Then spent a lot of time perusing parts books online and then on the phone ordering what I hope will be the necessary parts to get two tractors back on the job. Yes, currently both my snow clearing tractors are out of commision and I'm beginning to need them. It will take about $1400 worth of steel washers to get the big blade tractor (2090)'s clutch working properly again. The little John Deere 2140 that will run the snowblower currently sits in the workshop waiting for me to finish the fuel injector replacement that I began over a week ago. Complications of course. I somehow lost a critically important part (fuel line nut) in the course of removal and have spent hours with a trouble light and down on the floor searching for it. I finally gave up and ordered a new one today. Sure enough, a few hours later I did find the lost part. Now if I can just get the fuel lines threaded onto the new injectors without cross threading and ruining them I might just get it back to gether and running. l Earlier this week I hauled home the last of this summer's hay bales that had been left out in the hundred acre woods. Being cold and miserable weather I opted to use the comfortable and warm 2 wheel drive 41 year old pickup truck. It took some time and effort to load compared to a front end loader but was much more comfortable on the 5 mile drive home. I guess theres more but I'm not writing a book here. Naturally there is some video to go along with everything I do.