Old Traditions, and New

I'm sure it will take me weeks to recover from the over-eating, but it's been a fine time of it.

Christmas is a big thing in our family and this year has been bigger than most. There are seven siblings in my family - most of whom have children and now grandchildren too. With that many people to gather together at one place and one time, it isn't possible to arrange it very often. Even this year we didn't quite make the full family, but it was probably as close as we're going to get. All tolled, there were 42 of us to eat, drink, and be merry together for the past three days. You know what my New Year's resolution better be if I'm not going to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe in a larger size.

But we've had a wonderful time visiting, laughing and teasing; generally making memories with the people we love.

Glen had a wonderful idea a few weeks ago when he decided to host a hay ride for everyone who was around. Boxing Day worked out to be the best day so yesterday we hooked up a big wagon to the tractor, loaded it up with straw, and piled on 30 plus people and off we went. Glen tried to take us through bush country where we might catch a glimpse of wildlife, but I think we were a bit too noisey for that! It was an absolutley fabulous day - the weather was so mild that we snuggled the six month old twins down in the straw and they slept while we built a bonfire and roasted marshmallows and the kids chased the dogs through the trees. It was voted to be the best new tradition to come along and that we should do it every year, but I doubt that the weatherman would cooperate so well every time. Boxing Day could be a raging blizzard just as well as balmy, spring-like temperatures. At any rate - it wasn't only the little kids that enjoyed themselves.

Today is a quieter day. We've been trying to eat up the left overs and find the house from under all the clutter. The babies are sleeping, Glen is out feeding the cattle, and I've got my computer back from the teenagers using it for playing games. Tomorrow it's back to the real world - I think Elections Canada has a huge mailing headed out before the end of the year. I think New Year's Eve will be a quiet evening at home.

Christmas at Grandma's House

The shift from the greater portion of people living on the farm to having the vast majority living their lives in cities has been taking places for centuries, but in the fifty years of my life it has accelerated considerably. I don't know what the actual numbers are, but even in the rural province of Saskatchewan, the city people easily outnumber us farm folks.

One of the things this does is puts the power of the vote - the political power - in the hands of people who have, at best, a vague idea of agriculture. Not that a factory worker in Ontario needs to know how to milk a cow, or a retail employee in Vancouver should be able to seed a crop of canola, but that, having never seen a real cow, or walked through a field, they have no concept of what work and investment went into the food they consume. You can't blame them for wanting their groceries to cost as little as possible, but if they had a better understanding of the processes needed to produce the food, political policies might be based more on informed decisions.

As it is, most people in this country have no experience of what a farm is. My generation might have a memory of visiting a grandparent's farm, but anyone younger would be out of luck. They get their concept of animals from Walt Disney and have never so much as pulled a carrot from the ground - as simple a harvest as there ever was.

At this time of the year, though, there is a romantic version of an "old time Christmas" that surfaces. Favourite Christmas stories and songs conjure up pictures of a rural setting, a country home, and most of all a simpler time .... heck, even the Muppets head out to Fozzie Bear's Grannie's house for the holidays. (that's one of my favourite season TV specials)

After the rat race we live the rest of the year, and especially the frantic pace we foolishly put on ourselves at this time of the year, I think all anyone wants is to slow it down to an old fashioned bake-your-own-cookies, knit-mittens-for-gifts, sleep-over-at-Grandma's kind of Christmas. I know I love to listen to the old songs I can remember my mother singing alone to - preferrably sung by the same artists. I've never roasted a chestnut in my life, but I love that song!

It's ironic, don't you think, that I am the Grandma and I still long for a simpler time?

I don't know if it will be all that simple, and I can guarantee it will be anything but peaceful, but within the week we will have 16 people and two extra dogs running wild around this place. There will be sleigh rides (behind the quad) and hay ride one night to see the sights (hopefully the Northern Lights will make a showing). We will all eat too much food, probably play board games or card games well into the evenings and enjoy the season through the excitement of the little children we're blessed to have with us.

I guess this is a bit of a Christmas card to the people who read this blog ....... I just wanted to share who we are and what we think and do with all of you and hope that your holiday will be as busy and merry as ours will be - and in true farmer fashion - we'll all soon turn our attention to the next year. To be a farmer is to always live in next year country.

A Day At The Cattle Auction

You know you're a red neck when you take a day off your nice clean town job, and head off to the cattle auction with your husband. Glen has been planning on expanding his herd this fall and there was a large sale of bred cows over at Virden, Manitoba on Friday - perfect for looking at what was out there, and checking out what prices cattle are going for at the same time.

One lot of cows to be sold were those of a farmer we know from west of here. Glen was really interested in his animals as they are large and in prime condition, but quite a few other buyers felt the same way. The seller of these cows did really well - the younger animals went for well over the thousand dollars - a little out of the range of what we planned to spend. We did buy some of his older animals because Glen wanted to get some of their size into his herd, but most of what we took home were from another herd dispersal - the cows weren't in the best condition, but we have a good shelter set up and lots of feed so they'll do fine through the winter.

We have been a billet family for Katimavik for the past two weeks and our billet, Mike, came with us to see what an auction was all about. I think by the end of the day he had had enough, but he said he did learn lots. First of all - how does that auctioneer talk that fast? And, secondly, how does anyone understand him? I tried to explain what we were looking for in the animals we bought - the health (smoothness and shine) of her coat, her temperment (was she docile or out to kill the ringmaster?), was she limping, blind, have any deformities, and was her udder in good shape to feed a calf? I think, by the end of the afternoon, Mike was catching on.

What he mentioned on the way home, though, was his amazement at how much money changed hands that day. With all the cattle there were for sale, and the average price paid, the receipts at the end of the day probably added up to a half million dollars.

Glen has been noticing that there are a lot of cattle for sale this fall. There are all kinds of reasons - around here, we're in an oil boom at the moment. It is just outrageous what oil companies are paying people to work on drilling and service rigs. You can't make that kind of money farming, and it's hard to keep up with cattle chores when you're working shift work, so the cows are sold off. Give it a few years - oil feild work will go bust, and they'll be looking to start up a new herd again.

But, on a larger scale, cattle are being sold off because they are the only things that are worth anything at the moment. Farmers have bankers and lenders breathing down their backs looking for payments and the grain they grew (using fuel and fertilizer whose prices are out of control) is worth next to nothing. It is a tough situation to be in; you only have one thing making you money and you have to sell it to pay your bills. Glen and I went through a very bad time, finacially, some years ago so I empathize when people talk about the tough straits they're in this year. Maybe they'll be lucky and Ottawa will be handing out money for votes in the west. At least then there would be at least one good thing about an election that nobody wanted yet.

We had planned to buy about twenty more cows but the ones we really wanted went too high. We brought a dozen home and they seem to have joined the herd without difficulty. You never know with herd animals - there always has to be a boss cow. You can have a bit of a turf war if one of the new girls wants to take over that position on someone who has been already running the show for a while. From what I could see the night they came home, they were just glad to have a fresh bale and lots of room to lay down. I think that a trip to the auction barn is a preety stressful time for a cow.

Countdown to Christmas

Only one month to go before Christmas! There is so much to do before then - I don't know where to start.

At least now I can say that I made the first move on preparations for a houseful of company. I arrived home from work today to see that the carpet cleaner had been here and done a fantastic job. I don't know how long it's been since the livingroom has been done and I just couldn't imagine letting people sit on it when the sofa space ran out. Heck, the idea of letting them walk on it without shoes on was giving me the creeps. I've been letting it go because the plan is to tear it out and put down hardwood flooring, but that isn't going to happen before the holidays so something had to be done.

So, tonight there is furniture piled high all over the house while the carpets dry and I'm trying to get other things done. I plan to have my Christmas cards and letters ready for the mail before next weekend - that should keep me busy for any spare minutes I might have. And, I must get out the Sears catalogues and see if I can shorten my shopping list any. We were in Winnipeg last weekend and did a bit of shopping, but the crowds were already crazy and I don't relish a repeat of the traffic (vehicle or human) so I hope to do as much as I can by catalogue or in my own home town. We country folks like our space.

We also like peace and quiet but at the moment that's hard to come by. Yesterday Glen, Jesse and our Katimavik billet, Mike, sorted the calves away from their mothers and penned them apart from each other to wean them. The three days after this is done tend to be the noisiest of the year. The calves bawl for their mothers and the mothers call back. Constantly. For at least three days. And nights.

It needs to be done though. By this time the cows are pregnant again - in effect they are supporting two calves and it starts to take a toll on their condition. As we head into the colder weather it's too much for them. It's not that the calves need the milk any more - Glen says that some of them were almost as big as last year's heifers. It was a good year with lots to eat out on pasture.

We will keep them all in the corrals for a week or so until we're sure that the stress of weaning hasn't caused any health problems and then the cows will go out on pasture again. The calves will stay in and be fed a high protien ration to keep them strong and growing. He has bought some field beans to crush with their chop to see how they like that. Legumes are very high in protien; it remains to be seen whether they'll like the taste or texture.

The snow we got a couple of weeks ago has almost all melted - something that I never expected would have happened this late in the year. This past week's temperatures have been very mild, but yesterday the mercury took a nose dive and the wind howled all night so we're back to thinking winter is here again. With that, and the fact that they're starting to play Christmas music on the radio, I think I better get going on the holiday preparations again .... as soon as the carpets dry up.

It's a Kind Wind ....

It's a kind wind that blows east the past two days. We've been waiting for professional barn cleaners to come for over a month now and Glen finally decided he couldn't afford to wait any longer. Friday he rented an articulated loader/tractor and borrowed the neighbour's manure spreader and started the job himself. Of course, he wasn't even half done when the guy called to say he could make it Monday, but by that time, Glen will be finished.

Barn cleaning is a nasty but necessary job. The cattle are all our on paster doing the spring, summer and fall, but when winter hits, it's easier to feed and shelter them if they are kept close to the yard and are given a roof and windbreaks to protect them from the weather. Of course, this keeps them all in an enclosed space - and stuff starts to pile up. Between the bedding Glen puts down for them, and what they add to the mix, the "floor" of the corrals gets mighty thick by springtime. If it didn't get cleaned out every year, the cattle would soon be able to walk out over the fences, and have to duck to get into the barns.

Hence, the barn cleaning days in the fall. It's done in the fall because the manure is spread over crop ground as fertilizer and you can't do that until this year's crop is harvested. There are several barn cleaning outfits around, but as we've only recently got into cattle, we're not a long- standing customer. It leaves us pretty low on the list.

Oh well, the job is all but done now, and Glen says that renting the tractor wasn't any more expensive than hiring the job done. Glen did the loading, and Mick was home for the weekend so he did the hauling .... and thank goodness the wind was blowing east! It's hard to imagine - or describe - the smell that comes from stirring up several months off manure. Suffice it to say that you do not want the wind blowing that kind of perfume toward your house!

I wasn't needed out there (another THANK GOODNESS!) so I stayed inside and baked up a storm. Mitchell had been hinting that his room mate's mother sure sent a lot of goodies all the time so, with my reputation at stake, I sent him off this afternoon with pies, cinnamon buns and chocolate cookies. That ought to keep a couple of teen aged boys for a day, or maybe two, even.

It's a Pretty World Out There

It's always a quandry what to do on my Saturday off. There's never any shortage of things to do, I just have to decide which of the zillion things that need doing are going to get done this time around.

My original plan for today was to head down to Estevan (about a hundred miles away) to an auction sale of flooring materials. We have made the decision that the 23 year old carpet has to go and that we're going to replace it with hardwood, but nothing further has been done. As we live approximately 100 to 150 miles from any kind of major retailer, shopping for this kind of purchase isn't that easy. We may well buy from the local lumber yard, but before I spend that kind of money I want to see lots of samples of what there is out there for choices; something a small local business has a hard time providing.

The first look out the windows this morning kind of stalled my plans for travelling - the fog was so thick I couldn't see beyond the garden which is only about 50 metres from the house. Not very good driving conditions. I decided to check on the Internet if this company was liable to have another sale anytime soon - if they are they don't have any mention of it up yet. But, by this time, the sun had broken through the clouds and it was dazzling outside .... maybe I would go after all.

Then again, maybe I wouldn't .... it only made sense to take the truck, just in case there was a fantastic deal on the 350 square feet of flooring we will need for this job, but when I went to get the truck I found it full of fencing equipment and hooked on to a feed mix mill. This time I gave up on the trip. By the time I had everything ready to go the sale would be over. Glen just called to say that the roads were extremely slippery so I guess I made the right decision.

He has been busy this past week working on oil lease sites so the fall work around here has stalled out. He and Jesse did manage to get the calves all vaccinated and the herd all ear tagged, and then moved out on the last of the ungrazed stubble last Monday. That was a big job off his list of things to do, but the barns and corrals need to be cleaned out before the cattle are in for the winter. We're hoping that the cleaners can come this week. The ground isn't frozen yet, but it won't be long now.

So, here I sit with my morning cup of coffee - laundry on the go, a pot of home made soup brewing, and a batch of cookies started. If we're not going to get this flooring down in time for Christmas I better see what I can do about getting some carpets cleaned. The plans for this year's gathering are bigger than most and I think we're going to have quite the houseful between the 23rd and New Year's Day. The carpet better be clean because people will be sitting on it!

It Can Snow Now

It's not that we want it to snow now, but Glen finally finished his last 40 acres of oats Tuesday night so percipitation in any form wouldn't be as unwelcome now as it would have been last week. There are still a few others out there trying to finish up, but the end is definitely in sight. I'm afraid the northeastern quarter of Saskatchewan's crop land can't say the same thing. They got tons of rain at summer's end and a lot of their crop is still in standing water. A couple of guys from this area were through there last week to go moose hunting and said the best thing that could happen for farmers up there is a hard freeze with no snow. Then the ground would be firm enough to hold the machinery and they could get the crop off. I don't envy them the job. In 1985 and 1986 we worked under the same conditions - it was terrible. People literally pulled combines apart trying to get them unstuck.

Glen's next big project is to get his calves weaned. Every spare minute this fall he's been putting up fence so that he can let the cattle graze on the crop stubble. He's down to putting the gates in and we're ready for another one of those fun family rodeos where we move, sort, and separate cattle and nobody's on speaking terms for an hour or two afterwards. I don't know why it has to be like that, but it makes life interesting.

I've been noticing in the farm papers lately that quite a few of the stories featured are using the words "farm crisis" again. It's too bad that they can't find something else to call it because once people have heard the same thing over and over so many times, they get immune to it. "Farm crisis" isn't a cliche and shouldn't be treated like one. The people who grow the food in this country should have earned respect for their work, not derision or indifference.

One farmer who was interviewed compared his returns on the crops he's grown over the past 31 years. The prices he's sold different grains for were all down, in some cases by more than half. On the other hand, what he pays for fuel is up over 80%, fertilizer is triple, seed - the same. It doesn't take Eintstein to figure out how their finances look. How can they continue? They can't. Who's going to take over? Nobody in their right mind.

The writer of one article pointed out that the people who were in trouble had off farm income and had diversified their operation years ago to stay viable, and yet, it isn't enough. A few years ago I was at a seminar where a speaker from rural Saskatchewan got up and said that in 25 years this province would be down to maybe a dozen towns outside of the main cities. This was like a kick in the stomach to me, although I can see we are certainly headed in that direction, I didn't want to believe it could happen in my lifetime. I'm not so sure any more.

I have this pet theory of my own though: Saskatchewan was settled when the government offered fantastic deals on land out here - as long as people came out and settled it in person. It took this land from a barren, undeveloped prairie to a bustling place of commerce in one generation. There was a farmer and his family on almost every section of land and a town with full services every ten miles! Give it another hundred years and I predict that they'll be offering homesteading rights all over again.

Indian Summer

I suppose it's not politically correct to call this lovely time of the year "Indian" summer anymore. I mean no disrespect - I love the peaceful beauty of late fall, the earth tone colours, the pungent, tangy smell of earth returning to earth.

The snow of two weeks ago has completely melted away now and Glen has fired up the combine to take in the last of his oat crop. It's a slow process this time of the year - with a fog every night, or a frost in the morning, it's usually after noon before it's dry enough to combine. He gets a few hours in and then the sun sets, and unless there is a dry wind blowing to keep the moisture off, he has to quit right away. With the days steadily getting shorter this reduces his productive hours to five or six at the most per day. He figures two more days ought to wrap up the harvest of 2005.

We had business in Brandon, Manitoba this morning - a hundred mile trip east. It was interesting to see what was still out there for crop. Almost all the cereal crops were in the bin, with the exception of a crop of late wheat that had literally been flattened by the snow. It couldn't have been closer to the ground if someone had ironed it like a shirt. It was going to be fun to pick up and combine - but it could have been worse. At least this had all gone down it the same direction, as long as the farmer picks it up "against the grain" he'll do alright. Crop that gets flattened by the wind tends to be all tangled in many directions. That makes for a real mess.

There were lots of sunflowers to harvest yet, but until intense cold kills those plants, they're not ready to go. There was also a field of corn being made into silage for cattle feed, and one field had a late cut of green hay down in windrows. We both wondered how long it took hay to cure up at this time of year - you can't bale wet hay or it just rots.

There's a farm we pass when we head east that Glen always points to and says, "That guy has more money than God." My comment is that I don't think God measures riches in money, but that's not what Glen is talking about, anyway.

There is nothing remarkable about this farm in the material sense, in fact, it's just the opposite. The tractors are well perserved older models, the other machinery, likewise. Glen's point is that this man didn't have to have the newest and the biggest and the best. He didn't worry that his neighbour had newer iron and fresher paint. He went along at his own pace and did his own thing, and probably he has a bank account that would make his neighbours weep with envy.

It is a mystery to us how some people do the big flashy farming thing. When combines and tractors cost a half million dollars each, and sprayers run up to $100,000.00 how can people afford to have them? Truth is; they probably don't - have them, I mean. They probably just lease them.

It's likely pretty old fashioned of us, but we wouldn't be comfortable with not owning the tools we need to farm. We may only have old equipment and a few quarters of land - almost a joke in today's arena of Agribusiness, but we own every piece of rusty iron, every square foot of soil. Certainly the profits to be made on such an operation are going to be much smaller, but the trick is: we get to keep all of them. At this point in our lives, that is much more satisfying than big iron and shiney new paint.

Giving Thanks

What a weekend! I know we've only had a month to get used to having the house all to ourselves, so one would think filling the place up with family for a few days wouldn't be so exhausting, but I have to admit there was a fair share of relief in the air as I bid them all farewell this morning. A two year old and a set of 3 month old twins bring with them a lot of clutter and maintain a noise level that we're just not used to. Not that it wasn't great to have them here - I could cuddle and rock babies all day long (in fact, that's pretty well what I did yesterday).

My side of the family takes turns hosting the meals for the big holidays - what I call "staging the feast". This year we celebrated Thanksgiving here on Saturday because it was the only day that Jesse could join us. The crowd was quite a managable size for a change - only 18 of us, not including the baby boys. I never take on the job of a big family meal without remembering how my mother revelled in the role of hostess. I imagine she probably felt overwhelmed with all the people and food too, but I never saw it. She always looked the picture of poise and graciousness ... what I'm usually looking for is a glass of wine to calm my rattled nerves!

Ah well, it comes and it goes and everyone goes home happy and filled. The men talked sports and farming in the livingroom after the meal, and we women did the dishes and held babies and conversed in the kitchen. Glen got called early that morning to go to work so he missed the whole thing. He had turned down two days earlier because he had arranged to get his feeder steers off to market and wanted to be at the sale to see how they compared to other animals in the same category. He had never "fed out" beef animals for sale before and wanted to know what the buyers were looking for.

He and Jesse attended to auction in Melita, Manitoba on Friday morning and came home very happy. For someone who didn't know what he was doing, he had received top dollar and top grade for all but a few of the animals he had shipped. These were last year's calves that we had kept too long to sell as calves, waiting for the border to open last winter. Once they make it over a certain size and weight you lose money on them if you try to sell them as calves, so Glen was forced to bring them in off grazing pasture and feed them grain to fatten them up for the slaughter market. He tells me that we doubled the money we got for them by carrying pails of chop all summer. Nice pay for what the grain costs us.

Our neck of the woods got a huge dump of snow last week - there is still some laying around on the green green grass ( a startling contrast of colours) - and then it rained after that. What Glen has been doing at work is moving an oil rig. When it gets wet and mucky like it is right now, that means chaining those heavy rig trucks to Cats and pulling them where they need to go. I've never been present for this, but judging from the way his clothes look, it's messy business and just wrecks roads. Today he is gone again to push the sludge off the well site and spread gravel on the roads so that other vehicles can get around without sinking out of sight. This is the third day in a row that he's said he wouldn't be long and then doesn't come back for ten to twelve hours. Today he was pretty impressed that it was going to be double time and a half - farmers don't ever get that kind of pay!

And I'm sitting in my quiet house, doing laundry, catching up on my blog, and giving Thanks - both for the noise while it was here, and the quiet, now that they're gone.

Stacking Bales

This morning we woke up to another day, just like yesterday. The temperature was almost balmy - shirtsleeve weather. I had heard rumours that it wasn't supposed to last so we tuned in to the Weather Channel while we drank our morning coffee. Sure enough, there was cold on the way, and even snow and freezing rain across the northern prairies. We haven't been wasting this lovely fall weather, but that forecast stepped up the urgency of getting some of these fall jobs done.

Glen had hired someone with a bale hauling truck to come and move the bales home for us. We have a small trailer that Glen modified out of an old truck box and hoist, but it only moves ten bales at a time and requires a tractor and loader to load it, and someone to drive them home and dump them. With Mitchell away from home now this method is very time consuming for just Glen to manage on his own. He figured that the money would be well spent to just have them delivered to the yard. The guy came this morning and hauled bales all day, with Glen stacking each load tightly together while the trucker went for the next load. They still have another full day's work to go tomorrow to get the job done, but it will be a big one off the fall list of things to do.

Jesse had a couple days off this week so she came home and helped her dad move cattle to new pasture and build more fence. Of the four kids, she is definitely the farmer in the bunch. She is making plans to go to university next fall and work towards an Ag degree - something to keep her busy and gainfully employed until Mom and Dad are ready to retire. Glen still has more fencing to do and the barns need cleaning out before the cattle are in for the winter, the watering bowls have to be winterized and calves have to be weaned. He gets tired just thinking about all the jobs to be done.

I spent the weekend washing my new windows and cleaning up after their installation. It is fantastic to be able to see through the glass again! It looks like I'll have to get a wider type of trim for around the windows - which means painting, something I hadn't been counting on, but hopefully I can get it all done before freeze up. With all the kids out on their own, I've been trying to make the extra bedrooms look like guest rooms, not teenager hangouts. It's been quite a challenge - especially Jesse's room. She must have tacked or taped up hundreds of posters and photos throughout her teens. I have washed down the walls, now they need crack filling and probably two coats of paint. Sure hope she has kids some day - I'm going to make a point of encouraging her children to decorate their rooms freely. It was the best revenge I could think of as I scraped a hundred little glow-in-the-dark stars off her ceiling this afternoon.

I also re-potted my house plants today - a job I've been putting off for at least a year. It's a miracle that the poor things are still alive. The temperature had dropped a lot throughout the day so my hands were nearly frozen and I'm sure the house plants were glad to get back inside, but there still hasn't been a killing frost so my outdoor flowerbeds are still blooming - in some cases they are prettier now than they were in July. It's a crazy place we live - last year frost took everything - crops, gardens, everything - on August 20th, and here we are a year later on the second of October and plants are still green and growing. I'm afraid I might end up having to cut the lawn one more time.

Glen is sure tuckered out tonight. He was on an open tractor all day - out in the wind and working steady to stay ahead of the trucker. He says his knees are played right out with all the braking and clutching he had to do to stack the bales. I was out to take a look just before dark - he's done a nice job - all the bales are in tight to each other so that, as much as possible, the rain and snow won't have a chance to get to get in and rot the feed. He asked me to make sure he didn't bale straw next year - he has enough for two years ahead at the moment. It's hard not to reap in the harvest when it's there; you never know what next year might bring, on the other hand, after a while you just don't have the room to stack them, and can't use them up before they rot, anyway.

Golden days

You should see the trees these days! Outside my office window the maples are an array of brilliant oranges and the poplar leaves are discs of gold, set against the backdrop of a September blue sky and on a foreground of lush, green grass. It's a shame to be inside.

I've been trying to use this Sunday wisely - my way of making up for not getting to church this morning. There are so many jobs that don't get done with the day-to-day grind. Glen has been getting quite a few hours in at work this past week or so, but even though he does a ten hour day on a Cat, he still has to grind grain for the steers once a week, and feed them twice a day. He has more baling to do, if the weather allows, and all kinds of bales to haul home and stack, as well 100 acres of oats to harvest when they're ready. He has also been trying to get a last mile of fence up so that we can put our two herds back together in new pasture. The two bulls have never laid eyes on each other yet, and we want them to be well used to each other before they go into winter captivity together.

There is a lot of power thrown around when two bulls decide to fight. Neighbours of ours had a bull fight on their hands last week - the animals rolled through fence like it was built of toothpicks. Eventually they settled down - must have decided who was the toughest - and went back life as usual, but there wasn't much a puny human being could do in the meanwhile.

We use electric fence. It's not so labour intensive to put up or maintain. It looks flimsey compared to a three strand barbed wire fence, but it doesn't need to be a fort because one bite of that current and the animals won't go near it again. We had some trouble with our north pasture last week. Glen went to check and found that the solar panel that provides the electicity had been torn down and all the wires were off. He really couldn't think of how that had happened, but I'm wondering if the moose who likes to hang out along that creek didn't decide to play with it. One toss of a moose's head and there would be major damage done.

I spent this morning "doing apples", and I have the hands to prove it (the tannic acid turns your skin brown). Glen's aunt has been busy picking apples and giving them away for the last three weeks. I love these apples - I have trees of my own, but nothing compares to Granny's apples for baking. The trees they come from were planted close to a century ago and tended by a tiny little woman who I always think of as I prepare and preserve their fruit. I've tried to start my own from their seed, but so far, with no success.

I'm also trying to get the yard cleaned up before it gets any colder, and get ready for when the carpenters come to replace five windows next week. At least I have a good excuse to not wash windows this fall - not that any amount of washing has helped this past few years, the seals have all been broken and moisture has made a mess between the panes of glass. It will be so nice to have good windows again!

It seems strange now that there is just the two of us here. I moved Mitchell in to Brandon last weekend, and with that, Glen and I start a new part of our lives. The food bill is going to drop drastically, and I'll be able to cut back on the Internet package we use - I won't use a quarter of the time he did - but it's the little things that I've noticed that makes it feel different, like when it's bedtime, we turn out all the lights because there's no one to come after us. It's weird.

Late Mornings; Early Nights

I know that the days have been getting shorter since the third week of June, but , all of a sudden, it's dark by 7:00 and barely light at 5:30! In no time at all we'll be down to winter hours.

The short sunshine hours take a big slice out of a harvesting day. Even if the weather is clear and the sun shines all day, the dew on the grass makes the crops too tough to combine by the time the sun goes down, and it takes until noon most days to dry the windrows enough to go again. The only thing that stretches the conditions out longer is a strong, warm wind that keeps the moisture off. The more crop farmers can get off before September starts, the better.

We have our rye in the bin and Glen has been combining the barley today. Mitchell spent the afternoon cutting the last of the oats we grew for greenfeed (to be baled for the cattle) and I tried to give the lawn what I hope is the last cut of the season.

We had our house full to overflowing this past weekend with our son and daughter-in-law home with their three children ( a two year old girl and three month old twin boys). Jacqui's parents and grandmother from Australia were also visiting for the five days and on Sunday, after a triple baptism, we had a sort of "come and go" meal so that friends and family could come out to see the babies. I think, all tolled, there were 37 people here throughout the day. It was a good day, but it was really good to go to bed that night!

The last of the company left this morning and we got back to work around here. While the men did field work today I tried to think of what Mitchell will need for his first apartment as he moves out on his own this weekend. The fellow he's sharing a small apartment with is already moved in and has started tech school. Mick is going to try out for Emergency Services Training School but won't know if he's made it until early next year. Meanwhile he's looking for gainful employment; his last day at the local Coop grocery store was last Saturday.

Brandon is only 100 miles away, and I thought we might see a lot of this last kid on weekends, but with the price of fuel the way it is, we'll be lucky to see him at all. It is just obscene what it costs to fill up a fuel tank these days, and before you agree with me, think of a farmer's plight. A combine alone can easily burn $600.00 worth a day. Add to that the grain trucks that haul the grain, the tractors that till the soil, the sprayers and swathers - the fuel bill of an average sized farm climbs into the tens of thousands of dollars just to get the job done.

We always listen to the market report at lunch time - although what we hear probably gives us indigestion: in less than a minute, they speel off the prices of fuel and grain commodities; the fuel continually goes up and the grain prices are pathetic. I honestly wonder how most farmers are surviving these days. I know when I spilled a little diesel fuel this afternoon, I felt like I'd committed a crime.

By this time next week, Glen and I will be empty nesters. Over the past month, as he has been preparing to leave, I've been on a mental journey of my own. I am the first to say it's time for him to step out on his own, but I just can't seem to let him do it without non-stop advice and/or warnings. I have been living this "mission to mother" for so long I don't know how to shut it off. He'll be fine - and eventually, I'm sure, so will I.

There's no time like fall

Autumn is my favourite season - you just can't beat the sights and sounds and smells of this season. I know, I know, it's not technically fall yet; people constantly remind me that the first day of fall doesn't happen until the third week in September, but they're only fooling themselves - summer is fading fast.

The crops are in all different stages of ripeness. We finished harvesting our fall rye yesterday and Glen spent today out cutting 80 acres of barley and then went on to start a field of oats. With the heat we had today it won't be long before we'll be combining the barley. Everything will be ready at the same time from then on.

Glen tried an experiment this spring. He's got about 200 acres that he sowed with two different kinds of seed. On about 120 acres he sowed fall rye with the cover crop of oats so that when the oats were harvested the rye, which would still be green, could provide fall grazing for the cattle. As he cuts the oats he is quite pleased with the successful growth of the rye underneath. It will need a good rain to really do well, but it's more to eat than the cows would have had with just the oats stubble. On the remaining 80 acres he planted perennial grass and alphalfa - next year's hay field. This, too, has done well. I can see this fall is going to involve a lot of stringing fence wire, and with the last of our kids leaving home in two weeks time, it also looks like I'm about to enter into an outdoor fitness program/ marriage compatibility test. We haven't really worked together since the kids were old enough to help - this could be interesting.

Or, maybe he's mellowed over the years - it was just him and me today, and it was kind fo nice. He hauled in the last truckloads of rye and went off to swath barley. I had planned to do house cleaning all day to get ready for company on the long weekend. My plans were modified a bit when I discovered that one of our deepfreezes in the basement had given up the ghost a day or two ago. Thank goodness I caught it when I did or we would have lost everything in it. As it was, a good portion of the meat was not thawed out yet and could be saved, but all the baking, vegetables, and stuff like frozen pizzas were off to the garbage before they started to stink.

My day was busy, but I still had time to go out to the field with lunch, and fresh cookies and coffee later in the day. We have neighbours going full bore; their trucks roaring past our place all day long - all night too, if the weather allows it. There was a time that we farmed like that too; with every year that goes by we're more glad we don't run in that rat race anymore.

My house smells like apple pie - made with fruit fresh from the tree. The seed pods on the carraganna are popping in the August heat. Suppers are daily feasts of corn-on-the-cob, new potatoes, and fresh garden cucumbers. And when the breeze is from the east, the scent of this year's hay crop fills the yard. I enjoy all the seasons, but I love autumn the best.

Summer winding down

This is the first day in ages that I've had time to even get near my computer. It's a busy time of year, and this year seems busier than most.

We travelled to Calgary last week to attend my brother's wedding. They had a wonderful day - the weather was perfect and lots of friends and family were able to share the day with them. There was a little bit of suspense for a while at the church as the bride was 20 minutes late getting there, but everything turned out fine. That city is growing so fast that I think it expands overnight. City planners just can't keep up with how to move the exploding growth in traffic numbers. It's a great place to visit, but Glen and I were more than glad to get back to the quiet backwaters of rural Saskatchewan. At least life's pace doesn't make a person dizzy out here.

Glen works part time as a Cat operator for a company that does oilfield maintenance in the area. This spring one company has opened up a whole new oilfield just a few miles east of here, just into Manitoba. It's amazing how many wells they've drilled over the past months, and they haven't been easy holes either. There has been so much rain that preparing well sites (scraping a level work area and building a dike around it to contain any spills that may occur) has been next to impossible at times. I'm sure that the work would have been put on hold till things dried up except that the price of oil is so high that they can afford the extra costs involved. As well, the crude coming from this field is premium stuff and much easier to refine. Glen and I own the mineral rights to three quarters only 10 miles west of the action, and we dream of them some day moving the action this way. We have two more kids to put through school - how those oil dollars would help with those bills!

A few days before we left for the wedding one of the drilling rigs southeast of here hit a pocket of gas and water on the way down. Once a hole had been poked into this formation, the pressure it was under forced the gas and water to the surface in a 20 foot geyser. No one was hurt, but they couldn't stop it either. There was another well blowout at Brooks, Alberta last week that erupted in fire and sour gas killing one worker - as far as blowouts go, this is more the norm, but the emergency crew that came from Alberta to seal this one off said this was dangerous enough too. At least when the escaping gas is on fire you know where it is and that it's being burnt off. With this well they had to rely on moniters to tell them what they were dealing with.

The crew that Glen works for weas there around the clock "squeezing" the lease (pushing up dirt and mud to build a wall that edged the water away from the work area so that the crew could stop the flow. The rig never did hit the ground, but with the instability of the ground around it, it developed a 15 degree lean. They had it tethered to a huge winch truck which was anchored to a Cat. Glen was super impressed with the professionalism of the crew from Alberta and was pretty disappointed that he had to leave for the wedding - he wanted to see the job through to the end. He says that if he were 30 years younger he'd be off to sign up for that kind of work in a flash. I think it's a testosterone thing myself.

Since we've returned he's been getting ready for harvest. The rye is almost ready to cut, and he's trying to decide whether to cut barley for green feed, or not. When he planted it he planned to combine it for feed grain, but it was so wet this summer it never got sprayed for weeds so it is a mess of all kinds of vegetation. It would make better bales than grain, but we already have enough feed up to last us two years, and from the amount of bales we saw on the trip out west, there won't be a market for hay sales either. He's still debating what to do.

And I'm two weeks behind in yard work: holidays do that to a person. Guess I'd better get back to work here.

The Dog Days of Summer

I know that the expression of "dog days of summer" comes from the position of Sirius, the dog star, during the summer months, but we've been having more than our usual share of dogs this summer.

Like any normal farm we have a large breed dog to discourage animals like skunks and raccoons from moving into the yard, and to act as a guard dog in our absences. We have a fondness for Black Labs; the one we have now is our fourth or fifth in two decades. He is big and old but usually good tempered. Our daughter has recently got herself a small terrier pup who just wants to be friends with everybody. Our dog is not impressed and tries to stay out of Fred's way as much as possible while they are out to the farm.

We've been Fred sitting since Wednesday while Sandy attended a wedding in Saskatoon. He's a pretty high maintainence job compared to a farm dog - I don't dare let him out on his own. He'd either run off and be a coyote snack by sundown, or he'd push Chubby to justifiable puppycide. I don't want to have to explain either to his owner. She should be back to pick him up in the next hour or so and we can go back to normal around here.

Glen is off to bale greenfeed this afternoon, Mitchell headed up to the waterslides at Kenosee Lake with a bunch of friends, and I've got the place to myself. I love it when that happens. I'm trying to catch up on the laundry that has been piling up while our water system in the house has been slowly dying.

On the farm we don't pay a water and sewer bill, but that's not to say that these things come free. We have our own well, but we had to locate a source of water and pay to have it dug and installed out of our own pocket. Same goes for sewage - the whole system is installed and paid for at the owner's expense. Once it's paid for, of course, it's clear sailing - that is until something goes wrong. There is no calling up the municipal service provider and saying "Come fix it." It's go figure out what's wrong, buy what you need for repairs, and in our case, Glen does the work himself.

Our old well caved in over a year ago, and although a new one was dug and we had plenty of water, the dirt and sand that got into the system at the time has created havoc with every single aspect of our water system. Friday was the big day when Glen and Mitchell tore out everything - pressure pump, pressure tank, and hot water heater - and put all new in. It was a long, hard day, but what a difference! You don't know what a luxury it is to take a shower and have the water temperature and pressure stay the same for the whole time. Glen was teasing me that it was kind of boring, but I can live with that kind of boring.

They went the extra mile and rearranged the water system appliances and set them all up on stands so that any maintainence needed will be much easier to do. It was a huge job and took both of them all day from 9:00 in the morning to almost midnight. With the hard work and the heat of the day their goal was simple - to be able to shower before they went to bed.

There are a lot of cattle out there ...

We spent this past weekend building a deck and set of steps onto our son's house just out of Winnipeg. You wouldn't believe the mosquito population there is on the prairies at the moment - and Winnipeg is widely accepted as the mosquito capital of Canada. Trying to work outdoors with hordes of blood-sucking insects decending on any exposed flesh was an ugly experience! And the weather! It was so hot ... and so humid ... we prairie dwellers just aren't built for humidex factors. Wind chill in the winter time we understand, humidex in the summer is like speaking Greek. What I do know is that I never want to go through that again. At night we set their big portable fan so that it blew directly on the bed and threw the covers on the floor.

The mosquitos and the humidity are both due to all the rain we've been having. Who ever is in control of the tap up there just can't seem to get it turned off. There is STILL water laying in the yard. I can't cut almost half of what I normally do in our yard, and everywhere that water sits still mosquitos thrive and multiply. I was talking to my sister in Calgary this morning, and even they are complaining about the mosquitos this summer. Calgary is usually pretty well bug free.

There is another population that is much higher than it used to be. On the trip in to the city, and again on the way out, I was struck with how many cattle there are these days. I have read somewhere how much the Canadian herd has increased by since BSE - I can't remember the percentage but it was impressive. Even knowing that, seeing the countless animals in fields along the road we travelled was still thought provoking. You have to wonder where we are headed? I firmly believe that Canada will come out of BSE ahead. Absolutely ahead of where we were before BSE, and I'm betting ahead of the USA when all the dust settles.

True, we've been unable to sell our cattle into the states, but that has forced us to finish our own animals, butcher our own animals, improve the testing we do, be ready to show our results to demanding markets, and step up production on all fronts. It has involved a lot of growing pains but we are way ahead of the game now. No one on this side of the border believes that the recent proven case of BSE found in Texas was their first, it's just the first one they couldn't deny. It leaves them looking like they're playing a defensive game - I think Canada has building a good solid offence for two years now.

Life and Death on the Farm

Sometimes living this close to Nature has its draw-backs. While we get to be first hand witnesses of Mother Nature in her bounty - the birth and renewal of the land each spring, and the new generation of babies, be they calves, colts, puppies or kittens - we are also on hand at the other end of life when things are not so sweet and wonderful. I think it gives us balance, and makes us a more thoughtful people.

Friday afternoon our neighbour phoned me at work to say we had a cow in trouble out on the pasture. They had driven past and at first thought she was already dead, but then had seen her move and had gone in to see what could be done. The problem was a labour gone wrong, a calf half born and dead, and the mother not far behind. He had been unequipped to help her and had tried to find Glen to tell him of the problem, but there was no one around.

I knew where Glen was - running CAT building an oil lease a dozen miles away - but with no cell phone reception there was no way to ask him what he wanted done. We've talked about lots of other scenarios that might come up, but never this one. What was the right thing to do?

As work was really slow, I was able to drive out to where Glen was working, thinking he could probably spare the hour that was needed to do what ever was needed, but when I got there the big trucks were just starting to roll in. They were about to tow an oil rig in through the mud and would need all four CATs to accomplish to job. He couldn't leave. His advice was, if she was that far gone, put her out of her misery. "Go home and shoot her" he said.

I grew up on a farm but never had any interest in guns. Dad had one, of course, to use against skunks trying to set up house under his grain bins, or raccoons destroying Mom's garden, and for times like this when an animal needed to be put down, but I had never had anything to do with it. I couldn't spare any more time off work so I went back to town and hoped that she was already gone. Having the vet come out to take a look at her was going to cost more than she was worth. With what BSE has done to cattle prices, a guy just can't afford a vet call unless he's sure that the animal can be saved and go on to be profitable. The neighbour's evaluation hadn't even hinted at that being the case.

I came straight home from work and went directly to the pasture to see what I could see. My heart sunk when I saw she was still moving - poor girl! The boys went up to assess the situation and soon it was all over. Glen had spent the rest of the day trying to figure out which cow it was. I hadn't thought we had anybody up there that hadn't already had her calf, but he said there was one. As far as he was concerned though, she was a long way from being ready and should have been big enough not to have any problems. As it turned out, it was a young heifer who we didn't even know was pregnant. Glen went up last night to bury the dead one and take a good long look at the rest to see if there were any other surprises to watch for. He thinks we're safe with the rest, but he'll keep an eye on them anyway.

It's never easy when something dies. You try to take care of your animals as best you can, but sometimes "taking care of them" means taking care that they don't suffer.

Water ! Water ! Everywhere ...

I think most people's idea of the prairies is barren and dry grasslands. If they were airlifted into our neighbourhood this month they would have a hard time orienting themselves. Oh, we have grass - that much is true - but at the moment it's lush green grass, and it harbours a mosquito population that is right off the charts.

It's much closer to the mark to describe the prairies as a place of extremes. We can have bitter, bitter cold in the winter and blazing heat in the summer. Likewise, dry in any season is not uncommon, but we can also get tons of snow in the winter and plentiful rains in the summer. Then there's this year - I think we passed "plentiful" a couple weeks ago, and are now well past "soggy".

We travelled to Dauphin, Manitoba last weekend for a family wedding. It's about a 4 1/2 hour drive northeast of here and the whole trip showed us water laying in the fields and ditches. There was crop under water and fields too wet to seed or spray. Due to family circumstances (our daughter-in-law went into labour) our trip took us into Winnepeg the next day to see a gorgeous set of twin boys born seven weeks early but doing very well. As we travelled east it was hard to believe that the land just kept getting wetter and wetter. There was field after field where the farmers had driven through the mud trying to create a run-off path for the water with the tracks of their tractors. If it had worked I'd hate to think of how much water had been there when they started. There was still water laying everywhere, but now it had a double set of ruts every 100 feet or so.

And the mosquitos! Public Health agencies have been educating us for years about the dangers of having stagnant water laying around for mosquitos to incubate in. With West Nile Virus a proven threat on the prairies we've heard even more about it lately. I wonder what they think we're going to be able to do about it - if there was a way of getting rid of the excess water, the farmers would have done it long ago.

The other aspect to prairie weather is the force it's delivered with. In the winter it's blizzards - cold, howling winds, and blinding snow that can go on for days, and in the summer this is the place to see thunderstorms second to none. I'd never given this much thought until, a few years ago, I was talking to a girl I went to school with who now lives in B.C. She was home to visit her parents and was so happy that her teenaged daughter had had the chance to witness a thunderstorm the night before. She said it was something she really missed, living where there was lots of rain, but seldom any storms. I'm sure I would too - I love the noise and the light show of a big storm. I guess prairie poeple are of the extreme nature too.

Plans For An Ark?

We saw the sun today - it's been like forever since it's shown its face. We are just 50 miles northeast of Melita, Manitoba where they got from 5 to 12 inches of rain in one day and small tornados touched down last week, and only 12 miles southeast of a 7 inch rainfall happened last Saturday afternoon. Compared to these places, we would have to consider ourselves high and dry, but if this is dry I'd sure hate to be them.

Most of our yard is under at least a few inches of water. I have cut grass up around the house a couple of times this spring, but the lower area where my garden is, (this year it looks more like a duck pond) is nothing but over long grass and mosquito habitat. The sump pump in the basement has been running steady for weeks, and the creek which normally only runs in the early spring with snow-melt runoff is flowing again.

The gravel roads are a mess of potholes and slippery mud and huge places in the fields are under water. Glen had just finished fertilizing 80 acres to plant flax in when this flood started, but if (or when) it ever dries up enough to be able to seed that ground he'll be implementing "Plan B" which is to plant a much faster maturing crop like oats, or something he can cut for cattle feed. If it goes that far "Plan C" is a fall seeded crop like fall rye or winter wheat. If he didn't have all that expensive fertilizer in already he'd probably go with summerfallow.

We gave up watching the Weather Channel because it was never good news so i don't know what we can expect this coming week. I know that I have bedding plants that are going to rot in their trays if I don't get them out soon. I did get some in the ground on Monday night. For some reason that night the mosquitos left me alone and I worked as long as I could before it got too dark. I don't look forward to the next go round; with all this water and a few warm days the bug population is exploding with every passing minute.

At least the cattle have been moved out to pasture now, and Glen has spent two days trying to track down the drain on his electric fencer. He's got it up to 3/4 strength now - not that it matters - the cows have all tried it when it was really putting out and they remember it's not something they want to touch again. By Sunday night our new bull will be delivered and cattle duties will be done, except for the odd check, until late in the fall.

And the Rain Comes Down

Once it's "farming time" in the spring, when Glen can actually get out and work in the fields, the daily schedule of chores and meals becomes a thing of guesswork. During the winter our evening meal is usually around the 6:00 mark, but the rest of the year it can be anywhere from 5:30 when I get home from work, to 8:30 when he gets done whatever he was doing. It makes planning meals a bit of a challenge, but we survive.

Tonight it was decided that supper would be best at 7:00. Glen had some temporary fenceline he wanted to move so he went off to roll wire for an hour or two. This left me to figure out which of the jobs I had to do would best fit into the same time frame. Two weeks ago I visited my sister's greenhouse and came home with a trunk full of bedding plants which have been waiting on the deck for their place in the sun ever since. Monday evening had been an absolutely perfect night to work outside and I had weeded for two hours before supper and at least an hour afterward. All I needed was another day like that and I would be ready to put the plants in, so I decided that's where my time was best spent.

It didn't take long for me to rethink that one! All it took was a walk across the lawn to pick asparagas and my evening plans were modified to something I could do inside - away from the hordes of mosquitoes that weren't there two days ago. I bee-lined it right back to the house and started cooking. The plants would have to wait.

As it happens, the Weather Channel's prediction of thunderstorms and heavy rainfall rolling up from North Dakota was right on the mark, so even without the bugs I wouldn't have lasted long. Although most people are done seeding, there are still a few acres left to be sowed. Glen has about 80 acres of flax to put in, and then maybe 60 of grass for pasture land. It sure would have been nice to get this rain on the land after the seed was in the ground, but we'll get done eventually.

I'm told that this weekend we will be "working cattle". This means bringing them all into the big corral and sorting the herd. That sounds pretty tame to what really takes place ... we have two bulls now and since the youngers cows and heifers are daughters of the older bull, they have to be sorted out to go with the new bull, so first we cram them all together and then split them into groups in different pens. There's anxious cows calling for their calves, calves bawling for the mamas, yearlings bucking and kicking up their heels in the confusion, and a farmer who expects me to be able to read his mind. The whole preformance is very upsetting for the cattle - and it usually takes our marriage a while to recover, as well.

To make things a little more tricky this year one of our pens is full of feeder steers. These are last year's calves that we ended up keeping too long thinking the border was going to open. Now we won't get our money out of them unless they are up to butcher weight when we sell them. Glen has heard about a small packing plant which only buys unmedicated animals and is trying to find where it is and if they are looking for a supplier. We aren't registered as organic farmers but there are only two animals in our herd which have been treated with drugs. If there's a market out there that will pay a premium for that kind of meat, we can certainly supply it.

A Holiday Weekend ?

As I turned out of town tonight on my way home from work I met the first in a long line of campers headed out for the long weekend. There was a time when I would have felt anger and frustration at the sight. Why did everyone else get to take a weekend off? Farming ties us down for every holiday all summer long. In May we're still seeding, the 1st of July we're spraying, August it's either swathing or combining, and September it's harvest for sure. I would feel cheated for myself and the kids, but the farm always came first.

I guess I've mellowed with age because when I saw the campers tonight it was with no emotion at all - they were just the type of traffic that was going past. In fact, it took me a minute to remember that it was a holiday weekend. Those people heading off to campgrounds were welcome to them - I was quite content to keep the home fires burning instead. I wonder when my attitude changed?

We hope to get some seeding done in the next day or two but rain threatens again. It's not real late yet, but it sure would be nice to get the crop in the ground. My garden is nothing but swamp and I think I may just not plant one this year. I put the seeds into mud last year and it was a total disaster.

We've had a young city girl from Quebec staying with us this past week. She is a participant in the Katimavik program and is spending nine months discovering different parts of Canada. It's been a great learning experience for both of us - to view our country through another person's eyes. By the time her billet ends on Monday she will have bottle fed a calf, hunted for baby kittens in a hay stack, toasted marshmallows over a fire in our front yard, feasted on chicken wings at a local bar, and been treated to a day in the city to visit a Wallmart (because she hasn't seen one in SOOO long) to name a few of her experiences. So far she has been most pleased to have avoided woodticks - for which she is very thankful.

I'd love, someday, to go visit her in her home town. It would take more than a long weekend for that, but it would be more the kind of holiday I would want to take at this stage of my life. Maybe that's why the campers didn't bother me today - I have developed a different taste in holidays.

Still no Sunshine

It's the weekend again. I had hoped to get out into the yard and get to work on lawn and garden, but it's barely above freezing this morning. I think it looks like another inside kind of day.

Our main calving season is over for the year. There are still cows to calve but it will be later in the summer. If a farmer has a choice, he would rather have it all done within one month but there are always the stragglers. It's much more efficient to have the whole calf crop all the same size and weight when you go to sell them in the fall. This year we have four or five smaller ones from last year we have to keep separate from the older ones, and next year it will be the same. A major factor in why we have the late cows is that they are old and should have been culled from the herd, but with BSE they are in kind of limbo.

We have had all kinds of moisture in the past week - some of it in snow. The grass is growing now, at least, and the weeds are taking over my garden. Twice in the past two weeks Glen has said he will work it up and both times it has been too wet by the time he got to it. Last year it never did dry up until June and I should have just skipped the year; it was a disaster. I don't grow the huge "family feeding" garden anymore, but we still love to have the fresh vegetables when they're in season.

Some of the neighbours managed to get some crop in before the weather turned sour on us, but Glen has only just pulled his seeder up to the quonset to get it ready to go. We only have 480 acres to sow so it doesn't take long - if the weatherman co-operates. As soon as seeding is done we'll be busy fencing again. We plan to have at least another two pastures enclosed by fall.

All in all, we have a busy summer ahead of us - we have family weddings in June, July, and August, and our son and his wife are expecting twins in early summer. This morning I'd just be happy if it would just warm up enough to make it feel like summer was even going to come at all.

May Day

It's the first of May. In a perfect world it would be sunny and warm, the grass would be green and the trees would all be leafed out. Here in the real world it's cold, windy, and very little of anything is green. It has tried to snow all weekend long, although thankfully, it hasn't been too sucessful at it.

Some of the neighbours have been out planting their pea crops; it's something that can be planted early, although I'm not sure if this is because the plants are resistant to late frosts or that they need the extra time for germination. Peas are a crop that has become popular lately - since Glen and I have started moving away from growing crops, and more towards raising cattle.

I don't think there have been too many grains sowed yet, although, now that it is May things will really get rolling this week. Glen knows what he will be sowing, but is still deciding where he will put what crop. There will be a lot of work to do this next month as he wants more fence finished so that he can sort out his herd a little better and not put so many animals on a pasture at a time. So far it has been a pretty dry spring and we don't want to put too much stress on the plant life in the pastures. You have to let the grasses get a good head start before you let the cattle out to eat it. You want the animals to graze it, not kill it.

The latest government checks have started trickling out to post office boxes this past week. This is the money announced earlier this year to put money in farmer's hands so they can put their crops in. I wonder how much good it will really do. There are so many problems to do with the whole farming scene.

Low grain prices, bad weather, and insane crop input costs make a person wonder what the heck he's going to do. Sure, Ottawa is sending out some money - and it sounds like a lot in the announcement - but once it's all divided up, will it be enough to make a difference? With the price of fuel today, it will cost Glen $280.00 to fill the tractor's fuel tank every day. Hopefully, we'll be able to plant what crops we sow in five or six days, but our farm is small. What about the guys with ten times as much land? Think of what their bills will be. And that is just fuel - what about seed, fertilizer, chemical treatments?

I'm not saying that the government should be responsible for putting the crop in, because I don't believe that. Farmers don't even want that. But, on the other hand, if the agriculture industry is going to survive, we need our farms and our farmers. This week alone, I've heard of three of our younger neighbours trying to find someone to rent or buy their land. They are struggling to take care of their families and their futures - for them it means their farms have to go. I wonder how long the agriculture industry in Canada will be able withstand an almost constant exodus of it's "ground force" people before there is nothing left?

Not Another Election, Please!

The story about possible cases of BSE in the states has again dropped off the news media radar. I really don't know what to make of it. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would like to hear more, but there has been absolutely nothing for almost a week now.

The news story that just won't go away is the mud that is being unearthed at the Gomery Enquiry. I don't know why they're making such a fuss about it all. Has there been one thing come up that we didn't expect to hear? Is there even one Canadian who thought that the Cretien government was lily white? I guess, if there are points on which I was a little choked, it was the amounts of tax payer's money that was tossed around to pad the bank accounts of certain people. It is no wonder that polititains are held in such low esteme - they are hardly worthy of anthing more than scorn and contempt.

As bad as the Gomery coverage is, it's the spin-off story that has me really angry. All three opposition parties are circling the carcass, wonder when it will be safe for them to sweep in and force an election. They are not the least bit interested in what is good for the country, they just want their turn at the trough. Will a second election in less than a year do us any good? Will it change what happened in Quebec years ago? What do they have to give us that will ensure it will never happen again?

I hope that the polls keep telling them that Canadians want to hear the enquiry out. The Opposition leaders are all being very careful to sound professional and reserved, but give them half a hint that they could win an election and we'd be in the middle of a free for all again. If the pollsters call me, my answers won't be vague!

Most Interesting News

The National News tonight was most interesting. Last week there was a little blurb of a story where a former veterinarian with the USDA (U S Department of Agriculture) had come forward - in Canada - to tell of suspicious cases of downer cattle he had witnessed during his career. Cases he felt sure were BSE and that he had requested tests for but had, for one reason or another, had never received satisfactory results for.

When I first heard the story, many things went through my mind. The first thing was simply "That's no surprise to anyone." In the two years BSE has ruled the Canadian cattle industry, we've had plenty of time to think about how it is that we, with the size of the Canadian herd should have four cases, and they with their much larger herd should have none ... well except for the ones that they knew they could trace back to Canada, that is. I didn't know how it could ever be proven, but it seemed mighty suspicious that Canada was to blame for everything.

The next thing I thought of was who was this vet? And, if he did have information to blow the lid off a very serious cover-up in the U S Ag Department, was he safe?

I waited to hear more about it in the passing days, but the story seemed to drop off the map. Not so much as one word for four or five days. I began to wonder if the poor guy had been in a mysterious car accident, or something, but tonight the CBC had lots to tell. And I'm sure there'll be plenty more to come.

The story is mind boggling. If, indeed, the USDA falsified test results and hid cases of BSE, how many cases were there? The cases this vet is citing both took place in his jurisdiction in New York state; were there others? Where? How many? Were the herds they came from investigated? Or destroyed like those in Canada were? Or, was it all business as usual?

And if it was business as usual, where did the meat from these animals end up? That thought is just plain scary.

I'm sure that we haven't heard the end of this now. The US has a lot of explaining to do. If it is proven that they have been using Canada as a scapegoat while hiding cases of their own, they won't have a friend left in this world. Their credibility will be nil. And any potential markets they had for their beef will evaporate. Somehow it's easier to picture countries buying beef from a country who is known to have BSE, but is honest about it and has a superior animal tracking system to keep on top of new cases, than them wanting to buy from someone who has been proven to be dishonest and untrustworthy. If the American public decided they don't even trust their food supply, their problems will only get worse.

I guess we'll just sit back and watch how this unfolds. Two things, though, have to be said:
First - honour and integrity are not dead in this world, there's at least one guy - a retired vet from New York state - who understands the difference between right and wrong and is willing to show us uncommon courage to set the record straight.
And second - well, sometimes a bad thing turns into a good thing. Thanks to U S policy the Canadian herd has been held totally separate from the American herd for the past two years.

That Springtime Scent

Those TV commercials for laundry detergents or fabric softeners that tell us that they've managed to bottle the scent of spring always make me shake my head. I'd be willing to bet that no one will ever manage to capture the smell of spring - sure, they can make your laundry smell pretty with perfumes, but the real scent of spring? Not a chance.

That's not to say that you can't bring the smell of spring into your house. Today, not only did I have all the windows open, airing out the winter blahs, but I hung my laundry on the clothsline for the afternoon and then carried it all back in and folded it in the living room. The house doesn't smell like flowers - there are no flowers anywhere near blooming in Saskatchewan in April - but the whole house smells FRESH. The perfect ending to a day of fresh laundry is a bed made up with the same kind of freshness. I've put in a long, physical day, and I'm not far from that perfect ending.

This past week has been phenomonal. Seven days ago it looked and felt like winter. There was snow everywhere. Mother Nature must have decided it was time to turn up the thermostat because in less that one week the white stuff just disappeared. One morning the world was white, the next day there were patches of brown showing through, and after two more days, the creeks were going into flood mode. Tuesday morning we had a lake in our front yard. Water drains toward our corner of the quarter section we live on, and if the culvert under the road south of us is blocked, it takes no time at all for the to water back up and threaten to contaminate our well. We were pretty relieved later that morning when the pressure of the water managed to push through and it started to drain away. As of this morning (Saturday) the waters have receeded to our usual spring creek trickling between the house and barnyards.

We spent a few hours at an auction sale this afternoon. Glen was kind of interested in a tractor, if it would have gone cheap enough, but mostly we went because it was a beautiful day to be outside and to visit with friends and neighbours. By the size of the crowd, it would seem that everyone had the same idea.

The weather forecast is saying that we may have rain or snow tomorrow. It hardly seems possible after today - I even got a bit of a sunburn today! But, even if we do have one more turn with the white stuff, it won't last long. We don't have flowers to prove it's spring, but the birds are back. We've seen robins and meadow larks and kildeers; the crows have been back for quite a while, and great wedges of Canadian Geese fly north over us every day. I guess that means it's time to dig out the humming bird feeders - they'll be showing up next.

Sunshine on Good Friday

There's an old saying that whatever weather you get on Good Friday is what you'll have for the next forty days. Not very scientific, but we always note what the weather is - and it's usually blowing up a gale. But today is clear with bright sunshine and blue skies, although the temperature leaves a lot to be desired. It's still well below the freezing mark, but the weather guys say that it's supposed to start climbing on Sunday. Let's hope they've got that right.

So far we've only had one calf that didn't get dried off fast enough and ended up with frozen ears. Many farmers have their cows calving in January and February so that the animals they sell in the fall are larger and worth more money, but Glen isn't into babysitting frozen, wet babies at forty below zero so we aim for the end of March. We were supposed to start calving on the 19th of March but somehow a few of the cows jumped the gun. I think we had five babies by then, and since then it's been fast and furious. I think all the first time mothers (heifers) have had their calves - unassisted and doing fine. The older cows don't need as much watching; in fact, Glen is having trouble just trying to keep up with his records of whose is whose because two or three new ones can show up between feedings. He took his record book out with him yesterday to help him sort out Mamas and babies. Our herd sire is a black angus bull and his colouring has come through very well - with the exception of three, all the babies out there are black - and running and jumping and playing together. It's hard to keep track even after they've had their ear tags attached.

This week we've had our daughter-in-law and Jennifer, our two year old grand-daughter staying with us. Grandpa Glen takes her out to the barn when it's time to bottle feed the calf and after the little guy has drained the bottle she lets him suck on her fingers. There are lots of kids who would probably be intiminated by this, but she can't wait to go again. It's a funny feeling - that smooth, warm, slippery mouth sucking on your fingers. All little kids should be able to visit a farm and see the animals.

We still have our last year's calves. Glen says, if he has to, he'll feed the steers out and sell them for butcher in the fall. The heifers we were going to keep anyway to expand our herd. We did ship four of our old cows last week - they were too old to produce another calf and were just costing us feed, so when the neighbour said he was going to take some of his to the auction and had room for some more, Glen sorted these out of the herd and off they went. We got the check for them yesterday - before BSE it would have been over $4,000.00 but not anymore ... $1,250.00 was what we got and we're glad it wasn't less.

Leaning Sideways

Spring in Saskatchewan! For anyone who has never had the pleasure, spring out in the middle of the Canadian prairies means wind ... make that WIND, the lower case letters just don't convey power of what's going on outside tonight.

There was a cartoon in one of the farm papers a while ago that featured a "You Are Now Entering Saskatchewan" sign in the foreground, and in the distance everything else in the drawing had a lean to it: trees, barns, bale stacks, elevators ... even the sign wasn't quite on the square. One picture is worth a thousand words ...

Not that everything is bent over, of course, but we do withstand our share of wind. Luckily the snow is all crusted over with ice because we've had some warm, sunshiney days lately so there'll be no blizzard conditions out of it, but it's going to be a noisey night with the wind howling into the yard just outside our bedroom window. A few years ago, before we took the old shingles off and replaced them with metal roofing, we had some really noisey nights when the wind started slapping the shingles up and down. Now, with the metal roof the windy nights are quite tame, but when it rains or we get hail - that's another story!

Glen has been busy these past few days being a nursemaid to two new calves born Monday afternoon. We weren't expecting any babies until the end of the month so the cows hadn't been moved into the barns. We try to keep the immenent births under a roof and in fresh bedding, but these guys were born outside in the wet snow, so they had quite a few strokes against them when we found them. They were wet, cold, and weak from being a little premature, and their mother just doesn't know what to make of having two babies. To top that all off, Glen had to go out with a big calf sled and haul them back to the barn, take the babies into the heated well house to dry them (with my hiar dryer) and rub them down. They were too weak to get up and nurse so we mixed up formula for them, too. The larger one is up and nursing off his mom now, but the little guy, although he's come a long way since Monday night, is still getting bottle fed. Glen has named them Dumb and Dumber.

We got caught not selling our last year's calves before the border was due to open. Glen figured if the prices were good before, they'd be better after. I don't know what he was thinking, no one was surprised when the border stayed shut - disappointed, but not surprised - so why had he hung on to the cattle that were ready for market? I have a feeling that we'll have a long time to think that one over. There is a lot of ill will toward the Americans these days. The R-CALF guys are buying cheap Canadian cattle, having it processed here and are selling it in the States, but their case to stop the import of live cattle from this country is that it is unsafe. We all grew up watching the cowboys in the white hats - the John Waynes - show us how to be noble and good, everything that America was supposed to stand for. It speaks volumes now that they appear to only stand for greed.

The Friday Evening Wind Down

T G I F ! What a week I've had at work. Not that the work of a rural postmaster is extremely hard. Usually it's pretty steady and sometimes, when the the truck is really loaded with heavy bags, it can be fairly physical, but this week has been a one-thing-after-another scramble. I've had to deal with everything from the furnace not working to the computer playing tricks on me and a conference call that went on forever, along with all the usual customers at the counter and mail to sort.

Not that I'm complaining. I really feel privileged to have this job. For a small town job it pays well and comes with a nice benefit package, but what I like about it the best is the contact that I have with the people of the community. If I ever won the lottery I don't know if I'd want to give that up. Oh well, with my luck (and the fact that I only buy maybe a dozen tickets per year) I don't think I have to worry about that.

Having had such a hectic week as this one has been, by this afternoon I had started planning what I would do when I got home tonight. It was going to be just like they do in the movies ... sit down and read the paper, pour myself a relaxing cocktail of some kind, order out for supper ... What an imagination I have!

What really happened was that I changed into a comfy sweat suit, started a load of laundry, and made myself some toast to curb my appetite until 7:30 or later when Glen will get home from work; supper is in the slow cooker. The drink would still be a nice relaxer, but I just can't bring myself to drink alone ... oh well, it would just be empty calories anyway.

I can't believe that February is almost over. That's two months gone out of the year already; where does the time go? The big day of March 7th is coming up. Will the United States actually open their border to Canadian beef? There are lobby groups down there doing their utmost to stop it - not because they don't trust the saftey of Canadian beef, but because they are in a position, or are trying to get themselves into a position, that they will be able to more money. There was an article in the Western Producer a while back that told of one of the big feedlots in Alberta about to sell out to an American company. The Canadians who owned it had to sell because the BSE crisis was breaking them, and it was the American's who had the money to buy them out. In no way can I picture that scenario being a good thing for the Canadian beef industry.

Glen has been keeping a close watch on calf prices at the auction mart. We have to sell our last year calves before this year's batch starts to arrive. There's just not enough pens out at the barn to keep everything sorted out and as they all get fed different rations, they all have to have their own place. That probably means we'll spend at least some time this weekend sorting cattle and getting them ready to load for their trip to the auction barn.

If I thought my workweek was tough, sorting cattle with a farmer who expects me to read his mind (and that of at least five cows at a time) will have me just as happy as heck to get back to the grind on Monday morning.

A little more sun, a little less snow

There's still a long way to go, but spring is on its way. It's not the cold and snow that get to me during winter, it's the lack of sunlight. There are a lot of people who head south for a week or two during the deep, dark days of winter to soak up the sun's rays. They're looking for the "soaking up the sun on the beach" kind of sun. I'm not nearly so demanding in the heat and sun tanning capacities of the sun - I'm just glad to see it over the horizon for more than 7 hours per day!

These days it is just getting daylight as I drive to work at 8:00 in the morning, and it's still bright out as I fix supper an hour after I'm home at night. As soon as the roads aren't quite so icey I've vowed to get out walking again, like I did a few years ago. I know that I need the exercise and the dog is in even worse shape.

The news tonight gave the encouraging news that the border will reopen on March 7th as planned. Although that doesn't make it a done deal yet, it is something to take into account in deciding when to market our last year's calves. Glen is debating the before the border opens vs. after question, and hasn't really come up with a definitive answer. It's just like playing any other market - no one has a crystal ball; we'll just have to make our move and hope for the best.

The new calves will begin to arrive in mid March. The cows all look happy, healthy, and well fed so we don't anticipate any problems. The bull we've been using for the past two years has been excellent, his offspring have been small calves (for easy births) but hardy, with a great ability to thrive and gain weight quickly. We'll have to buy a new one this year as his daughters are old enough to breed this year, and it's best to keep variety in the genetics. We'll likely be doing some shopping at the Redvers Ag-Ex and Bull Congress next month - the best big city show in a small town that Saskatchewan has to offer - or so say many of the exhibitors who come back every year.

The forecast is for higher temperatures for the rest of the week. We had some wonderful, melting days last week - just a taste of what will come. Not that I'm any fan of the mud of March, but it's what we have to go through to get to April showers and May flowers.

JANUARY IS ALMOST GONE

I know that they say that the older you get, the faster time goes, but this is ridiculous! Here we are at the end of January already and I'm not sure that I have anything to show for it. I haven't even been able to finish the book I started to read before Christmas. There are just never enough hours in a day.

Glen and I began an odessey last fall to renovate the larger of our two bathrooms. I took a week off in September to dismantle the closet and vanity, take the tub out, and tear out the old, rotten floor. From there I was at a stand still until some electrical work and plumbing was done, and since Glen is absolutely adamant that he can do as good a job as any highly paid professional I've been waiting on his talents ever since. First there was the harvest - that went on, and on, and on. Then he had to bale cattle feed. To be followed by the next job - hauling the bales home and stacking them. November's weather was the best we had all year so he decided that it was the perfect time to put in fence posts, so my project was put on hold again. I had thought December looked promising, but that was not to be either when my Dad passed away and we made the trip out to Calgary for his funeral.

Now, here we are at the end of another month. Glen has been taking safety courses so that he is qualified to run earth moving equipment in the oil patch. Our area in Southeastern Saskatchewan has a lot of oil activity, and with oil prices so high there are plans to open up a whole new oil field just east of us. Glen says he can work three days a week and it won't interfere with his cattle chores so he's raring to go run Cat. I think I've finally got it across to him that if he leaves the bathroom undone it may not be safe for him to return. This week he's finally got down to business ... we're not done yet, but we are getting somewhere. I can't wait until the ball is back in my court; the dry walling, painting and decorating are things I can do! All I want for Valentines is a long, hot, luxurious soak in my refinished antique clawfoot tub.

On the farm front we wait to see what will happen on the BSE roller coaster. First they announce that the border will open, and then they find another sick cow. "Not to worry" they say, "we knew about that one before our announcement", but then there's yet another BSE cow and it was born after the feed ban. The lobby groups in the States who don't want to open the border are having a heyday with this. The official government stand on both sides of the border says nothing has changed; the border will open, but we all wonder what will really happen. Glen and I are still of the opinion that the longer Canada has to get their packing industry up and running, the better, but with our little operation we can afford the time and risk. The same can not be said of the big operators in the beef industry.

Winter, not meant for wussies ...

40 below is a nasty number. Getting up at a quarter to seven when the sun hasn't even peeped over the horizon yet is another of my pet peeves. Put the two of them together - standing in your housecoat and peering out onto the deck where the thermometer is, and seeing that it is, indeed, 40 below, just like the radio announcer said, is one cruel way to start the day. We've had a couple of weeks of this now, and it's just lost all its charm.

To add to the fun, we've been losing vehicles to the weather as well. Mitchell's car's block heater is not working so it hasn't moved for almost two weeks now. Fixing that problem has been postponed until the temperature is condusive to human hands working without gloves on. We've been making do with my car between the two of us but then it died too. I guess punching through those semi-hard drifts on the way to work yesterday scooped the snow up into the motor, doing damage to the starter. The mechanic who fixed it said that if we could have got it started again the damage would have got worse, so it's just as well we left it sit in town last night. Glen came in to get us and took us back to town this morning, and then spent a good portion of the morning trying to fix it himself before he called the tow truck. $412.00 later we have the car back, but if it can't take that little bit of snow, I told Glen that I wanted something higher off the ground to drive! SUV's might be a luxury in urban areas, but out here it's another story. I'd have one too, if they didn't come with a luxury price tag.

So Far, So Good

Considering how long it took me to make up my mind to create a blog, I am very impressed with how things are going so far. I think this is going to work out very well.

This new year has gripped us by the throat here in Saskatchewan. At least thats what it feels like when I go outside and try to breathe air at minus 40 degrees. Wednesday morning I think they were saying that the windchill was more like minus 52. Of course, we prairie people never let on how cold it is - the weather is always played down. A tornado will be called "a bit of a breeze" and 40 below is "a bit nippy out there". We sound tougher that way, like we can handle more - just bring it on! I had to laugh the other day, an English family have recently bought a farm in the district and are spending their first winter here. They were in town early this week during a very significant snowfall, and I asked them what they thought of all the snow. The answer was that they had heard the forcasts calling for a snowstorm and they would have been very disappointed if nothing had shown up. I just laughed and said "You're already Canadian!"

It's been so cold all week that Mitchell's car has refused to leave the garage so he's been catching a ride into town to work when I go. I've always found that a moving vehicle is the best place to talk to teenagers and we've had some good chats. Yesterday's topic was where not to put your tongue or lips when things are frozen. We both had stories to tell.

The snow that fell last week is still sitting there, just waiting for the wind to come up. There's over a foot of it, and when it does blow no one will be going anywhere till its over. At least all the cattle have been moved back home for the winter now. They weren't so hard to move this time once we got them convinced to leave the shelter of the trees they were in. It was straight down the road and into the corral where the feeders were already full of hay. We aren't expecting any calves until much later in the spring, but it's good to have them here where we can monitor their diet and health easily in the deep, dark days of winter.

Starting 2005 off on a different foot

This seems a little bit strange to me, this writing a blog. I'm not even sure what b l o g stands for. But, it does seem like the next natural step I should take in an endeavour I started almost five years ago.

I'm one of the rare and lucky people who live on the Canaian prairies. Compared to the densely populated areas of the world, we enjoy the luxury of our nearest neighbours living a mile or two away - we can see their yard lights at night, and hear their dogs barking back at the coyotes in the summer when the windows are open, but otherwise we enjoy the complete privacy such distances allow.

My husband and I farm - a small family farm of 800 acres where we have been slowly changing over from grain farming to cattle farming over the past five years. For the first 15 years of our marriage we tried our hand at a huge grain farming business, but circumstances such as weather and debt load have seen us scale down to what some would call a less glorious way of making a living at farming. Actually, the more time passes, the more we feel that we are the lucky ones; our lives are simpler now, the bills are all paid, and while we own less land and older equipment than we did before, the point is that we do own it now.

Five years ago, when our area was flooded and seeding was extremely late, CBC Newsworld asked me to write a diary of our stuggle to put the crop in which they would then post on their website. I'd never tried anything like that before, but it was as if the offer was a gift from heaven. I have always felt that so many times the media distorts the stories they are reporting, sensationalizing them so that the true picture is warped to suit the reporter's take on things. It also is frustrating to have farmers portrayed as whining beggars - most of us aren't - but it's so often the ones that are that find themselves in front of the microphones. All we want to do is make a living at a job that has to be done if people are going to eat. CBC's offer was my chance to say all of that and I have found the opportunity very fullfilling.

With this new year, though, CBC has decided to end my column. On the one hand, I think they are probably right. A five year run is impressive, and I know I've been able to explain the rural way of life to a lot of people; but to go on forever would get stale from their perspective. On the other hand, I have had so much encouragement from other people - fans who sent Christmas cards from other countries to name a few - that I hated to see this avenue of contact end. A blog seemed to be the answer.

So, for what it's worth, my plan is to continue telling the world what it's like to farm in rural Saskatchewan - the people, the places, the work, and the play. Check in every week or so and see what's going on.