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.
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
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.
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.
Monday, October 10, 2005
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.
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.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
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.
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.
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