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.