There's always a silver lining to any misfortune. Up in Northern Saskatchewan people are being forced out of their villages because of forest fires, certainly a terrifying experience for them and not something I make light of. It always amazes me that the smoke can travel so far, but we're only forty miles from the USA border and the air has been blue for most of the week. We can't smell that it's smoke, but the colour tells us that's what it is. It was very hot here on the prairies today, but the smokey haze seemed to make it feel a little cooler - I guess it was just that the sun wasn't quite so glaringly hot. But, it's the evenings that really work magic with the smoke in the sky. The lower the sun sinks in the west the more smoke the light has to travel through. the sunsets are fabulous, firey reds and the western skies are pink or orange or a dozen colours in between. I guess lots of people would say "all she's doing is describing the effects of air polution." and they would be right. On the other hand, forest fires happen and if their smoke at sunset gives us a spectacular view, we may as well sit back and admire the show.
I've been trying to stay ahead on the lawn mowing. It's been a few weeks since we've had substantial rainfall so the grass has slowed considerably. Yard-wise that's a good thing. On the other hand, we have all those cattle (self-propelled grass cutters) out on the pasture that will run out of food way too soon this summer if the rain doesn't come and replenish the plants that they're eating. The news is full of the troubles farmers a few hundred miles north of here are having - it's so wet there that maybe only 20% of the crop even got planted. We understand all too well how that feels; that was the year we had in 1999. What a crazy counrty we live in! Every year is a crap shoot.
We only have about ten more calves to come this summer. This has certainly been our worst for losing babies - I think we're up to 8 now. It's so discouraging to see them die - it has all been for different reasons, but with the big pure-bred Charlais there seems to be an underlying failure to thrive tendency. Glen says he's read that they've spent too much effort in larger cattle and some just don't seem to have a will to live. With three that we've lost this spring, that seems to be the only answer. We worked with them, we treated them, we hand fed them, but they just didn't have the gumption they needed to fight to live. Those cows are out with Angus bulls this year - we'll see if there's a little more fight in the calves next spring.
We were out checking calves last night and found a new mom and baby - this one had lots of life and the mom looked like she was going to be a problem to even let us near him. Glen tries to get their ear tags in them in the first 12 hours before they're too sure on their feet, but this guy looked like he was more than a day old and had too much fight for one farmer at the end of a long hard day. The main concern to do it right away is so that you can keep the cow-calf pairs straight, but there was no worry about remembering which calf this was - I nick named him Panda because of his black and white markings. He'll get his ear tag in the fall.
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