A month ago I mentioned that we hadn't had any rain for quite a while - well, here I am saying that no more than ten drops have fallen since then. The pastures are done. The crops are stopped dead in their tracks. The gardens are withering daily. And it's so hot! Up until this weekend the days have been hot but at least it has cooled off at night enough to keep the house liveable. Last night the temperature hardly went down at all, and we started out the day at almost 30 degrees. The weather forecast says we're in for another whole week of this at least. It's not something to look forward to.
Glen has most of our hay baled. It wasn't a fantastic crop because of the lack of moisture, but the quality is good. We have our neighbour, Earl, custom growing some for us, and Glen is cutting greenfeed to bale as well. It's easy to see that there won't be an abundance of extra feed out there to buy this winter, so we'd better be making sure we have enough of our own to last us through.
The pastures that the cattle are out on are suffering. Glen and Jesse fenced off some of the greenfeed feild so that we could let them out there to graze and this morning we're going to chase them over there. They opened the electric fence up almost a week ago but the cows haven't discovered the hole yet. We have to leave the fence open between the fields because there is no source of drinking water in the new part. I can't believe that they've not moved over on their own. Cows usually can detect any weakness in a fenceline anytime, anywhere. I guess the electricity has them wary of even going near it.
We haven't had such a great calving year. I think we're up to nine calves dead and still have two more to go. Other years we've never lost more than one or two. Glen likes to calve later in the year so we don't have to worry about the cold, but babies being born out in the pasture has it's own set of dangers - it's much harder to supervise them, and the coyotes are never far away to move in on the weak and vulnerable. We did get one surprise this week, though, Jesse had bought a cow last spring and had insisted she had to have twins for her as Jesse has had really bad luck with her animals in 2006. Be darned if we didn't go out and find Buttercup with a set of bulls a week ago! At first we left them out on pasture , but one of the little guys is weaker than the other and we didn't want to lose him so Thursday night we herded them all back to the barn. this way the mother will get a better diet to help her produce milk for two calves, and the little guys will be safer. Besides, no one wanted to be the one to call Jesse and explain how she was back to only one calf again.
We have a city girl, Jenn, staying with us for the summer while she works in crop inputs at the local Coop. Seeing the country life through her eyes has been fun and Glen promised her some other country experiences while she was here as well. I think we're crazy to go out in such heat, but there is a rodeo at Kennedy, Sask this afternoon, about an hour from here and it sounds like we're off to the rodeo. Oh well, the other option is staying home and trying to work in this heat!
