This is my favourite time of the year. The leaves haven't started to turn yet, but the feel of fall is in the air. I don't know how many times I've tried to describe what makes autumn so special to me - it never seems to go down on paper very well. The smells of ripe apples on the trees, wheat at the peak of perfection, the almost wine-like sent of canola pouring from the combine ... if the reader has nothing to compare it to, how are they going to know what I'm talking about?
And there's the sounds of fall ... grain augers filling bins, harvesting equipment going non-stop to bring the crop in, and the sound that grasshoppers make in the dry grass - nobody has ever come up with a word to describe that one. I think to call it a "sizzle" is the closest I can come up with, although it's very soft and soothing.
The sky at this time of the year goes an incredible "September" blue. I know, I know, there's a perfectly scientific explanation for that - it would have something to do with the angle of the sun's rays through the atmosphere - but to me it's just the perfect backdrop colour for geese to fly across in their giant wedge formations.
There's nothing better than a meal served off the endgate of a halfton truck in the middle of a field - golden crop laying at your feet, a breeze keeping the insects at bay, and little kids insisting on pouring their daddy one more cup of iced tea - each. And, at night fall, watching the combine (a machine so huge it could pass for a small house) gracefully gliding from swath to swath, dipping its header, making its turns in wide swoops, all of its actions enhanced by the lights that twinkle from its frame. It always makes me think of a grande old dame in a ballroom doing a stately waltz.
The other night one of our neighbours phoned to tell me to check the stars out that night. She had heard that there was supposed to be a special alignment of planets to see. She called back shortly afterward and said that she had got her information wrong, and not to bother. There would be nothing to see. I decided that I should check it out, just in case - I sincerely hope she did too. She had been right- there was nothing unique happening in the sky that night, but it sure as heck was special anyway. The sky was so clear it felt as if I could reach up and touch the stars. The Milky Way was there in all its powdery glory. The constellations brilliant in the dark sky. It seems ridiculous that I had to be told to go outside and look at such a treasure - why am I not out there every night? People in the cities have no idea what they're missing - they really need to drive outside the city limits from time to time, just to get an idea of where we are in the Universe.
Harvest is getting very close to being done. We finished more than a week ago and Glen has been baling more straw nad cattle feed since then. We've brought the young herd home from 21 and will be mixing the two herds after the weekend. The bulls have yet to make each other's acquaintence so there'll be a few noisey days as they try to tell each other just how tough they are, and things will settle down again. The Farmer's Almanac says this winter is going to be a nasty, cold and snowy affair. Usually we don't pay that book much mind, but this year other things are giving the warning more merit. Mother Nature is someone you don't ignore and she has her creatures getting on with fall preparations much earlier than usual - geese are already flocking up almost a month early, crows too. And the humming birds that usually stay a week into September have been gone for 10 days already. I don't know what that means, but it doesn't seem like good news.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Saturday, August 19, 2006
AND WE WERE OFF TO THE RODEO
The summer of 2006 is coming to an end, and I for one, have no desire to slow down the time machine. The heat of summer is not something I enjoy and this summer has been hotter than usual. And so dry - we had an inch of rain last Friday night, the first real rain since June.
The trees are still green, but everything else is brittle and brown. Harvest is in full swing - probably two weeks ahead of schedule - because the crops just cooked in their tracks this summer. I haven't heard a lot of talk on the yeilds people are getting; that's probably pretty telling on its own - people brag when the news is good.
We have very little to combine - Mitchell was out swathing the barley today and then moved over to forty acres of oats which he'll finish tomorrow. Both crops were grown for cattle feed. We also tried about 80 acres of field peas this year. Glen started swathing them about 10 days ago but chickened out after about five rounds - he was scared that if the wind ever came up the swaths would just roll up into huge banks and it would be impossible to do anything with them. He knew what he was talking about - the storm we had last weekend had some wild winds with it and we have a significant mess where the peas all rolled up in banks too big to feed through a combine. Thank goodness he stopped when he did. He tells me that plan "B" is for him to swath the rest right in front of Mitchell running the combine. The wind isn't going to get a second chance.
Our problem with the dry conditions is the state of our pastures; basically they are done. The older cows have been let out onto a section of the oat crop for extra grazing, but the younger herd has nowhere they can go. As soon as we can get the crop between them and home harvested, we will be bringing them home. Glen is not too crazy about having to start feeding them in September, but there is nothing left for them to eat, and the water holes are better described as mud baths at the moment.
It's not just the feed situation either. When we checked the cows the other night, one of the younger cows was limping really bad - probably she has stepped on a dry stick and drove it up into her foot where it has caused infection. Not only is her health affected, but she has a calf who will suffer if the mother is sick and not able to get to food and water, so tonight we borrowed my brother-in-law's stock trailer, loaded up a bunch of corral pannels, and drove up to 21 where we build a temporary corral to catch her, and her calf, and load them up in the trailer to take home so we could treat her. We all went thinking this might be quite the rodeo by the time we were done, but her being lame made her a lot easier to deal with - and once we had her, the calf followed without too much trouble.
I spent today trying to catch up on a whole summer's housework. This is the second weekend I've been home all summer (hence the really spotty blog entries - I plan to be much more on top of things from now on!). This buying a house for the students of the family got to be quite the oddessy by the time we were done! We moved them in last weekend and have one more trip to Winnipeg for a nephew's wedding on the long weekend and then I'm not leaving here again for very long time! Heck, I've even decided I'm going to find the time to read a book - just for the pleasure of it all!
The trees are still green, but everything else is brittle and brown. Harvest is in full swing - probably two weeks ahead of schedule - because the crops just cooked in their tracks this summer. I haven't heard a lot of talk on the yeilds people are getting; that's probably pretty telling on its own - people brag when the news is good.
We have very little to combine - Mitchell was out swathing the barley today and then moved over to forty acres of oats which he'll finish tomorrow. Both crops were grown for cattle feed. We also tried about 80 acres of field peas this year. Glen started swathing them about 10 days ago but chickened out after about five rounds - he was scared that if the wind ever came up the swaths would just roll up into huge banks and it would be impossible to do anything with them. He knew what he was talking about - the storm we had last weekend had some wild winds with it and we have a significant mess where the peas all rolled up in banks too big to feed through a combine. Thank goodness he stopped when he did. He tells me that plan "B" is for him to swath the rest right in front of Mitchell running the combine. The wind isn't going to get a second chance.
Our problem with the dry conditions is the state of our pastures; basically they are done. The older cows have been let out onto a section of the oat crop for extra grazing, but the younger herd has nowhere they can go. As soon as we can get the crop between them and home harvested, we will be bringing them home. Glen is not too crazy about having to start feeding them in September, but there is nothing left for them to eat, and the water holes are better described as mud baths at the moment.
It's not just the feed situation either. When we checked the cows the other night, one of the younger cows was limping really bad - probably she has stepped on a dry stick and drove it up into her foot where it has caused infection. Not only is her health affected, but she has a calf who will suffer if the mother is sick and not able to get to food and water, so tonight we borrowed my brother-in-law's stock trailer, loaded up a bunch of corral pannels, and drove up to 21 where we build a temporary corral to catch her, and her calf, and load them up in the trailer to take home so we could treat her. We all went thinking this might be quite the rodeo by the time we were done, but her being lame made her a lot easier to deal with - and once we had her, the calf followed without too much trouble.
I spent today trying to catch up on a whole summer's housework. This is the second weekend I've been home all summer (hence the really spotty blog entries - I plan to be much more on top of things from now on!). This buying a house for the students of the family got to be quite the oddessy by the time we were done! We moved them in last weekend and have one more trip to Winnipeg for a nephew's wedding on the long weekend and then I'm not leaving here again for very long time! Heck, I've even decided I'm going to find the time to read a book - just for the pleasure of it all!
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
Garden overdose
This summer is just rolling along - it kind of feels like I'm being "rolled over". There haven't been too many quiet relaxation hours since the snow melted.
I have accomplished, finally, purchasing a house in Winnipeg for the kids to live in while they go to school there for the next few years. The actual deed was much harder to do than I had anticipated. By month two of searching, viewing, and bidding on (unsuccessfully) houses all over southwest Winnipeg I had begun to mutter under my breath "How can it be so hard to buy a house in a whole city of freaking houses?" I think I was even talking in my sleep - when I actually managed to get to sleep. This has not been a low-stress summer.
But, as I said, that's all behind me now and possession day is the 12th of August - in plenty of time for the kids to get settled before their classes start. The girls are enrolled at the U of M for this fall and Mitchell will have to wait for what he wants to take at Red River College next year. He admitted that the extra year was a good thing as he wasn't 100% sure if he still wanted to take computer graphics after all. But, he still wants to be in the city! It doesn't make sense to either one of his parents that he would rather work for minimum wage there than stay in Saskatchewan and rake in the money with an oil patch job for the year. You can't tell them anything when thy're 20 and invincible! Oh well, the main thing is that he will work for the next year, and if he's not sure about school, the more contact he has with other ideas, the better.
At the moment I'm trying to stay on top of my garden produce. I always plant one, but success is not guaranteed. 2006, although very dry, seems to be outstanding for vegetable production. There is no way we can eat it all ... and it just keeps coming and coming and coming. Glen and I plan to be away this weekend at a camping weekend with my family, so I've offered the kitchen and supplies to the daughters to come and pickle to their heart's content. Sandy took me up on it right away because she is trying to unload belongings and she has boxes of jars from her "canning phase" that she wants to be rid of. She is happy with the opportunity to come out to the farm, fill the jars, and leave them, knowing full well that if she ever wants some of the produce, she can come right back and get it with no guilt attached.
The rest of the summer is stacked with committments: move furniture to WPG next weekend and arrange for the rest of what we need there, home to get harvest underway, ship the feeder cattle we've been finishing off all summer, and haul the bales home. Come the long weekend in September we're back into the city to a nephew's wedding and then our son Wayne, and his family are coming to stay with us for a week before they leave the country for her native Australia ... and then there will be the farewells. By the end of September I'll be ready for a padded room - or at least some down time all alone in my own space.
I have accomplished, finally, purchasing a house in Winnipeg for the kids to live in while they go to school there for the next few years. The actual deed was much harder to do than I had anticipated. By month two of searching, viewing, and bidding on (unsuccessfully) houses all over southwest Winnipeg I had begun to mutter under my breath "How can it be so hard to buy a house in a whole city of freaking houses?" I think I was even talking in my sleep - when I actually managed to get to sleep. This has not been a low-stress summer.
But, as I said, that's all behind me now and possession day is the 12th of August - in plenty of time for the kids to get settled before their classes start. The girls are enrolled at the U of M for this fall and Mitchell will have to wait for what he wants to take at Red River College next year. He admitted that the extra year was a good thing as he wasn't 100% sure if he still wanted to take computer graphics after all. But, he still wants to be in the city! It doesn't make sense to either one of his parents that he would rather work for minimum wage there than stay in Saskatchewan and rake in the money with an oil patch job for the year. You can't tell them anything when thy're 20 and invincible! Oh well, the main thing is that he will work for the next year, and if he's not sure about school, the more contact he has with other ideas, the better.
At the moment I'm trying to stay on top of my garden produce. I always plant one, but success is not guaranteed. 2006, although very dry, seems to be outstanding for vegetable production. There is no way we can eat it all ... and it just keeps coming and coming and coming. Glen and I plan to be away this weekend at a camping weekend with my family, so I've offered the kitchen and supplies to the daughters to come and pickle to their heart's content. Sandy took me up on it right away because she is trying to unload belongings and she has boxes of jars from her "canning phase" that she wants to be rid of. She is happy with the opportunity to come out to the farm, fill the jars, and leave them, knowing full well that if she ever wants some of the produce, she can come right back and get it with no guilt attached.
The rest of the summer is stacked with committments: move furniture to WPG next weekend and arrange for the rest of what we need there, home to get harvest underway, ship the feeder cattle we've been finishing off all summer, and haul the bales home. Come the long weekend in September we're back into the city to a nephew's wedding and then our son Wayne, and his family are coming to stay with us for a week before they leave the country for her native Australia ... and then there will be the farewells. By the end of September I'll be ready for a padded room - or at least some down time all alone in my own space.
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