You'll have to forgive me for being late with this blog - things have been pretty crazy around here lately.
We are into haying now - full force. Glen has the first 80 acres baled and had a guy with a bale mover truck haul them all home so I guess you can say Part One is done. The second field he is working on is half cut and the hay has been curing for most of this week now. The humidity is out of this world these days so the plant matter is taking a long time to dry out. It was finally ready to bale on Thursday afternoon so Glen started his work day (running grader to build an access road into an oil well site) at 4:00 AM so that he could get home early to bale. When I got home from work I did the chores and then tried to call him on his cell phone to see if he wanted me to pick him up at dark. I got the usual recording - that he was out of the service area - which is pretty hard to take when he's only a half mile away and I can hear the tractor from where I was standing on the deck. So, I jumped in the truck and drove down to ask him in person. Well I told him I had tried to call him he said that I would probably never call him again on his cell phone - he was pretty sure it had gone through the baler.
He even had staked out which bale it likely was in and we tried calling it to see if he could hear the ringing, but no dice. I'm telling you - he is one sad puppy these days - with all the people he works with in the oilfield he had his number memory just about full. He is due for a free up grade of the phone, but he'll never get his information back. He never is very sympathetic when my computer crashes and I lose my stuff - maybe now he'll understand. Mitchell and I have hauled his suspect bale home and opened it up and found nothing. I don't know where it is, but the battery has gone dead in it now so it can't even tell us where it is.
Glen went off to work on Friday and Mitchell came out at noon to start baling. He was barely even started when I got a phone call at work from him saying that he had smoke coming out of the baler! Glen was unreachable, remember, so it was good old Mom who got the call. He used his thermos of drinking water on it but that didn't seem to do any good so I told him to get the whole tractor and baler unit over to a slough with some water in it and get ready to unhook, and I left my part time, Rhonda, holding down the fort at the post office and tore home. Another neighbor had come to help and between us all we got the fire out but couldn't really decipher what had caused it. It was just best to leave it and let Glen figure it out.
It had cooled down enough for him to get right into it by the time he got home and he found a bearing that had gone to pieces, so this morning's job was to get new parts and put it back together again. After an early dinner Mick went baling and Glen filled the chop bin while I tried to clean up flower beds and do a week's worth of house work. The weather is just plain ugly with the heat and humidity. I should be mowing grass tonight but I just can't face going outside again. So far the nights have been cooling the house off nicely - I sure hope it keeps it up. I just plain don't do well in heat.
Mick was having trouble with the baler again in the late afternoon so Glen went out and took over ( I think he wanted a turn in the air conditioned cab, myself), but the humidity had come up so much that he didn't keep at it for long. Damp bales are just a fire hazard because they rot, and heat, and then combust into flames. It always seems so strange to think that something can be a fire hazard because it's too wet, but the last thing you want is a couple of hot bales in your hay stack - you could lose your whole feed supply for a year that way. I hope we've already had our one fire of the year.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Monday, July 02, 2007
It's another steamy day out there today. I managaed to get some of the lawn cut later on yesterday afternoon, but there is still so much to do - hopefully the temperature will drop later on and I can get at it again. Meanwhile I'll hide out in the house and find other things to do.
We celebrated Canada's birthday last night by having family and friends over for a bonfire and fireworks after the sun went down. Being as we're not exactly fireworks experts, we are never sure of what we're getting until we light them. This batch was really nice with lots of variety in colors and design. The little kids were impressed, and the cattle right across the road were not. After the first few went off we could see them in the twilight, turning tail and running for the other end of the pasture for saftey. There was absolutley no wind by that time of the day, so the smoke just hung in the moist air - it was a neat effect to see the fireworks shooting out of the low smoke cloud, and up into the clear sky above. After the pyrotechnic show was over Mother Nature took ove with dozens of fireflies drifting around the yard showing off their natural glow, and the full moon rose just before midnight. There were a few mosquitos, but not enough to drive us inside.
Glen has been gearing up for haying. He has a neighbor's son hired to come and cut the hay with his crimper. This machine cuts the crop and makes several crimps in the stems so that the moisture can dry out faster. To make the best hay, you need it to dry out just enough to hold the nutrients but as quickly as possible so that it doesn't have time to get rained on, or start to rot or get moldy. Last year the weather was perfect for making hay - I wonder if we can manage two years in a row? We have a lot to do this year as Glen has planted another whole quarter section done to tame hay now. He will get the guy who is cutting it to leave a day or two between aech 80 acres or so. It would be a very bad thing to have all 300 acres laying on the ground if it rained.
It's hard to believe that we are into July already. Now that we don't have kids in school, summer holidays kind of sneak up on a person. I have been trying to talk Glen into some kind of a holiday in the next two months, but he's a pretty hard guy to get off the farm. Too much depends on the weather and how fast the hay can be put up and hauled home. He tells me that if I want a holiday I will have to make my own plans, so it looks like I will head west and go camping in the mountains with my sister for a week. I'm looking forward to it.
We celebrated Canada's birthday last night by having family and friends over for a bonfire and fireworks after the sun went down. Being as we're not exactly fireworks experts, we are never sure of what we're getting until we light them. This batch was really nice with lots of variety in colors and design. The little kids were impressed, and the cattle right across the road were not. After the first few went off we could see them in the twilight, turning tail and running for the other end of the pasture for saftey. There was absolutley no wind by that time of the day, so the smoke just hung in the moist air - it was a neat effect to see the fireworks shooting out of the low smoke cloud, and up into the clear sky above. After the pyrotechnic show was over Mother Nature took ove with dozens of fireflies drifting around the yard showing off their natural glow, and the full moon rose just before midnight. There were a few mosquitos, but not enough to drive us inside.
Glen has been gearing up for haying. He has a neighbor's son hired to come and cut the hay with his crimper. This machine cuts the crop and makes several crimps in the stems so that the moisture can dry out faster. To make the best hay, you need it to dry out just enough to hold the nutrients but as quickly as possible so that it doesn't have time to get rained on, or start to rot or get moldy. Last year the weather was perfect for making hay - I wonder if we can manage two years in a row? We have a lot to do this year as Glen has planted another whole quarter section done to tame hay now. He will get the guy who is cutting it to leave a day or two between aech 80 acres or so. It would be a very bad thing to have all 300 acres laying on the ground if it rained.
It's hard to believe that we are into July already. Now that we don't have kids in school, summer holidays kind of sneak up on a person. I have been trying to talk Glen into some kind of a holiday in the next two months, but he's a pretty hard guy to get off the farm. Too much depends on the weather and how fast the hay can be put up and hauled home. He tells me that if I want a holiday I will have to make my own plans, so it looks like I will head west and go camping in the mountains with my sister for a week. I'm looking forward to it.
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