It's been a brutal week for those of us who enjoy fall for its cooler temperatures. We've had day after day of above 30 degrees - almost unbelievable after the cold summer Canada has been dealt this year. The air conditioning has been running steady at work, and the farmers have been going hard at harvest. This hot weather has done a nice job of bringing on the crops, and somehow we have yet to have our first frost. It has been one weird year.
With Glen working off the farm so much, this spring we made an arrangement with his niece and her husband to lease them the farm for the next year. It took some thinking through to decide how it could be done. The crop land is pretty straight forward, but very little of the land we own is crop land anymore; the tricky part was the pasture and cattle. The bottom line - what Glen wanted out of the deal - was that we could keep our cattle herd, and feed them off our pasture and hay land, but that he would not have to do the work. Trying to bale in the summer, and feed bales in the winter, while working ten to twelve hours days in the oil patch is a little grueling for anyone, let alone for someone who is getting close to sixty years old.
It took a couple of sit-down sessions, with a lot of trying to think of any situations that may cause us to want to tweak the agreement, but I think both leasee and leasor are okay with what we came up with. Mind you, half way through seeding Steven hurt his back so badly that he is on a waiting list for surgery, and Glen has been pitching in on some of the work he wasn't supposed to have to do anymore. Who could have seen that happening? At least it happened when the oilfield work was slow, so it was no big deal.
As it is, it looks like the deal is going to go ahead. The bales have all been hauled up to their place for winter feeding and once we bring the cattle in off the pastures and wean the calves, they will be herded up to their farm for the winter. We will still have feeders to take care of in this yard until after the new year, but the plan is, by March we will be free of them, Glen's work will be all but shut down for road bans, and we will be off to Australia to visit the grandkids (and their parents, of course) for a month. This has been talked about for so long that I have a hard time believing that it's actually going to come true, but it's sure starting to look like it.
Glen is gone to work this morning. Oilfield work has been picking up steady in the past month and he's put in some serious hours. Today should only be a short day as it is a rig move. I'd really like to go along on one of those someday just to see what he talks about. Basically someone has to be there to run CAT while all the rig trucks and platforms are moved onto the well site. In the rain this can be quite the ordeal as the CAT ends up pulling every piece of equipment into place because the trucks don't have the power or traction to move their heavy loads in the mud, but even on a dry day like today the CAT operator is needed to push things around so they line up properly. It would be neat to see the whole performance, but since I don't have all the oilfield safety tickets, and I'm not required personell, I wouldn't be allowed on site anyway.
So, I guess I should get back to my own work. I have potatoes to dig and windows to wash. I just have to decide which job to start with ...
