AS PERENNIAL AS THE GRASS

Where does that sentence come from? "as perennial as the grass" Seems to me that it's from a famous poem, or work of literature. That's the way my mind works - I remember bits and pieces like that, but next to nothing for reference points. At any rate, I've always loved the way it rolls off the tongue, and the reassurance it brings - that no matter what else goes on in this world, that the grass will always grow.

There was no doubt of this fact this past week. Two weeks ago, before the recent rains, our lawn was brown and brittle. It's a farm lawn, there are no pampering treatments to keep it weed free and lush here. On wet years it stays green throughout the whole summer, but give it a hot, dry season and the truth shows pretty fast. The grass quits growing and soon dries right off; the weeds take over. One would swear that all plant life would have to be started over from seed, but let it get a good drink and some sunshine and it's a nicer lawn now that it has been all summer long. I started cutting it yesterday and will finish as soon as the dew dries this morning. I love the scent of fresh cut grass.

The sky is September blue this morning. I don't know how to describe it, but it's a kinder, softer blue than the dazzling blue of summer skies. The crickets are chirping in the grasses (and in the basement - how DO they get in?) and the atmosphere takes on this air of completion. A lot of people see autumn as a sign of approaching winter, but it is by far my favorite season - and the leaves haven't even started to change colors yet!

Glen is spending his Sunday morning grinding grain for cattle feed and then plans to bale straw off the neighbor's rye field this afternoon. Right after the rains he wasn't doing much oilfield work because of the muddy conditions, but he put in a full week this week. Compared to last summer - when the price of oil was crazy - it has been pretty slow going this year. It is picking up now, but there are some rigs that have only called their crews back in the last two weeks. That's a long time between paychecks. I guess that's why we still have the cattle - it keeps an income flow for us no matter what the whim of the marketplace is doing.

Halfway through August and very little summer to speak of. This has been a season for the record books.

My garden has been surprising me though. At first nothing seemed to be growing - that cold spring and old seed with questionable germination being what I blamed it on. There wasn't a single Swiss chard that came up and the beets and beans were few enough to count. The radishes - what did show up - went straight from seed to going to seed. I think we only had one picking of them. On the other hand, this was a good year for leaf lettuce and a spectacular one for peas and potatoes. I planted one double row of peas (half what I usually do and a quarter of what I took on when the kids were growing up) and I can't keep up to their production. I even had to freeze some last night; something I haven't done in years. It's crazy, but there will be at least one more picking just as large.

But impressive as they are, I cannot believe my potatoes. There are three rows planted what I thought was far enough apart for me to be able to till and hill between them no problem. Those plants are so lush and huge that trying to walk through them is a challenge and hilling them impossible. Potatoes are exploding out of the ground. At this rate, one row would have been plenty. I also seem to be enjoying year three of a miracle - not one single potato bug! I don't know if some unknown disease did them in three years ago (I had plenty before that), or, did the type of potato seed I planted three years ago have some kind of super resistance to the bugs? At any rate, I'm not taking any chances - I will again save seed from this year for next year. I doubt that saving it will be a problem, there will be enough to feed an army by the looks of things.

Things had been getting pretty dire moisture-wise in the past month, but Mother Nature finally came through for us on Friday night. In our area we got almost two inches and some places got more than double that. They say would could get even more in the next day or two and while anyone with cattle welcomes the idea the grain farmers aren't quite so happy about it. What this rain will do is promote new plant growth and keep things green. People with cattle to feed on pastures couldn't be happier with that scenario. Farmers who already know that their crops are a couple weeks behind in development and susceptible to frost just want dry heat to force the crops to ripen so they can be combined and stored in a bin, safe and sound. Just goes to show; you can't make everyone happy.

Today I would like to be out cutting grass but the lawn is too wet to try. It hasn't rained for 24 hours now, but there has been no sun or wind to dry things up. It feels like the whole weekend is being wasted because I can't be outside.

A couple weeks ago we spent Sunday afternoon decommissioning a well in our yard. We are very lucky in that our whole yard is a sand point - we can pretty much drop a well cribbing down anywhere and get very good drinking water. Over the 100 plus years that people have lived at this yard site there have been numerous wells dug. The older ones were built with wooden and then meatal cribbing which eventually cave in. That happened to us a few years ago and we dug a new one (concrete cribbing this time - it will last for a long time) but as yet we hadn't got around to filling in the old well. This spring the wellhouse covering this well took a wild lean to the west as the frost came out of the ground, meaning that the top of the cribbing was caving in too. Something had to be done as there was a place along the north side where an animal or a small child could have fallen in.

You would think that with everything falling to such pieces, that it would have been easy to pull out what was left and fill it all in, but it was a BIG project and took more than double the time we thought it would. The job still isn't really done because we still want to install the wellhouse back on top of the new cribbing but it needs some sort of a foundation first. The big plus for me, though, is that the new well isn't in the sight line to the barn. I can actually see across the yard from the deck - very handy when I want to know what the farmer is doing over there!

I am enjoying a week of being at home these days. I had taken this week for holidays long ago - before the impromptu trip to England in June - and even though all my holiday money was used I decided to go ahead and take this week off too. I'm not going to say that I wouldn't rather be out camping or traveling, but having spent a few days catching up on jobs that I've let slide way too long, I can't say that the time is being wasted.

This morning is a good example: all my original plan entailed was getting the recyclable cans and bottles into the SARCAN depot in town. My focus was rediscovering the floor in my utility room (where things like recycling seem to migrate to), but once I got started the work expanded to include the garage, as well. Not that the SARCAN project wasn't ambitious enough, but the garage job was one of those things that, if I had stopped to think about what a mess it really was, I would have cowered away from the whole works. As it happened, the task just kind of evolved and I was half way through before I realized how much I had taken on. By that time I was already sweaty and filthy, so why not just keep on until I was done? I wish I could actually see Glen's face when he pulls in tonight. I know I sure would be happy if he had cleaned it up while I was gone!

I spent Monday doing a full cut of the lawn. I knew my mower blades were past their prime, but I can't believe the difference since Glen put the new ones on. Once I started, I just wanted to see the whole yard neat and even. It was cold, though, and I was wearing a fleece jacket (in mid-July yet! We had frost on the quonset roof at 4:30 that morning!). By the time I was done mowing in and out of the evergreen shelterbelt I looked like a horror movie's idea of a candy floss cone. I don't know if this is just an exceptional year for spiders, or I 'm not usually wearing something their webs will stick too, but I was just coated in them. Let's just say I'm no fan of spider's webs - I'd rather deal with the actual bugs. I couln't lose that jacket fast enough. Thank goodness just washing it made them all go away.

JUST FOR LAUGHS

SEE THE PRETTY GARDEN
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

See the pretty garden? I do confess, it is my pride and joy. Notice the rocks? Well, boulders, actually. How did so many of them happen to be in a farm yard? For those of you not
“in the know”, farmers do not like rocks. They tend to really hate them, in fact, but look at the multiple rocks in our yard. They don’t just happen to be there either, my Farmer hauled them in for me - ON PURPOSE. He really loves me.

Even in the winter you should see my pretty garden. There, in the pristine white snow is the stark blackness of a large maple tree ... and, you guessed it ... six or seven huge boulders hunkered down in the folds of a blanket of snow. Not many gardens get to be an artistic focal point even in the winter. It is a pretty garden.

But, there’s no denying it, come the growing season, my pretty garden gets prettier. Over the years I’ve been adding all kinds of perennials. As soon as the ground begins to warm up I’m out there looking for signs of life. The red sprigs of peonies, the green tufts of delphinium leaves, and columbine sprouts, carnations, sedum, shasta daisies, bleeding hearts, soapwort ... and a few things that my sister has given me that I don’t have a clue what they are. Every spring is like an Easter egg hunt as I wait for all my plants to show up. I always know when everything is there and accounted for - the hosta is always last.

Before I leave for work in the morning I go out and wander through my pretty garden. I pull a few weeds and plan what kinds of annuals I will put in this year. Soon you will see me out there tilling the earth up, nice and soft, ready for transplanting. You will also see two dogs laying on the lawn close by, all casual-like, biding their time. See them? Shifty characters!

I am gone to work now, and the Farmer is gone too. Now where are those dogs? Do you see them on the acres of lawn? Or out under the trees? Or patrolling the perimeters? No. You will not see them any of these places. You will see them in my rock garden. Chubby will have lumbered in under the maple and plunked himself down on as many columbines as he can possibly hit (which are quite a few, given his size), and Sam; well he’s more of a digger and has broken, bent, and up-rooted delphiniums like he had something personal against them.

Now, see me drive back into the yard. The dogs did, and they are nowhere near the pretty garden. But I know. I get out of my car and go over to inspect the day’s damage. Because this is a daily thing. Now, see me turn and look for the dogs who are trying their best to look nonchalant and are NOW making for the perimeter. See me go ballistic - again - ranting and raving and demonstrating my pitiful attempt to throw stones so they hit a target. The only thing I have ever been able to throw at a time like this is a fit. I’m getting pretty good at that.

What is Sam thinking when he stops and looks back at the lunatic jumping up and down in frustration? I think he’s a bit worried if I’ve had MY rabies shots, or not. He should worry. I haven’t.

See me, laying awake in the middle of the night, plotting different methods of ending dog damage in my pretty garden - and this time I’ve come up with a doozy. It was there all along; I just hadn’t seen the opportunity before.

See my pretty garden now. See the delphiniums, tall and straight? See the columbines delicately swaying in the breeze? See every single bedding plant exactly where I put it two weeks ago? Also, see Sam standing just outside the pretty white ribbon fence? See how that white ribbon runs over to the line of electric fence that goes around the pasture? See Sam realizing he needs a new hobby.

See my pretty garden?

I'LL NEVER CATCH UP

Here I am again, way behind in my blog - but don't feel bad - I'm way behind in everything. there just aren't enough of me. I need at least two clones.

After a depressingly cold and slow spring, Mother Nature has suddenly turned up the heat. I have spent all day outside trying to get some yard work done and am paying the price for not reapplying sunscreen at some point in the afternoon. My face isn't the neon pink it usually goes with too much sun, but, boy do I have a farmer's tan! Well, make that a burn at the moment, but I'll keep slapping on the moisturizer and it will eventually turn brown. I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts so only some of my arms and legs are affected. I'm going to look ridiculous when I want to wear a sleeveless shirt.

The long cool spring has really effected the crops. Things were planted at the regular times but germination was slow because the ground just wasn't warm enough. With the recent heat fields are starting to green up and it wouldn't look bad - if it were the end of May.

We are more concerned with the state of the hay crop. It doesn't look like there will be much of that either. The timothy grass is heading out at eight inches high (it should be double that). We had almost two inches of rain last week and they are saying we should be getting some more tomorrow, but the plants are already stressed into maturing early so the bulk won't be coming to make winter feed for cattle. Glen is really having a struggle with this as he had quite a few replacement heifers that he wanted to keep, but can see that he will be reducing his herd, not expanding it with the feed situation as it is. He's typically the kind of guy who has hay kept over from one year to the next, but this spring had him using almost all his extra feeding the herd while he waited for the pastures to green up. I'm of two minds about this - on the one hand, I think it's ridiculous that we have a herd as big as we do - I thought we were aiming for semi-retirement. On the other hand, I can see some really lovely animals out there that it's going to hurt to have to sell. I understand how he feels.

The only thing that seems to be growing just as fast as ever is the dandelions out in our yard. I made a very quick trip over to England last week to see an aunt who had been hospitalized. My sister and I could only manage a week's worth of time, but we made the most of it, balancing visiting and sight-seeing. I arrived back here last Friday night and have been trying to catch up with yard and garden ever since. I'm beginning to think that the first full week of June is the wrong week to leave a garden and lawn. I was outside working all day long today and, although I've got a lot started, I have nothing done. It sounds like the Good Lord is going to see fit to water it all tomorrow. Part of me is cheering Him on, but the rest is just cringing at the thought of how big the weeds will be by the time I can get out in the garden again.

BRINGING ON SPRING

Well, it’s spring 2009 (No, really, it is! The grass is green and there are wood ticks out there - that does NOT happen in January!) The date is past the middle of May and a few of the heartier dandelions have even stuck their little yellow faces out, looking for the sun. When they finally find it they will report back to the rest of their kind and lawns will turn yellow overnight.

There are certain rites of spring that I perform every year - like, on Saturday I mixed up a batch of humming bird juice (a whole month later than usual) and hung it out on the deck, hoping to heck that it won’t freeze and break the glass jar feeders. I haven’t seen a single humming bird yet and am holding out hope that they decided to stay in Mexico regardless of the H1N1 ‘flu, but just in case they did head north, they’ll need sustenance when they got here. By Tuesday we had a pair of oriels appreciating the free dinner.

I have also spent a day rambling around the yard with a wheel barrow, showing my lack of appreciation of how the dogs like to decorate the lawn over the winter. Anyone who has been past our place knows that the sign reads SKULL RANCH (don’t ask) but after five or six months of hauling in any carcass that those dogs have been able to find and move, “boneyard” would be a more fitting description. When I was done, the yard was safe to be mowed, and the dogs were already plotting how to get all their treasures back before sundown.

It took me a whole other day to clean up my rock garden. This, too, is an annual rite of spring. It begins with me buying a spray bottle of grass killer and doing my worst to the Mother of all Quack Grass - which, I should mention, constitutes wetting down the leaves and watching it continue to grow uninhibited throughout the summer. I think it’s immune. Still feels good to spray that skull and crossbones stuff on it, though.

Part Two of the rock garden experience is when I take leave of my senses and go out to manually till between the rocks and perennials. It takes a whole day, and I’m a bent and broken being for the better part of week afterwards. Plus, the dogs immediately take their revenge over my confiscating their bones by digging great holes in my soft, fluffy dirt, up-rooting my favorite plants in the process.

The next thing on my spring agenda is to mow grass, which follows the “ritual of raking”. To town folk this would mean raking last autumn’s leaves, but to us farm women it means leveling out the gravel and chunks of sod that mysteriously appear where the road cleaning tractor piled snow up during the winter. Good exercise that: raking gravel out of grass.

With the lawn all cut, the next step is to till the garden. All through the winter months it was such an eyesore with corn stalks and sunflower stems sticking up through the snow - I tilled it twice, and then went back to sit on the deck and admire it’s black, weedless beauty. When it looks that nice I hate to even put footprints in it.

But what would be the point of that? Gardens are to grow things in - my work was not yet done.

All through my other jobs I had been going through my annual debate ... north-to-south, or east-to-west? Which way would I put my garden rows in this year? It’s a big decision for me. I’m married to a man who just can’t abide a crooked row. He’s married to a woman who can’t create a straight row even with markers and twine - and who gave up caring ages ago. If I plant east-to-west he can see them from the barnyard, and north-to-south makes my short-comings obvious from the kitchen table.

It’s not REALLY spring until the potatoes come up crooked, folks, so give it another week. It won’t be long now.

I LOVE WHERE I LIVE

Maybe it’s a good thing that I spend most of the daylight hours of the week in an office in town. There are plenty of days that I resent the time I have to spend indoors, knowing that the sun is shining, the roses are blooming, and the grass would be soft and lush under my feet ... if only I could be home to enjoy it. But, it occurs to me that if I had that kind of freedom every day, would these pleasures be as sweet as they were on this past holiday Monday? Would I become complacent about the sky and the wind and the sunshine if they were mine every day?

It’s spring on the prairies. Not only that, but it’s spring after an unusually long, bitterly cold, never-ending winter. We are all so very ready for days that don’t require jackets. Even with piles of filthy snow still lingering on our front lawns and mud and winter trash everywhere else, isn’t it glorious to be outside? When those first rays of warm sunshine hit your skin, didn’t it feel like being re-born? Isn’t it thrilling to find those first tiny sprigs of green grass? I can remember searching for them when I was just a little kid, and I have it on very good authority that the thrill of finding green is still there in your mid eighties. We never tire of spring.

It seemed that the unseen forces of the cosmos came together on Monday to give me a perfect day. First and foremost, my presence was not required anywhere else. My time was completely my own. Even the daily chore of meal making was taken care of with a fridge full of leftovers. I could spend the day as I pleased.

I walked the yard - well, as much of it as I could - at this time of the year, a river runs through it and fills a small lake that has been used as both skating arena and rafting venue over the years. I would have wandered farther, but I made a common springtime discovery - I seem to have a hole in my rubber boots! I sized up the repairs needed on my clothesline, and finally took down the Christmas lights. I saw my first robins: all was well with the world.

After dinner we toured the pasture, scouting out how many calves had been born since the last time he had checked, and tagging the babies. We even discovered one cow who was going to need help and I was there to be part of the action. It is seldom that I get to feel like I’m a contributing part of the farm so this was special ... and the outcome was the best it could have been - a healthy (big) calf, and a tired but dutiful mama whom we left to bond for the rest of the afternoon.

Back in the yard I decided that it was the perfect time to pump up the bike tires and take it out for a spin. I can hardly express how many levels of success this establishes. It has been at least 15 years since I rode a bike, so merely not falling off and breaking bones rates an award, but besides that I went a whole mile, wobbling down the road like a five year old just shed of her training wheels - it was magnificent!

The day came to a close with me firing up the barbeque for supper, the sun’s fading rays warming the deck so much that I could still be barefoot and sleeveless even as evening approached. The skies had been alive with geese heading north all day, and in the time it took to cook the steaks, at least another thousand went over ... and I thought to myself ... I love where I live.

It’s more than just the land location (although our own little piece of the prairie is a very important part of it for me), it’s the wide open skies, the wild storms, the native flowers, the endless fields of grain, the smell of damp, fertile earth, the yipping of fox kits playing puppy games after sundown. It’s feeling infinitesimally small standing under the canopy of the Milky Way ... well, you get what I mean.

And, maybe the job in town plays its own role in how I feel too. If I had all day, every day, to soak it all in, would one day of heaven mean as much?

just for laughs

FREEZER BURN
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

There seems to be something going wrong with 2009. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s got a lot of people talking. Well, more like complaining.

Oh, let’s be honest - they’re downright snarly these days.

The details of their unhappiness are a little fuzzy to me. I don’t know what it is ... I hear them talking, and even through three wraps of my scarf I can detect the anger and bitterness in their voices, but the topic they are going on about seems to be just beyond my grasp.

Just yesterday, as I was walking down the street, I came across a small huddle of people deep in conversation. Snippets and sound bites of what they were saying carried through my ear muffs and I caught “... can’t believe this cold ...” and “... when will this ever end?” Then someone else said “... record breaking cold ...” and then a foreign word “... spring ...”

I stopped to ponder where I had heard this word before. It seemed familiar - I would have to look it up when I got home - but was reminded to keep moving when one of the group asked another to give her a bit of a push as she had frozen down to the sidewalk during their visit and couldn’t get going again without a little help.

It occurred to me that this word “spring” might be a significant clue as to what folks were so upset about - I mean, just judging by the way it seems to be in every sentence uttered these days. It might even be considered a fixation, the way they go on and on about it. I felt I should have strong feelings about it too, but was having trouble working out the details. Is it possible to get frostbite on the brain? Freezer burn on your grey matter? And, if you did, would it affect your powers of concentration? I’ve been kind of worried about my shrinking attention span lately.

They say that the best thing you can do to stimulate your brain is to keep it active, so when I got home I decided to look “spring” up in the dictionary. If you want to believe this craziness, Mr. Webster says that spring is a warm season that starts in March, and that it comes every single year. This has made me pretty darned skeptical about anything else he has printed in that book, I can tell you, but that’s what it said.

I thought I would dig a little deeper so I pulled out the old scribbler I keep a bit of a diary in and looked back to other March entries. This is where it got really confusing - I accept that Mr. Webster might make stuff up, but the diary is in my own writing. Why would I lie?

Be darned if I didn’t mention spring too. Over and over again. Like it wasn’t a fantasy, or even anything out of the ordinary. If I am to be believed, spring is when the birds come back from the south, the snow melts, and trees get leaves on them. Amazing.

Mind you, it’s not all sweetness and roses, apparently there is something in March called “mud” that I seem to despise. Really. There are quite a few references, and I don’t sound happy about mud in any of them.

I thought really hard. If only my thinking wasn’t so fuzzy! Mud ... mud ... darn it! I wasn’t going to dig out the dictionary for this one! Mud ... yucky ... mess ... everywhere ... boots ... floors ... mess ... walls ... clothes ... dogs ... wet ... give up ... put broom away, bring in shovel ... okay, okay, it all came back to me. I do hate mud. And, if Mr. Webster is right, we should be having some right now.

Having solved that one with the few warm brain cells that I have operating, my next plan is to research the symptoms and treatment of Frozen Brain Syndrom on the Internet. I don’t know if I’ll learn anything, but the heater out in the office can really kick out the BTUs. It might not be the real thing, but in 2009 it might be the only March warmth I get.

SAUNA SUIT

It's been a lazy winter of it for me this year, and it's beginning to show around my waistline. There are a couple of contributing factors to this - besides the fact that I like food a little too much for my own good, that is.

For the past number of years I have had my own personal exercise routine. It's called feeding the steers their grain ration. Whether it's forty below in the winter, or forty above in the summer, we go out and fill up to thirty five gallon pails full of raw oats or ground grains (chop) and carry them all over to the feeder pen, then fight our way through big, pushy animals to dump the feed in the troughs. It strengthens back muscles, arm muscles, leg muscles, and it does a nice job of sucking in a flabby tummy too. I can never stick with a exercise workout that I have to set time aside for, but this is different - the animals have to be fed, it's useful work, and it has to be done.

Part of my trouble started last November when we shipped last years feeders. Down the road they went to market, and in came the 2008 calf crop. Only this time Glen decided he was going to try to finish these guys a little cheaper. Grain costs much more than hay, so he thought he'd just start them off on hay and baled green feed, and only use grain later on when they had already got some size to them. What this boiled down to was the end of my calorie-burning chores. Funny how, what with wearing bulky winter clothing, the creeping poundage didn't show itself immediately, but the photos we took in Cuba sure showed up where they settled!

The other major contributing factor in my weight gain is the economic down turn. No really! I know everyone wants to blame it for everything, but it really is affecting my activity levels on this farm! Any other winter I would have gone out after supper and helped Glen feed the bales because it was the only time we had to do it. We both worked all day long. But his job in the oil patch has pretty much come to a grinding halt, so he is home all day, and he gets to do the chores in the daylight. It's a much more civilized way of life, I'll grant you that, but it does nothing in the calorie burning department.

So it was with much relief that I was told he has started working a grain ration into the feeder's diet, and for the first time all winter I went out with him this morning to help him out and see which bins he was using. He's only up to twelve pails per day (for sixty head). Grain is too rich a diet for them to just have everything they can hold right off the bat. You can actually kill animals by giving them too much grain at once.

Being totally out of the loop as far as outdoor chores for the winter went, I dressed for January when I got ready to go out. There's no denying that it's still colder that it should be for March, but it's not THAT cold. Even carrying those few pails had me well warmed up in my old ski-doo suit, but we weren't done yet - next stop was a trip out to the dug out to chop a drinking hole in the ice.

For the past two winters Glen had let the cattle get their water from licking snow, but partly because he's decided that they do better on water, and partly because he's been home to do chores, this winter he has opened an ice hole almost every day. (On the days of forty below the cattle wouldn't leave their shelter for a drink anyway.) Because I had never seen this done and I was curious, I tagged along this morning to check it out. He has been asking me when I plan to take over this job for "my cattle", and I have informed him that April 1st is my day to start. (Surely the winter can't last THAT long!)

It was interesting to watch. He has a "trough" cut in the ice, about 8 inches wide and 2 feet long. The cattle have splashed enough water up and around it while drinking that it has built up a frozen lip of maybe 6 inches of ice framing the hole. Glen used his big ax to chop carefully around the inside of the hole, scooping out the ice chips after one circuit, and breaking through on the second one. He says that it's nothing to do these days with only 4 or 5 inches if ice - it was a half hour job in the dead of winter.

I just watched the action there, but when Glen got back on the tractor to go feed bales I said I'd walk the half mile home. It wasn't but a few hundred feet and I was peeling extra clothing off! There is no melting going on yet, but that March sun was strong on my back, the snow was deep, and I was wearing Glen's big boots. By the time I got back to the house I was wearing my own little personal sauna suit. Obviously I should take that trek on a regular basis.

city dogs/ country dogs

WHO LET THE DOGS IN?
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

We live a peaceable existence out here on the farm. Just me and the Farmer rattling around in a house foolishly large for the two of us, but built back in the days of kids and toys, teenagers and stereos, tantrums and hormones, when lots of space was a very good thing. Oh sure, there are times when we miss the kids, but there’s no denying that we have become accustomed to our quiet, laid back routine; our uneventful days and our boring evenings. We’re not at the hearing- aid-and-rocking-chair stage yet, but it seems to be the general direction we’re headed in.

We don’t have the place completely to ourselves, though. Besides the two hay-burner horses, and the hundred or so head of cattle, we also harbour numerous fugitive barn cats (a.k.a. “The Shredders” because that’s what they would do to you if you ever managed to corner one), and a couple of free loading dogs, Chubby and Sam.

As is the case for most farm dogs, Chubby and Sam live the good life. In payment for their diligence in putting the run on various song birds, digging great holes in the lawn to catch gophers, and howling back at coyotes from right under our bedroom window in the middle of the night, we buy them a lot of dog food. Sam is still young enough to run the excess off; Chubby, not so much.

They understand, though, that they are farm dogs. In exchange for all the food and freedom that a dog could possibly dream of, they also know that pampering is not part of their lifestyle. A bath for them is a swim in the dugout, a de-oderizing is a warning to stay away from skunks, and grooming involves a flea and tick collar during the pertinent months of the year. When summer thunderstorms roll in they can hide out in the garage, and when the temperature drops to below freezing they can sleep on an old chunk of carpet in the porch. It’s the good life - or at least it used to be.

One of our kids has gotten married and had kids: all the rest of them so far just have pets.

First, there was Fred. Compared to the usual size of dog we have around here, Fred is somewhat of an ankle biter - built low to the ground, and born and bred to chase things. 80% attitude, 15% hair, 5% dog. In the spring, right after his annual trim, he looks like a dog with a big bushy moustache, four legs and a tail. By this time of the year a person is not too sure whether he is coming or going, if you get my meaning, but he makes a fine self-propelled mop. He has an amazing amount of hair, but at least he keeps it to himself.

Which brings us to Tugger, daughter #2's Blue Healer/Boxer cross. Tugger is a three year old perpetual puppy. His energy level makes me suspicious that his food is laced with speed - or steroids - or both. His tail is at least a foot long, never quits wagging, and is made of titanium. One whack and you have a bruise, two and your leg gives out on you, three and you may be crippled for life. But the most endearing thing about Tugger by far is his hair; it’s short, it’s white, and he’s not very attached to it. Oh sure, he grows it, but after that it’s on it own - everywhere he has been.

Which wouldn’t be so bad if he was a farm dog and stayed outside, but he’s not. Fred and Tugger are visiting dogs. They get to come inside. A few weeks ago they even brought along daughter #1's boyfriend’s room mate’s dog, Willie, and all three of them camped out all over the house on their sleeping pillows while Sam and Chubby looked on from their place in the porch, pondering just how good their “good life” really was, after all.

WEATHERING WINTER

People are starting to talk about this winter. It's not that we aren't used to cold and snow, but the "cold snap" we usually get in January turned up in mid December and has yet to leave. It's been a long, cold time of it. Well, I guess we did get a short break this week when it warmed up enough for it to rain an inch and then cover that whole slippery mess up with about eight inches of snow. Not that we're going to complain about the extra moisture to fill dugouts in the spring, but it's still not safe to walk or drive anywhere out there! Now it's right back to being very cold. At these temperatures I don't know how long it's going to be before the highways melt off the ice. Getting to and from work this week was a challenge, to say the least.

There are encouraging signs of spring being on its way, though. The one that made me smile this afternoon was the sunbeams on the livingroom floor. Good warm spots to place the big bowl of bun dough I was rising. That's what I did for my Valentine today - a batch of cinnamon buns. Now there's a wonderful comfort food smell for you! And, they are already half gone - I did give some away, though, and made a mental note to self "we can't afford that kind of calorie intake on a regular basis!"

There is also a big pot of homemade soup brewing up on the stove tonight. Glen's dad is very ill with congestive heart disease and, although he is managing to stay out of the hospital, the wear of ill health is starting to show on both him and Glen's mother. We'll take in the soup and buns tomorrow and visit for a while - don't want to play them out even further. I wonder if I'll be that independent and matter-of-fact when I walk in their same shoes? They're tough as nails.

I've also been leafing through seed and nursery catalogues lately, dreaming of greens, pinks, blues ... any colour but white! It's called spring fever and I've got it bad! Too bad that the Weather Channel is predicting another two to three inches of snow tomorrow, and another potential system drifting in after that. Oh well! It means water for the cattle and moisture for the crops!

GROUNDHOG DAY

As ridiculous and unrealistic as the expectations of Groundhog Day are -that winter could possibly be over in another six weeks - even the most practical of western Canadians are cheering on this myth for 2009. It's nothing too unusual to have a cold snap or two per winter, but this never-ending 30 to 40 below grind has worn us all down. Although the sun is staying up longer, and today the temperature is a little bit better, the wind is howling across the prairies making the outside world a very inhospitable place to be. We really want some little rodent not to see his shadow tomorrow just for the hope it would give us that winter is on the wane.

Last fall we planned a great escape from the cold and booked a tropical holiday in Cuba for the middle of January. It was a great plan, and the money was spent, but we managed to be there for one of the coldest weeks they've ever had, I'm sure. We were there with some of my family and had a good time, and not every day was too cold for the beach because I did manage to get sun burned, but it was pretty darned cold considering how far south we had traveled. You always pack for one cool-ish day, just in case, but when half the week calls for long pants and warm jackets you start wondering whether someone moved Cuba when you weren't looking. Mind you, if we Canadians were cold, you should have seen the Cubans. They were nearly frozen.

The coldness of the winter has kept Glen busy feeding cattle. Food is their way of staying warm - their calorie intake is what keeps them alive so the calories have to keep coming. Other winters the routine is to feed bales maybe every second day - possible every third day when it really warms up - but I don't think that there's been a day that he hasn't had to feed in the last two months. If there's a bright side to the price of oil being so low which is causing the local oil industry to seriously bottom out, it's that he has not had to work all day on an CAT only to have to come home and feed cows in the dark. He is in the middle of a land-clearing job this week, but oilfield work is rare. I heard this week that out of 79 rigs in the area ( a lot of which were brought in from Alberta last summer) only twelve are drilling now. That's a lot of men off work. It makes me glad that Mitchell works in the agricultural retail field. His wages are not even close to what rig workers earn, but at least it's still coming in.

The town of Redvers was an interesting place to live this past week. Sunday evening a water main cracked because of the ground frost and the system lost over 60,000 gallons of water before it was detected and shut off. Then began the hunt for where the actual crack was. The water, of course, had taken the path of least resistance to the surface, leaving the site of the trouble pretty well concealed. Add to that the fact that it was 40 below and the ground was frozen solid six feet down, and you can see it was a painfully slow dig. The water went off at 11:00 on Sunday night, was briefly turned on Tuesday evening for people to stock up on "flushing" water, and for a few hours Wednesady night once they had uncovered the break and done a temporary fix while waiting for parts needed for the permanent repair, but we didn't get full water service again until Friday morning. Anyone who had farm connections left town, and those that didn't were looking pretty dishelveled by the end of the week. Now they are on a boil water advisory because dirt got into the system during the repair. What is it they say about a bit of adversity? Makes you stronger? Builds character? In Redvers this week, it sure made people smell stronger.

It is good to put January behind us though. A person doesn't want to be wishing their time away, but a little bit of warmth would be a welcome thing. The seed and nursery catalogues have started to arrive, and the girls and I were dreaming over them yesterday. Warm sunshine. Green grass. Even dealing with mosquitos doesn't sound like such a bad thing when the north wind is howling steady outside your door in January.

New Years day

Here we are, at the beginning of another year. It's like being on a merry-go-round that has lost it's brakes - it just keeps getting faster and faster. 2008 disappeared in the blink of an eye and I know of no way to make 2009 go any slower.

The month of December is always a marathon for me. Well, for any working woman who is trying to send cards, buy or make - and then wrap - Christmas gifts, and prepare the treats and other goodies for when the kids come home or neighbors drop over. With my job as postmaster of our small town, the workload builds steadily from mid November on. There are different waves of the season's mail - first the catalogues to order from, then the orders coming in, then the cards and parcels going out ... and then that last week when all the procrastinators come in and are willing to pay almost anything to get their gifts to loved ones in time for the big day. I see it year after year - paying the extra money for the extra speed sooths the guilt of not getting the job done when they should have.

Age must be catching up with me, though. I have always loved this time of the year. It's fun to work at the post office in all the hustle and bustle. Oh sure, I'm pretty worn out by the time the last truck pulls away from the loading dock, but it's a happy kind of tired. This year I was already feeling the drag by mid month. I felt like the Energizer Bunny who had been slipped a cheap store brand battery! And to think, the doctor put me on iron pills earlier this fall - what would have my energy levels been like if I hadn't had that extra fuel to go on?

Christmas 2008 was not my meal to make. We sisters all take turns and I did the feast last year. We all gather on Christmas Eve for a big meal and open certain gifts that night. The meal was great and the company fun. Christmas Day was a bit different with a visit with friends and no big meals at all - just nibbles and goodies all afternoon and a board game to keep things lively. the four day weekend was a lovely treat and the mail load has been light since then - a breather before we get back into the real world again ...

Glen has had most of the last month off. The oil patch work typically eases off over the holidays and with the price of a barrel of oil so low at the moment, everyone is waiting to see if, or how much, things pick up in the new year. Everyone has a theory about what will happen, but it's the same as the bigger economic world - no one knows and we're all just waiting to see.

Meanwhile, at least, Glen is getting some things done around the farm. When he's running CAT in the oil field he starts his day out with over an hour's chores at home before he goes to work, works a ten to twelve hour day, and comes home to feed bales for two more hours in the dark. Don't get the idea that this something that his wife approves of - she thinks he's nuts and will drop dead of exhaustion some day - but he ignores me and carries on. I think keeping only half as many cattle as we do would be a good thing. I could even be comfortable with getting rid of them all and taking life a little easier, but what do I know?

Oh well. Here we go with another year. Where will it take us? Will the markets and the economy straighten out? What will the price of oil do? I shake my head at what's liable to go on in Ottawa at the end of January - we do not need another election to pay for in the middle of all of this! Stephen Harper should never have opened this can of worms, but Jack Layton's dreams of a coalition government frighten and disgust me. Is there anyone in Ottawa who cares about Canada, and not just their own political carreer?

DOG WITH A BONE

I can't believe it - it's been three weeks since I last sat down to write this blog. Where does the time go, anyway?

It has been a very mild fall. We have still to get any significant snowfall; there's just a couple of light dustings from time to time. On the one hand, this makes for less work for Glen as the cattle can still graze out on the oat stubble and he has less bales to haul out and feed. On the other hand, there is no snow to provide them with water and he has a daily job of going out and using an axe to chop through the ice on the dugouts so they can drink. I'll be glad when the snow is there - I worry about him slipping on the wet ice and chopping his own leg, or that the cattle will all go out on the ice together and break through and drown. It seems like you hear at least one of those stories every fall. We have electric waterers for the cattle in the corrals, but the main adult herd stays out on the land year round with Glen putting up wind break enclosures for the winter months.

I think we are finally done the sorting and weaning work of the fall. Our own herd was done a week or so ago, but we also board another guy's herd here over the winter and they have only just been brought back here this week and had to have all the other fall shots and treatments first. This morning we pulled on all our heavy winter clothes and went out to get the last of them sorted.

Glen had already marked the older cows which were going to be shipped so we had to get them off in one pen, the calves off in another one, and the cows we were keeping back into an adjoining pasture. He believes that the calves aren't so stressed if they can still see their mothers for the first week, so they are kept in full view of each other - but with a good solid fence in between. They'll bawl for each other for three or four days, but they both have lots to eat and drink so they get over it. There was one cow/calf pair in that herd where the calf was too young to wean, and we had a very late set of twins in our herd so they will get special treatment all winter, being in the feeder pens and getting grain. Winter can be pretty hard on a nursing mother.

For the first time in years Glen went out deer hunting this fall. Jenn talked him into it because she wanted to try it. They both tagged out and are looking forward to making jerky of the whole works - which really isn't much when you see how little meat there is on a white tailed deer. It would be something else if they had been drawn for a moose license - those things are monsterous and there are a lot of them around. I told Jenn if she got one of those, she was on her own for storage! My deepfreezes are already full!

The dogs are in doggie heaven at the moment with the deer leg bones to chew on. During the winter they get to sleep in the porch overnight but Sam wouldn't come in the first night he had a bone to guard. He knew that if he left it outside that the coyotes would have it long gone by morning, and he also knew I wasn't letting him bring it in the house - so he camped out on the deck that night - the prize between his paws!

Woke up to a world of white this morning - not snow, but frost covering everything. After a few weeks of "after harvest" browns it is a very refreshing and welcome change. Glen is working on leases at least an hour away these days so his alarm clock goes off at the ungodly hour of 4:30, and being a spectacularly poor specimen of wifehood, I don't even acknowledge that I'm alive, let alone that I know he's getting up to face the dark world alone. I know, there'll be a special place in heaven for me when I get there - just outside the gates - but the middle of the night is for sleeping in my books. I didn't hear him do his "winter is really here" groan this morning, so frost must be okay. You don't have to clear it off the roads or dig bales out of it, and it doesn't blow up into banks you can get stuck in.

Since I have been up (at about 7:30, when the sky was at least begining to lighten up) I have started about five different jobs and completed not a single one. The kitchen table is strewn with papers that I have sorted through to find the bills that need paying and things that need filing. That led to putting away catalogues which, in turn, progressed into paging through them to get ideas for Christmas gifts. That led to starting a shopping list for things I need to pick up in the city when I go into Brandon for a medical appointment on Wednesday. Not one of these things is done and in the meanwhile I've called Sandy in Winnipeg just to catch up on her news and Mitchell has dropped in to raid the deepfreeze for some meat. That's something we do for all the kids - they all help with the cattle chores and can have what beef they need anytime they want. Mick stayed for a bit of a visit and a piece of raisin pie - his favorite. Yesterday I did actually get something done - a whole batch of pies and a big pot of stew.

Glen says that the feeders are finally scheduled for market next Monday. They should have gone six weeks ago but with him gone working all the time it's been hard for him to make the arrangements. I have been on his case this fall to cut back on some of this cattle work. What will happen next is that, once last year's feeders are gone, we will wean this year's calves and start all over again. We segregate them and start feeding them a grain diet. That means pails and pails of oats both morning and night, all winter long. Before and after a very long day's work and always in the dark. It's crazy that we continue to do this when we make a decent living at our jobs! Sometimes it almost sounds like I'm getting through to him, and then we end up buying another bull to refresh the genetics going into the herd!

He did tell me the other night that he thinks maybe he'll just fill the creep feeder (a big feeder bin on wheels) with oats and just park it in their pen. That will lighten the work load somewhat. There will still be bales to feed both the cows and the feeders and bedding to put out for them both, but the day to day drudgery will be lessened at least. He teases me that I'll be losing my exercise regimn, and he's right about that - I may be sorry we didn't carry pails all winter long when spring comes around!

I have managed to get the yard cleaned up and ready for winter. There is still most of a bale play house that he put in the middle of the yard for the grandchildren when they were here, but he is slowly carrying the straw off to put bedding into the corrals. It needs to be out of the way before the big snow hits us - they stand exactly where he has to push the snow out of the way to clear a path out of the yard. It won't always be frost like this morning - he had better get that done. And so must I get something done around here ... better get back to that kitchen table!

WORKING CATTLE

THE GREAT FALL ROUNDUP - 2008
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

And so the time came, once again, to round up all the farmer’s expensive pets and give them the full benefits of our farm’s health care plan. It’s a great deal for them, really; after enjoying free food , water, and lodging all year, and having paid no premiums whatsoever, they get treated for whatever ails them too. The calves all get inoculations - free. The young males have some minor surgery - free. And, the whole works of them are sprinkled with some blue stuff that keeps them lice free all winter - again, completely free of charge.

One would think that they would be happy to participate in this clinic held especially for them, but to tell you the truth, they didn’t seem to be one bit more willing than the human crew who were prodded out of a nice warm house and into the hurricane that was last Saturday. Nobody was happy to be there.

It is comforting to see that every year we seem to improve this operation a little bit. When I think back to the first roundup, I can hardly believe that we’re still married. Back in the day we weren’t exactly set up with enough sorting pens, and not a one of us had learned to read the Farmer’s mind to know what we were going to be instructed to do next. These days we have six or seven pens to funnel animals around in and we’re much better at ... well, we’re much better at staying calm in the face of very loud instructions.

Once the squeeze chute was set up, it was time to bring the herd in from pasture. That’s the improvement that we added this year. It doesn’t take the whole family and four trucks to bring them in. The Farmer merely hopped on his new quad and steered them towards the yard. They learned over the summer that this bright red new toy always seems to lead them to more and better food so the main problem is keeping out of the way of a stampede. They were almost all in when one of them decided that she smelled a rat and took off for the high country. The farmer put an extra mile on his machine trying to head her off at the pass, but in the end she was left to run free. It will serve her right when she’s the only one with lice this winter. Or, she could still find herself in a cull pen for not doing what the Farmer wanted her to - that happens sometimes. Thank goodness he doesn’t have a cull pen for wives.

At first it seemed as if all those wind warnings had been greatly exaggerated, but no, along about noon we found ourselves in gale force winds. Upset animals. Dirt blowing in our eyes. Papers flapping in the wind. Barcode stickers for the radio frequency tags blowing away before we could stick them down. And, every seventh animal insisting on getting into the chute backwards. Which made for upset human beings. One, especially.

Dinner didn’t happen until we were done the calves at 3:00, and somehow, although I can’t imagine how, it was even windier when we went back out to run the adults through. On the one hand, it provided the push necessary to return to the barnyard, but standing still once we got there was a bit of a problem.

By this time we had been offered a reward - the Farmer would take us to town and cook us steaks at the local watering hole when we were done. When someone else is going to cook me supper I don’t ask questions - we got the job done!

If you happened to be in the bar on Saturday night, you might have noticed us - we were the exhausted, wind burnt crew fighting sleep even as the guy at the grill flipped the steaks. Then again, if you were watching the Riders blow Edmonton out of the water, you missed us. We were probably home and in bed before they were out of their game jerseys. You see, we still weren’t done yet - first thing Sunday morning we were back at it, tagging the feeders for their trip to market. Yep! That’s what we’re doing all this for - apparently, these pets turn into money when you ship them. It’s not just for the fun of it all!

STORMS OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER

Another Saturday morning and so much to do! Not like last week end though. Living at the very bottom of Saskatchewan like we do, we were dead center in the winter storm warnings last week. I went to bed on the Friday night mentally listing everything I had to get done before the world turned wet and white - the list was pretty long.

Glen had an oil lease that was supposed to be ready for a rig immediately so he was gone extra early; as it was a long weekend there were a lot of the crew who had other plans and couldn't be there. I was up before the sun came up (which really is nothing to brag about anymore - the days are getting shorter all the time) and managed to get a lot of the in-house chores done before I went out to tackle the garden.

There was still a half row of carrots to dig - not bad you say? Well, the original row was over thirty feet long so you do the math. I tried and failed to get the garden tiller started so I had to haul it manually over to the quonset to put it away. The dogs loved it when I lifted the tarps we had used for covering the tomatoes because it gave them mice to chase for a few minutes. Once I was sure that all the wildlife had left the premesis I folded them up and put them away too.

Next there were dahlia tubers to dig and garden tools to put away. Working with the cold mud, my poor fingers were nearly frozen by this time so I snapped the tops off all the carrots, put them in a big plastic tub and hauled that back up to the house. I couldn't believe it when I looked at my watch and saw it wasn't even 10:00 yet! Sandy had hinted that it sure would be nice if there was a pot of home made soup and fresh-from-the-oven buns ready when she arrived home. I had started the soup before I left the house and I still had time for the buns. It's amazing what you can get done with a storm bearing down on you!

Glen must have called me six times during the day, wanting up dates on the weather forecast. It never wavered - it was still headed our way. But it took longer to get here than they had predicted; there was nothing until about 6:00 on Sunday morning. It really came down for an hour or so, but once the sun was up it switched to rain here. The family plans for Thanksgiving supper was to have the meal at my niece's in Macoun, down near Estevan, and much as it would have been lovely to be there, the thought of having to drive in that mess (it was an all snow event there), especially the trip home, helped us decide to just have our own quiet little supper here at the farm.

It was very quiet - Mitchell had gone to Brandon to spend the weekend with his friends, Wayne and Jacqui were back in Australia, and Jesse lives much closer to Macoun than she does to here so she went to the family supper. It was Sandy, Glen and I, a roast chicken and a pumpkin pie.

To make up for the lack of company on Sunday, though, Monday ended up being quite the opposite. Sandy and I had decided to make a pizza for supper but we needed mozzerella cheese so we called friends who lived in town to come on out for supper - and bring some cheese! Before they even got here neighbors, Scott and Ean, dropped in and it ended up being a lively, happy evening - good times with good people.

Another week has gone by and the election is behind us - thank goodness - I've about overdosed on politics lately. Of course, being from Saskatchewan, no one will be surprised to hear that I'm relieved that the Stephen Harper remains at the helm. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, but I just wasn't comfortable with any of the other partys' platforms. If there ever was a time for a "steady as she goes" approach, it is now. One only needs to watch the stock market to see how panic is turning the whole system into a rollercoaster ride. We need calm. We need steadiness. Mr. Harper's much maligned blue sweater is comforting - I'm kind of glad that the media and the opposition parties made such a big deal out of it. How many people would have missed it otherwise?

In our little corner of the world - with everyone's jobs tied in some part to the oil industry - we wait to see what the price of oil is going to do. Will the demand for it slow? How many oil companies will go under? How many will cut back? How many rigs will be shut down? Who will be laid off? For how long? I'm sure the miners up north feel the same way, and those in the potash industry. Farmers have seen the prices for their grain drop to half of what they were this spring already. We're all about natural resouces out here, and our livelihoods are directly tied to being able to sell what we produce. This is scary stuff for everyone.

TIME IN A BOTTLE

Here is another of my weekly columns that kind of sums up the month of September , 2008 for our family ...

TIME IN A BOTTLE
By Jocelyn Hainsworth

If I could save time in a bottle / The first thing that I’d like to do / Is to save every day / Till eternity passes away / Just to spend them with you.

I’m not normally a fan of Jim Croce’s music, but these words and the hauntingly simple melody that they are sung to are different. Who hasn’t wished for more minutes of the special times in their lives? Who wouldn’t love to go back and re-live certain moments? Who doesn’t wish that they could keep time in a bottle? Jim’s poetry touches us all.

So much has happened at our house in the past month: the preparations for the wedding, greeting friends and guests from far and wide, playing with our grandchildren - there hasn’t been one bad moment. We’ve laughed together, shared meals together, and emptied a few bottles of wine.

There were afternoons on the deck preparing the centerpieces and bouquets for the big day, with happy kids jumping on the trampoline out in front of the house, and two little boys reactivating a couple of old Tonka trucks for gravel hauling after almost two decades of gathering dust in the basement.

The wedding day was all we could have asked for - the bride in her perfect dress and the flower girl finally being allowed to wear her pretty dress and ballerina shoes too. Everyone dressed up and their hair done, with cameras clicking steady to capture the moment. The bride’s and groom’s friends, our friends, close family and distant well-wishers; they all made the day special.

There have been quad rides and cattle drives, potato digs and many little handfuls of petunias picked specially for me. The warmth of a sleeping baby cuddled in my arms, the wriggle and giggles of a little girl trying (not too hard) to escape being tickled. The happy grin of a little boy being allowed to steer the lawn mower on his own. Reading the same favorite book over and over so many times everyone in the house has it memorized now.

A night, even in mid September, that was warm enough for us to build a bonfire so that we could laugh and tell stories around the flames until almost the midnight hour, and another night when Grandpa treated everyone first to ice cream, and then to fire works.

If I could make days last forever / If words could makes wishes come true / I’d save every day like a treasure and then / Again, I would spend them with you.

Of course, short of inventing a time machine, there is no way to actually live a day over again. Instead we have been given the power of memory. All the experiences of our lives are stored in our own personal memory bottles, for us to revisit time and again when a certain scent or song or sound stirs them to life.

It is so fitting that all these recent memories were made during this season of autumn. My favorite of all seasons. A time of fullness, of ripeness, of exquisite completeness.
There will never be a time when I breathe in the heady fragrance of harvest that I won’t think of these days. When the softer sunshine of autumn warms my skin, even years from now, I will think of these days. When the trees take on their fall colors, I will remember these days. When the evening temperatures begin to dip low enough to put frost on the ground, I will remember these days. And yet, even as I recall those memories, I will likely be making new ones too.

Jim’s song speaks of saving time until eternity passes away, not something that we’ll ever be able to do, but a memory bottle that always has room for more seems to be a pretty nice consolation prize.

Well, the deed is done! Jesse and Andrew are married, and it really was a wonderful day.

I can't believe how lucky we were that we didn't get a hard frost until the night of the wedding. The grass stayed green all through the end of summer with the rains that kept coming, and the flowers in the garden are still in full bloom. The wedding was in town at the church, but all the photos were taken outside - most of them in the yard here, or across the road in the pasture with the cattle and Jesse's horses in the background. The whole wedding had a real harvest and country flavor.

The house here has just been over-flowing with noise and confusion for the past week or so. Our son Wayne and his wife Jacqui, along with their family, a six year old girl, a set of three year old twin boys, and a five month old infant, have been staying with us. they made the trip from Australia for the big day and are staying for the whole month. It's lovely to have them, although getting used to toys and noise after spending the past three years in the peace and serenity of a no kid environment takes some adjustment. The way I see it, they'll be gone too soon and I'd better enjoy rocking babies and coloring pictures while I can.

Harvest is off to a pretty slow start. The farmers were going great guns over the Labor Day long weekend, but then the rains started and the fabulous crops began their slide in grades and worth. Being so busy with wedding plans, I had been unaware of how little combining was actually done, but friends at the wedding dance were saying that they weren't even 25 % done yet. The next trip I made to town I took note of the unharvested fields and, sure enough, there is a lot out there - and the stems are starting to break down which makes picking it up with the combine all the more trickier. I've also heard that a substantial portion of the crop has sprouted which is also a very bad thing.

Glen had taken a lot of time off to prepare for the wedding as well, so he is back to work in the oil field to catch up on lost days. He has arranged for a neighbor to come and combine our barley so that he doesn't have to take more time off. They were supposed to be going yesterday but ran into all kinds of hold ups ( a very typical occurrence in harvest) and only got set up at dark last night. They should have been rolling this morning first thing, but again were held up with a soaking fog throughout the night. The temperatures are really high this afternoon so they should be going soon. We don't have much to do compared to everyone else, but it's still nice to have it done.

It doesn't feel much like fall out there. It's beastly hot and the steers are off their feed (their appetites pick right up after it cools down at night, but during the heat of the day they just go looking for shade to lay in). At least the colors are telling us it's September - and that's only since the frost on Sunday morning - the maples are gold and the sky is the powder blue that only September skies are. My porch smells like apples, I've more cucumbers than we'll ever be able to eat, and if those tomatoes ever begin to ripen, I'll have to make tubs of salsa and tomatoe sauce.

THE WEDDING PLANNER

It was a hellish hot day today. Probably not for those people out trying to get one more weekend in at the cottage or beach, but we farmers could really do without temperatures in the 30s at the moment. It never fails that the air conditioning breaks down on the hottest day of harvest, and with the weather man telling us that rain is just over the horizon there is no quitting until you can get it fixed. When the difference in price for perfect wheat, as opposed to bleached or sprouted wheat, is thousands of dollars, you suck it up, open up the cab for a little air flow, drink water by the gallon, and keep on trucking! And, thank the good lord when the sun goes down.

Not that you necessarily get to quit; sometimes the dew settles right away and you're done for the night, but on nights like tonight when there's a bit of a breeze, and the cool air is much kinder the trucks keep rolling. We're not combining yet - Glen is down at the neighbour's baling his straw, but standing on my deck I can count four combines going in the distance. At least hundred thousand dollars of grain and oilseeds must have been hauled past the yard today. Things are in full swing at the moment and the weather man is promising to spoil it all by Monday. He's not a popular guy, I can tell you!

What I spent my day doing was house and yard work. Our daughter's wedding is only two weeks away now and there is a lot to do. My brother-in-law has been finishing our deck and back door step (it's only been on hold for four years and has almost reached grounds for divorce status a couple of times). We've had to marry off a child to actually provide the push to finish it, but I'm beginning to think it was worth the wait. You gotta love a carpenter who comes with his own creative ideas and suggests different things that take it from a plain deck to a special extension of the house. I can see that it will provide a lovely setting for wedding photos too!

I had planned to get mere done outside but I really can't handle the heat. I did some weeding in my rock garden and then had to do chores as Glen wasn't going to be home until very late. If you think 30 degrees is hot outside, just try stepping into a steel bin and filling 27 pails with chop. It's just plain nasty. And the itchy dust sticks to your sweaty skin and makes the job just that much more enjoyable. I filled all those pails with the oats and barley mix, carried them out to the feeders and dumped them, and then went back and filled them all over again for tomorrow morning's chores. After all, once you're that sweaty and itchy, what difference does it make?

As soon as I was done I went straight to the house and had the coolest shower I could stand, then cracked two beer and sat down with Dale to enjoy the deck and watch the hummingbirds fight over the feeders. Dry barley dust on a day like today is an evil thing, but make beer out of it, and it's not such a bad thing after all!

There isn't a day that isn't full from now until the wedding. As soon as Dale has his tools out of the garage I'll be trying to clean it out, and the porch needs to be emptied of all the stuff that gathers there too. All the bedrooms have to be made ready and by this time next week I'll be in Winnipeg picking up the Aussie branch of our family. If things weren't busy enough before that, having four kids under six years old around the place will certainly put us into fast forward.

There hasn't been a hint of frost yet so the gardens are all looking great. I know I'd get hit for saying this, but the rain that they promise on Monday won't hurt my feelings at all. The flowers could all use a good drink and it would keep the grass green too. Don't tell any farmers I said that!