A little hard work

A 'helpful' farm pup

The morning woke sleepily, blanketed in heavy fog while dawn stretched lazily above the grounded clouds. Ninety days or so we’ll have a nice storm of some variety (snow or rain), right before Thanksgiving, the American one. Where trees once stood is a plot of bare earth waiting for a new beginning and perhaps some fun, creative landscaping.

Last week the tree guy was here lying to rest diseased poplars and filling in an old, dry well and a dugout. The dugout had a faint sense of whimsy to it shaded by trees like a pond but was overburdened by the unpleasant assault on the nose of green algae overgrowth. It had to go. We’re prepping the pasture for the future arrival of my horses. Once the pasture and barn are ready, then my horses get to travel internationally. Looking over the existing fence that used to keep two sheep and a mini donkey in, which I’m still unsure of how exactly, I could see that it would need some work considering most of the poles were pretty shaky. I’m talking wooden poles with page wire. My horses would lean on that and in no time be out strolling in the corn, being naughty or racing around the yard with the wind in their manes.

Hubs said we’ll just rip it out. Like it was going to easy and fun, he thought. I said sure, you can rip it out and I’ll put the new one in. Pulling out the wooden poles (meh) versus pounding t-posts in and snapping insulators on? Yup, I’ll take the t-posts. Of course, I’ll have to go buy them and do the whole load/unload song and dance. No one tells you that unloading is harder because they turn into spaghetti, hooking and twining around each other. I get a call from hubs… he wants help pulling out the poles.

My handiwork, one at a time, it was a tough job.

Who would have thought that getting in and out of the little backhoe to chain up each individual pole would be annoying and tiring? He’d made it a quarter of the way around the pasture, not bad. Ever the gentleman he said I could operate the backhoe. So thrilling… raise the bucket, out pops the pole, lower the bucket and drive to the next. I did what any self-respecting farm wife would do… I earn my callused hands, plus I wanted to get my steps in. And a little quality time with the sun for some vitamin D never hurts. (I walked eight miles that day, total, not just the pasture, it’s not that big.) So I walked the pasture, chaining and unchaining each pole and then went back and loaded the gator for hubs. Of course, the trusty farm pup was right there supervising. This is when he wasn’t off ‘helping’ pick up sticks and spreading them back out around the pasture. And somehow he found mud or the mud found him.

A little hard work goes a long way.

The wheat harvest finished Friday evening right before the ‘big rain.’ This big rain on Saturday evening turned out to be a nice light show to the south as tendrils of rain teased us to the west as a gorgeous sunset shone through. However, on those rare days of harvest transition between crops we had a date night. I love farming but it is nice to get off the farm once in a while for a nice meal out and coffee (that I didn’t have to cook or wash the dishes.)

Canola swaths

The tribute to August is on as its final days roll by before we segue into September with sultry heat and a wind that taunts you with hints of a fall chill to come. The trucks are rolling, combines rumbling and radios squawking Charlie Brown-style as canola harvest hits its stride.

Canola. Photo credit to Dave

 May your final days of August be warm, the iced coffee cool and your steed (vehicle, truck, combine, etc.) trusty.

Combining that canola. Photo courtesy of Dave

Finding my harvest groove again

Hubs in the green machine coming my way

First off, there’s nothing more exciting on a Monday morning while savoring that first cup of excellent coffee than watching the tree guy demolish the dying, brittle poplar trees in your front yard. Even the farm pup got excited, peeking around the curtain with his nose pressed to the glass and standing enthralled with all the action. My week is off to a great start.

Tree guy changing up the landscape for us

Clearly at some point we’ll be talking harvest… why not lead with that? I don’t have a good reason, do you? The pup just yawned when I asked him so let’s get to it. As you’ll see in the photos to follow I finally swathed out some time to operate the combine, in 35 foot increments, of course. I decided a break from canning was in order (and the kitchen was really hot) so I might have brought some food as bribery, and a distraction, so I could combine. Hubs was more than happy to move over to the pup seat while I surveyed my new (and temporary kingdom) from the captain’s chair.

Of course combining on the pancake flat of the Canuckland prairies isn’t too much of a challenge but I’ll admit some of the fun leaks out when you’re also running on gps. In my photo, I’ve got a little hand on the wheel but that was more for proof that I was here. You might note the little wheel on the top right of the wheel. That little bugger is following instructions from the gps and turning the wheel without me. Although I must caution you, absolutely do not forget to move your fingers out of the way (if not off the wheel entirely) as the wheel turns because the ez-steer will give a nice nip of a pinch to your fingers. You might even find yourself unexpectedly speaking a few words of a different language. I give this caution out of professional experience.

Back in the combine again

Even if all I really had to do was turn the combine around at the end of each swath or unload on the go, it was great being back in the saddle again. I still say my red combine back home has a quieter cab. A frustration that day was the moisture sensor didn’t want to stay calibrated. We’ve tried a few different things but it’s looking like it might come down to replacing the wiring harness. And that would be so much fun. Here’s to hoping it will calibrate and stay calibrated (it tells you what the moisture levels are in the crop).

This week I’ll be back combining, in between canning. With any luck, I’ll get to help start on the canola. Hopefully I won’t find a beaver hut and plug the feeder house. (A beaver hut is a large pile of swathed canola, instead of an even row, that tends to plug the ‘mouth’ of the combine.) My first year combining canola, I managed to do that a handful of times. Let me just say, your reflexes get sharp and fast, when that happens (a lightning fast hand snaps out and flicks off switches, turning off the head and idling the engine down).

Farm pup watching the combine in the distance

After I combined towards the end of the evening, I went back and got the gator and my farm pup. He wasn’t too thrilled about being left behind. He does LOVE a combine ride. The trick is to get him IN the cab. Now that he’s about fully grown, it’s more of a challenge to heave him up the ladder. This evening though, I only took him for a ride out to the wheat field.

Unimpressed with the garden haul

May your Monday morning be positive, caffeinated and productive.

P.S. I now have an Instagram account, a Facebook page and a couple of pins on Pintrest. Please like, follow and share to your heart’s content. (Of course, all roads lead back to here.)

The smell of harvest

Photo courtesy of hub's cousin, Dave

It’s official. We are definitely in the harvest season, canuckland-style. Back home, there would still be a good couple weeks until it was ‘go time, get your head in the game, put your game face on,’ whichever you prefer.

Normally, the smell of harvest is that crisp nip of the air to your cheeks bringing the light scents of drying leaves, clean air and a hint of dew to your nose. Unless, of course, you happen to be one of those people that perpetually have a coffee mug of a sort in your hand or nearby; then it might be a little harder to pick up that specific, memory-maker scent. Let’s be real here, that heady smell of delicious, brain-jumpstarting coffee wins the race of scents recognized by the ol’ nose. Also, unless you’re one of those rare, yet-to-be-photographed tea drinkers then you might have a bit more of a chance catching a nice, long inhale of that harvest-time scent. And for those on the struggle bus, imagine pumpkins, pumpkin spice (or chai tea) lattes and cinnamon apple crisp then you’d be on the right track (but behind, clearly).

Photo courtesy of hub's cousin, Dave

 However, seeing as how it’s still August that lovely harvest scent has not been on the market for outdoor scents, yet, it’s coming but will probably make an appearance closer to October. Right now, the smell of harvest is dust, brittle and hot wind and more itchy dust. Spring wheat is apparently quite notorious for leaving behind some love for its land stewards in the form of itchy dust. I’m thinking the correlation between the itchy dust and wheat is due to the stalk size of the plant. I’ve noticed bean dust is itchy but wheat dust takes it to another level. No thank you! I’ll take the rock trap opening and dumping a nice load of bean dust and junk on me than get covered in wheat dust.

Spring wheat harvest is cruising along, especially with the rain passing by. However, the yields give us much to be thankful for as the rain totals have been on the sparse side. I wake hubs early in the mornings to go swathing canola to take advantage of the dew. As I understand it, the dew makes for better swath cutting and less shelling out of the canola. Hopefully the canola yields well also. 

Photo courtesy of my hubs

 Did I mention it was dusty? Beautiful, rain-laden clouds pass over and give some much-needed shade while I’m mowing but they continue on and keep dumping rain over the same prairies south of us. Maybe the rain clouds need a perfect proposal kind of skit to entice them to grace us with some rain. You know that scene, where the future fiancée is flown over a beach/field/etc and there’s a proposal written out below. Ah well, there’s always hope of rain in the forecast although the clouds will tell when it will actually rain.

While hubs is having so much fun with a few breakdowns here and there and rolling in the itchy dust like it was a leaf pile meets a five year-old, I’ve been harvesting the garden. Never have I felt like a championing victor than when I ended up picking a bucket of cucumbers. Perhaps it was the summer long ordeal of a war campaign against the grass. Or perhaps it was the thought of a lighter grocery bill. Of course I knew exactly what I was going to do with this abundance of veggies (and my plan when I planted). Canning!

Let me first clarify that this was the launch of my canning career. I’ve assisted my mom growing up but I dried the jars or stuffed them with the veggie of the day. This was a whole new level of the game. What do you do first? For how long? And more questions. Naturally, I went to Pintrest; the site that’s a treasure-trove of ideas and knowledge. Then I called my mom. Hashtag ‘thanks mom’ was so appropriate for my Insta post later. I sweated out over three and a half hours of canning. One batch turned into two. Hubs popped in for a kiss and drink of water and then said he was scouting the garden before he left with the truck. I thought for sure he wouldn’t find anything, I had just been out there yesterday picking. Yeah…  He comes in with an armload of cucumbers. Hence batch number two. 

I survived my first attempt at canning, it was surprisingly easier than I had thought. For even better first-timer experience, I had a jar break on me in the canner bath. I’ll blame it on the heat in the kitchen as to why I stood there stupefied for a good, long couple of seconds as I watched bits of dill float to the surface. Then the water turned a bit yellow (dill mix) and then it finally hit me that a seal had broken or something. Now which jar was it? Some serious scrutiny later I found the culprit. I set the offending jar in the sink, placed in the last jar and closed the lid. Peering at the ‘broken’ jar (it was boiling hot yet) I couldn’t figure it out and then I turned the jar around so I could see the bottom. And there it was. Ah ha. My mom commented later that she couldn’t believe that had happened on my first time canning because she’s only had that happen to her a couple of times in all her years of canning experience.

Here’s to a new week (my parents’ anniversary today!), harvest and productive gardens. May your seat be comfy, the radio loud and harvest yields great.

Mapping with a pup

Partner in mapping crime

There once was a pup who treed a rat. This rat had once made his home in the fall rye just south of the farm yard. At the combines rumbled and grumbled their way through the tough, still slightly green straw of the fall rye the rat escaped the devastation. As noted by one of the combine operators. My handy hubs was watering our young willow tree when Scoots caught the rat’s scent and chased him out of the bushes, they raced towards the tree line where Scoots triumphantly treed the bugger. Hubs dispatched the rat just as Spock sauntered up to check out the commotion. Spock the tomcat got a free meal and nice nap just for taking a walk that evening. Versus the nearly constant catnaps, in various poses and locations, I’d catch Spock in around the farm. 

The weather cooled off, clouds rolled in and rain looked to be clearly in the immediate future. I was supposed to go map the fall rye field with the gator loaded with gps and monitors. Thunder mumbled nearby and I decided to wait until after lunch for this mapping date. I don’t mind the rain, heaven knows I’ve been intentionally outside in downpours (even waterproofed military-issued boots give up and soak in the wet) but when fancy, expensive monitors are outside of their comfort zone (aka the cab) they don’t play nicely with rain. So there you have it. 

Mounted up for mapping

 When I volunteered for this job I didn’t pick up two key facts: 1) I’d be driving intentionally in the steep ditches and 2) how mind-numbing it is to make a typography map driving every 40 feet, back and forth, across the field. Not going to lie, I kind felt like I was mopping the field with really big sweeps, back and forth, for 24 times. In case you really wanted to know, it takes about an hour and a half to ‘properly’ map the entire field, the ditch and the ditch across the road. The pup wanted to ride with so he got to be in the back in the little box and I’m still not quite sure how he managed to stay in through those ditches.

I thought I might as well take advantage of the sunshine since the earlier rain passed us by. Rub in 50SPF sunscreen (hey, I’m Scandinavian white remember?), grab my shades and I’m ready for some quality time with the sun. Yeah… about half an hour into this escapade, the sun apparently gets shy and more clouds roll in teasing me with thoughts of rain. Lucky for me though, the clouds and all their rain parted like the Red Sea for Moses and went around me and my field. They rained a mile away on either side of me. (It’s really flat here so you can see the mile lines and their trees/identifying object.)  I toyed with the idea of writing a big ‘rain here’ on a white board and strapping it to the gator so the clouds would get the message. With my luck it would literally rain right on the sign and me and those fancy monitors. So I scrapped that idea like a journalist dismisses a blurb about the rescue of a kitten from a tree. Oh well I tried; or thought about trying anyways. 

Rain passing on by

The joys of fall rye will wrap up this evening and then it’s back to the spring wheat! Swathing of the canola will commence next week at the earliest, barring rain. Then it’s a game of tag to the different fields, switching out the machinery and a general race to the bins. We save the ‘touchdown!’ moments for when the grain is sold for a good price. 

May your harvest prep be light, your breakdowns few and the coffee perfectly perfect.