Busy harvest days of summer

Scooter testing for harvest readiness with the 'crunch test'

The week has flown by! Like a kite on a string that’s taking you for the ride. Zooming along at a speedy 3.5 miles per hour but still. Or maybe it was the tune of crackling POP’s that filled with the air on Tuesday as canned beets and pickles sealed.

Harvesting canola

The canola swaths steadily feed into the hungry combine and the rich, black grain fills the tank. Hubs stays out of trouble trucking the grain from field to bin. I was only on the combine for a hot minute this week. Sad.

Hazy, dusty days at work

The ‘normal’ duties called to me. Not like a siren, more like ‘drag yourself to the gym because you ‘have’ to but really you’d rather be on the couch and watch tv while eating junk food.’ It’s beautiful weather outside, the sun is shining (or trying to through the thick smoky haze lately) and there’s a nice breeze. All that makes me feel like the first days of school again where I’d rather be outside than inside.

This dog is always ready to ride

Someone has to do the bookwork, perhaps file a few papers to make it look like something got done, rifle through the mail and buy the groceries. Food is good and eating that food is even better. Evens out the hangry side effects of long days in the field. Uff da.

Hubs sprayed a desiccation blend on the edible beans to even out the drying and prepare them for undercutting. This week he’ll begin the undercutting of the beans (and swathed) and hopefully close to the week’s end I’ll be back in the combine harvesting edibles. Wahoo!

Adjusting the spacing

He and his dad are finishing the canola today as I write this (again, I’m stuck with the normal duties of life and I should probably meal prep for the week if I’m going to be on the combine); with maybe a bit left for tomorrow.

Final adjustments on row spacing

Everyone is happy with the yields with the caveat of better than expected, considering the drought and the inconsistent, spotty rain showers.

With this crazy drought we’re on the fast track for harvest to be done here before I go south snow bird-style for harvest in SD. It just boggles my mind. We’re very thankful to have average to good yields and we know that our heavenly Father has been watching over us.

With the lack of rain, the lawn grass has died but I still have to mow because of the weeds that are somehow cropping up. Sigh. However, the garden is the only green spot on the yard (thanks to daily evening watering) as the trees think its fall and are turning the brilliant hues of autumn. And it’s way too early to begin raking leaves… so I think I’ll use the lawn mower to shred them to bits.

May your week be full of happy days of harvest, summer festivals and iced coffee.

Ready to undercut the edibles

It’s a wonderful time of year

Color amid showers

It’s the most colorful time of the year… (think that Christmas song ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ tune, its what rolls across my mind when I survey the prairies). Emerald green waves drift across the prairies while brilliant, rich yellow pops here and there. The rare periwinkle blue shyly blooms and winks amid the waves.

The canola is such a rich and brilliant yellow; my eyes forget the intensity of the color till the next year rolls around. Soybeans, corn, wheat, edibles and potatoes wave and nod sleepily in the afternoon sun as birds execute soaring swoops and daring dives. While the flax pops the soft blue and then melts back into the green of the emerald waves.

Scattered rain showers stealthily steal a march over the prairies, dousing some fields and leaving others with only tantalizing drops of rain. Farmers play tag with the rain clouds as they try to finish the last rounds of spraying. Hubs is out right now sneaking into the opening of gentle breezes and temporarily cloud-free skies.

I spy a fox in the edibles

I turn around and weeds have sprouted even bigger than before from my last weeding and hoeing. Finally, my garden looks less “I just planted this in the middle of June” and more like a real, potentially veggie-producing garden. Yay. A garden that I now remember to close the gate behind so Scooter doesn’t charge in and damage my plants with his clumsy paws.

Not too shabby looking eh? Ignore the weeds lol

When I bought my plants (my house starters didn’t make it or it was a 90% fail rate, lol) I encouraged hubs to pick one out. Yes, hubs took me flower/veggie shopping. He wheeled that giant flatbed cart like a pro around the greenhouses (he took me to more than one!). An interesting plant called a cola plant caught his eye. It smells faintly like the pop and if you snip the new, tender shoots you can use it in marinades to flavor meat. Maybe even as a dry rub. Who knows? We’ll test it this weekend. 😊 But it’s the first plant that hubs checks to make sure its still alive and growing in the garden. For some reason the squash plant doesn’t interest him as much. Go figure.

Gotta keep the water-loving farm dog happy and cool

My farm/in the field duties have been relatively light in the three weeks that I’ve been back in the Canuckland. Unfortunately mowing, trimming and general roundup spraying around bins waits for no one. And we invested in a lot of perennial flowers which take more time to plant than it took to buy them (this includes mulling over the exact plant – and how many - to put on the cart, after I’ve discerned which type of flower – hubs did very well through all this). 

I’m thankful for the time to catch up on that but now that leaves me with ‘free’ time. Which is just waiting to be filled with bookwork and follow-up phone calls to straighten out the inevitable error here and there on statements. Wiiiiiiiiiiin… or not. I suppose it’s a good reason to stay out of the heat and bask in the arctic cold of the basement that comes with the ac being on, right? And drink cold coffee while the obviously over-worked and busy farm dog snores on the cold floor. 

It's like he knows I'm going to take a photo

I shall procrastinate on posting a photo of my ‘now completed’ horse pasture because the wire isn’t up yet. Somehow spraying trumps that, ha. At least when I post a photo next week, the grass blend for the salt spot will finally be up and looking more like a grass pasture and less like forgotten field.

 May your week be full of time with friends, bbq’ing and iced coffee.

But hey, apple trees :)

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