Another week closer to spring. Yahoo! The weather has been cooler all week with a little warm up at the end. Days are noticeably longer. I like it. Soon us guys in this little corner of Saskatchewan will be going forward an hour following Alberta. The magical date is set for March 8. I like that, too! That is a short three weeks from now. I would happily stay on the fast time year around. No hoar frost to report, just six months from now wind and more wind. Keep your toes warm as I am sure winter is not over with us yet.
On the home front Jaco has the F9000 truck finished and ready for spring. It can go back out into machinery row. There is a list of things he did to the truck. All small items but added up to a lot of time. He replaced two breathers on the truck’s differentials and checked the oil levels. Checked the gear oil and replaced the breather on the truck transmission. Greased the drive train. Replaced the glad hands hoses. Installed a used air drier and the hoses to plumb it in, replaced air hoses that were old and cracked like the PVC hose to the brake pots, rubber hose to rear control valve, air compressor discharge hose, air supply hose to air tank. He replaced the railer supply valve in cab and installed a blow-off valve on the air tanks. In addition he changed a fuel filter, adjusted the clutch and put on new wiper blades. This is the best shape and serviced this truck has been in since I’ve owned it.
Now for his next project, I can bring in the sprayer or the Ford tractor or the spare air seeder cart. There are little fixes and servicing to do on all. The Ford tractor has a hydraulic leak. It also has a bad back tire that you can check the tube through the side wall. That is no good and that will be a Rhinehart Tire job. They tell me they have a good used one and that will do just fine. The sprayer needs the nozzles looked at and by jiminy there is going to be a step extension put on it. You have to have six-foot long legs just to get into it. I am quite a bit shorter. I have some things to do to the spare airseeder cart, as I want to use it to meter grain out into my grinder and pellet mill I have set up at the elevator. I need to be able to run the meters with a small electric motor and we need to make the brackets to do that. These SLOJs have to get done and out of the way. We soon need to start getting ready to clean seed although that is not a big project as the wheat is already in the elevator, but it has to get done.
In political news in Ottawa, John Baird, foreign affairs minister has quit. This caused Stephen Harper to shuffle his cabinet and he appointed Rob Nickolson to foreign affairs. Jason Kenney is the new defense minister and Pierre Pailierre has taken over from Jason Kenney as employment and social development minister. John Mulcair NDP leader was quick to call the new minister as weak. That is what he is expected to say. I personally thought they were three excellent choices but it matters not what I think because on Oct. 19, we will have an election and the people will decide.
Oil price drops have put Alberta Premier Jim Prentice in a tight spot as he tries to balance the 2015 budget. More than any other government, Alberta has suffered the largest losses in oil tax revenue. They have a $44.4 billion budget in Alberta and have suffered a loss of $4 billion. That is providing oil moves up to $70 a barrel. It currently is $50 a barrel. Premier Prentice has proposed a nine per cent cut back in government budget to make the books balance. Sixty to 70 per cent of the Alberta budget is wages. Right away the unions are against it. The Alberta Union of Public Employees is against it. The teachers’ union is against it. The doctors and nurses are against it. Brian Mason and the NDP are against it. They all know there has to be cuts but they want the cuts on someone else. Premier Prentice has pledged there be no sales tax, no increase in personal or corporate tax in the province. His choices are limited. Jim Prentice will have to call an election and just like Ralph Klein before him depend on the “silent majority.” The people will decide.
My hat is off to the farmer owners of the Northwest terminal in Unity. They have completed an expansion of their rail facility so both CN and CP can bring rail cars. The loading track will hold 300 cars. They are thinking they could load 300 cars a week. My farmer calculation tells me that is one million bushels a week. That is just fantastic. I wish them luck as railroads have not been very dependable suppliers lately. I think their leg is going to be warm. They also have a plant on the same site processing 25,000 tonnes of ethanol a year. They also have a rail spur to load oil. All of this built by farmers working together.
My congratulations to Ray and Bev Stewart who celebrated 55 years together Feb. 12. Ray said it wasn’t hard, the years just went by and for the first 30 years he was out on the drilling rig so there was nothing to fight about. May they have many, many more anniversaries to celebrate.
Joke of the week from Jaco Coetzee: In Saskatchewan there lived a family of barn swallows — a mother, a dad and one young one. They were very cozy in their nest. Soon fall came and the weather got a lot colder. The parents decided to fly south but the young swallow said he wasn’t going with them since he was comfortable there in the nest. Soon it got colder and it snowed a little. The young bird decided that he had to fly south, too. He started flying but it was so cold that he couldn’t keep going and soon he was so cold he crashed to the earth. As he lay there wondering how he was going to manage an old cow came along and pooed on him covering him right up. It was warm and soon the little bird was thinking he could stay there all winter. But soon the poo started to cool off and stiffen up. Just as he was wondering how he was going to get out of there, the farm cat came along, fished him out and ate him. The moral of the story is sometimes when you are down, people crap on you. Also, people who help you out, may not be your friend.
