One can't drive around the countryside without marvelling at how green and beautiful everything looks after all the rain. Rain is great but it can be trying if you wish to spray. I have scattered showers marked for the first couple of days of July. I don't know how I came up with that from a hoar frost but that's all I have. I have a rain marked for the July 8 and then nothing for rain to the end of the month. I have July 14 and 15 marked for a strong wind. That's my forecast, I may be wrong, but I always think I am right.
On the home front, by the time you read this, the wheat will be sprayed and none too soon. We have the canola to do and it's looking a little jungle-ee. Amazing how those weeds can grow with rain. I am somewhat smarting as with the repairs I have spent on the sprayer this year, it comes to more than what I paid for the sprayer. My Flexicoil sprayer is old but now has new nozzles and screens (maybe not needed), a new PTO shaft, new pump impeller and one new shutoff solenoid. It has been a good sprayer and maybe I owe it a little something. It does a good job, but it can't cover the ground like these new high clearance sprayers. I restrict it to about six or seven miles per hour as faster makes you have boom issues. It is what it is.
I have the rockshaft back in the air seeder. I am old and a little problem with my lookers as I was having trouble seeing the crack, but I sat on an oil pail and welded it up. I had my man Sven lift it up on stands I have and he rotated the shaft as I welded. My upside down never was good and I intensely hate welding overhead. We found a piece of retired oil field pipe that fit right inside the rock shaft. Sven and weekend warrior Cole put it back together. Good to go again.
The back room boys are at it again. These maggots hiding in the woodwork get new laws passed without public debate in the legislature. No one gets to challenge the law, it's just there, "imposed" on us. In Saskatchewan, if you are caught twice using your cellphone while driving, they will seize your car for a week. If you get caught using excessive speed, the vehicle is seized for a week. Where are my property rights, Allan Blakeney? I can see if you are texting or something like that, commonsense would make you stop to do that. We don't need stupid laws to tell us that. I was against this stupid short-sighted law right from the start, I wrote letters to the editor, I wrote letters to my MLA. All to no avail.
Now we have PC leadership candidate Jim Prentice coming out saying he would strengthen distracted driving offences in Alberta if elected. That says a load about what would be leadership or lack of it if he were premier. I hope he loses votes for that one. That's all we need, more overburden of laws. Maybe when he gets to be premier he could just ban common sense, too.
Now we have more! If your child is less than 12 years old, they must have a booster seat. Geesszzz some 11- year-olds are taller than I. The law is so stupid at the moment that we had a neighbour lady get stopped, her kid was in a seat belt and the cop had the kid on the side of the road with a tape measure it to see if he could write a ticket. What next?
They have also passed order in council that all automobile insurance is going up 3.4 per cent. I suppose that was inevitable as new vehicles are so full of high prized plastic parts, any little bump and there are pieces everywhere.
On the interesting news side the Antonov AN225 monster airplane landed in Edmonton. It brought a waste heat boiler made in Germany for Agrium's Redwater fertilizer operation. Holy Shnikey is this plane big! There is only one plane like this in the world. It was originally built in the Ukraine to carry the space shuttle. It has a wingspan of 290 feet. It has seven sets of tires under the body with 32 tires in total. The loading bay is 142 feet long, 21 feet wide and 14.5 feet high. Maximum payload is 551,150 pounds. It takes 9,842 feet of runway to take off and 11,482 feet to land. The miles per gallon is not good as it takes $100 per mile to fly this thing.
That is all incredible as when you think about it, all this is financed on the backs of farmers. Farmers' money made Agrium rich. They have bought out all the other competitors and now they have enough money to rent the largest plane in the world to fly a boiler from Germany to Edmonton. Incredible!
Joke of the week: A new teacher wanted to use her psychology courses on her students. On the first day of classes she said, "Everyone who thinks they are stupid stand up." After a few seconds little Johnny stands up. The teacher asked, "Do you think you are stupid, Johnny?" "No," said Johnny, "I just hate to see you standing up there by yourself."
