Talk about the dog days of summer. The weather is the same every day, not too hot, just right for moving the crop along. Some Canola in the area is almost done flowering. Another month and the guys are going to be thinking about swathing. I can't believe where the summer has gone as here it is the first of August. The wheat is getting that lighter shade of green so its thinking about ripening, too. The crops are good enough that every farmer is as nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Is the big guy going to let us harvest it without a drama or not?
The cowboys are making good time making hay as they have had very few weather delays. The bales look nice and green too. Maybe old Bessie can have a nice winter for a change.
On the home front, we disced a bit, now we had to fix the disc. The leg standard that holds the gang bearing broke. Agland had one the next day. I am $240 poorer. When we took the old one off, we discovered some cowboy had been welding on it. Didn't look like weld, it looked like chicken crap. Get it patched up and send it along home to the next sucker. Alvin and Mathew got it fixed. The disc was doing a good job but my farming experience tells me that if you use a disc, soon you will be fixing a disc. I got done what I wanted to get done and now the disc will be parked on machinery row. It can't break down and need fixing if it is parked. We will use the heavy harrow. It is just some stuff left that Riley sprayed and it is all dead anyway. My plan is to make it fit to seed in 2014.
Alvin and I made an unsettling discovery when we went to fill the fuel trailer. I have a 500 gallon tank on a frame of one ton with duals and made into a trailer. When we went to fill the trailer, here was a bullet hole about half way up the tank. From the hole it was obvious that the shot had come from the road. The trailer had been parked about 300 feet from the road that goes north and south past my place. What screwed up thinking would possess someone to shoot a hole in my fuel trailer tank? Now someone is going to have to weld it, not a big deal as long as the tank doesn't blow up, just more work for nothing. I would really like to catch people like this just once. I guarantee they won't shoot my stuff again.
Things are really crazy in the oil patch around here this week. There are gravel trucks going by my house every 15 minutes. Bonavista is making a lease just a mile north of me and they are putting down some rug and clay capping it. Better be a good well as this must be really expensive.
Rife has a drilling rig straight west of me three miles and they are drilling a three hole pad. Rife also is building a new lease three miles south of Waseca and two more surveyed out.
Four miles south of here, Baytex is drilling a new well. A single hole down and five legs off it. New technology, eh! Lots of oil they tell me. They have completed another well one mile west of the present site. Both wells are completed and they are leaving, but are coming back.
Things couldn't get much busier and that is just in my division and south of Highway 16. At the same time Department of Highways is repaving Highway 21 to the east and "Lord be praised," Maidstone has finally got the culvert in the road replacing the old bridge at the old hospital. I thought we would be going around forever. They dug up the highway in beginning of May and it is August. If they take this long to get the new cop shop built, the old cops will still be looking for a home in 2020.
It has been a terrible week in the community as six teenagers were killed south of Lloydminster. One of the families had a Waseca connection. My condolences to the families. None of these families were expecting this. There are donation sites set up so families can help pay for the funerals. If everyone gave a little it would really help the families. We can't give their loved ones back, but a little financial donation from all of us would ease the expense of a funeral for the families.
My condolences to the Hume family of Maidstone on the passing of Shaun. He was only 58. He was our lifetime telephone repair man and a friend of mine. I played old timer hockey with him and against him.
My condolences to the Wilm family on the passing of Robin. He was raised in Maidstone and a classmate of Shaun. He was at Fort McMurray.
My condolences to the Herman Gray family on the passing of their daughter Amie (35) who passed away this weekend. Amie went to school in Waseca and was a friend to all.
This weekend was my mother, Agnes Lesyk's (Howson), 90th birthday party at the Waseca hall Aug. 4. It was put to me that my wife, my sister and our two daughters were the main organizers and what was I doing? After they put me on the guilt trip they suggested I could make a little speech. I agreed to do it and then it hit me later. What do I say? I can't talk about her being married five times. Do I talk about the big black strap that she kept behind the kitchen door? What do I say? As I write this I have three days left!
Jokes of the week from granddaughter Torrie. She is nine:
Why are there no vampires in Manitoba? They can't compete with the mosquitoes.
Where do zombies go on vacation? Deadmonton. Hahaha
