Here we go, cooking into harvest. These 30 C days are hard to take for us short, fat guys. I was down to my hills putting gear oil into one of the swather planetaries and I had water running down my face so I could hardly see. I know after a late start that the crops need heat to mature before Jack Frost comes. With heat like this I hope we don't see the big white combine. This is the weather that spawns those unwanted hail storms. It is clouding up every night when it cools off. We have had a lightning show every night after a hot day, but usually in the distance. To say the weather is stable is not exactly right. I hope we have a calm harvest and everyone gets done.
For you hoar frost believers, I don't know if I was sleeping at the time but I have no hoar frost rains marked for the first two weeks in September. That should mean good harvest weather. I hope so!
I see the headline in the Western Producer that the moon is not a reliable predictor of the first killing frost. I would like to point out Environment Canada's weather forecasts have been not too accurate either. I am not a scientist, but I know that if you have a full moon and you have a rain marked four days before or after, you can possibly get a killing frost. Let me turn this around. When a killing frost comes, it always comes three or four days before or after a new moon. If it is damp conditions, it really blitzes the crop. The new moon in September falls on the 15th. If we get past Sept. 12 to 18 we are good until mid-October. See if this short, fat dirt farmer is right! The middle finger salute to Environment Canada.
On the home front, fix and repair on machinery is the order of the day. Some afternoons were unfit to be working outside. The pressure washer will be needed on the combines. I like to keep the deck clean around the motor. I really dislike combine fires. A tack weld on the bottom sprocket of the feeder chain drive will eliminate the pulley wandering off wrecking the slides and throwing the drive chain off. John Deere's set screw idea was good 3,000 hours ago but now its Vic's welder that will keep the pulleys lined up. The pickup belts are on and I think the combines are basically ready, barring some unforeseen calamity.
The Westward swather is another story. The pickup reel is on and looks like it is running well. Son Ron helped. The knife drive gearbox is on the swather. It needs a bracket made to modify the swather so it will fit.. I priced out a new knife ouchy ouchy! Five hundred dollars for 30 feet. I bought a 16-foot for $200 and I will have to weld the bar in the middle. Luckily I have a lot of experience in that department, darn it anyway!
The John Deere 2360 swather has been cutting volunteer canola patches in the hills and running fine until today when Alvin came up with a broken hydraulic hose. One new hose and more hydraulic oil. I hope we get enough canola to pay for the repair. I am at the stage now where I just want the crop off and this machinery all parked. Machinery can't break down once it is parked in my machinery row.
In politics, Senator Mack Harb has resigned from the senate. He paid back $231,000 that he owed and stopped legal action. Before we all start cheering, he now is eligible for a senator's pension of $120,000 per year. Will this ever end? Now we have people, left and right, who want to abolish the Senate.
The Senate was originally designed as a chamber of sober second thought. A safe guard against ill advised legislation. Bills that go through Parliament are sent to the Senate where they are supposed to help with the wording, debate the bill and suggest better wording and send it back for final approval.
How did this degenerate down to a bunch of old party hacks and high profile fundraisers? That is not the purpose of the Senate. Its purpose was protection of the people from radical government and poorly worded laws.
Joke of the week: Two old farmers were having coffee and the one farmer said his herd bull had become infertile and so he had taken it to the vet. The vet had prescribed pills that had to be given every day and his bull was cured. The other farmer was amazed so he asked what was the name of the medicine? The first farmer said, "I don't know, but it tastes like chocolate."
