Another week of hot weather. Before some wild eyed tree hugger yells "global warming" about the weather, it's not! This is normal. I would like to point out it is July and weather tends to be hot in July. It has been this way for years. This is when the cowboys make hay. They are all out there cutting and baling away, trying to get the hay up in good condition. Looks like a good stand and there will be a good hay crop. Good baling to you and hopefully you don't have too many breakdowns. For those who believe in the hoar frost, I have no rain marked for this week.
With the wet spring and now the heat, the crops are coming fast and furious. It is a beautiful sight to see the wheat all heading out and some canola crops in full bloom. Cross our fingers that we can get this crop with no more weather problems. The high clearance sprayers are running flat out to get done on time. There is so much more spraying now with burn off in the spring, then in the crop for weeds and wild oats. Now they are spraying fungicides for plant disease. Soon there will be desiccation before harvest.
I don't know about this fungicide spraying. Is the cost going to be recovered by the increase in yield? I don't know! I had to laugh at one of my neighbours. He said he was just part of the lemmings group. One guy sprays and all the rest jump in and do it, too.
I had a trainee named Henry from England and he has sent me a yearly subscription magazine, that comes once a month on farming in England. They are spraying almost weekly feeding the crop with a small amount of fertilizer and chemicals mixed in. The early sprayings after weed control is a mixture of liquid fertilizer and a small amount of industrial brown sugar. How they don't plug their nozzles and screens I don't know. They have a new spray they are trying just as the plant is heading. This is a mixture of fertilizer, industrial brown sugar and fungicide. They are claiming significant yield increase. No mention of the cost! No mention of the other spraying costs either. Also it is small fields. It is definitely a different point of view and I find it quite interesting. How you would get all your spraying done on time I do not know.
The train derailment and fire in the small town of Lac Mégantic in Quebec is just another disaster for 2013. Is it my imagination or have we not had a lot of disasters this 2013 year? We have had the flooding in Calgary, High River and Fort McMurray. Then there was the air plane crash in San Francisco. This past week we had a cloud burst and flooding in Toronto. People were still out of power there. I never liked that "13" number anyway! For the rest of the year we should do what Elmer Fudd used to say, we must be "vewy vewy carefooo."
We have had Ben Ponto and his son Royce here visiting from Toronto area. He is Bev's uncle and he is 96. They left Ben's wife Elsie, who is 88, back in Toronto with a granddaughter staying with her. They are still living in their own home with home care coming in twice a week.
Ben gets around pretty darn good with a short step shuffle. He went to the old farm house and the long grass was bad for him. He got in the house, even went upstairs where his bedroom was when he was growing up.
Ben has mineral rights on a half section so he had to go there (at least twice) to see that. He was pleased, as Twin Butte had three wells pumping and were building two more leases. He went around and visited relatives and old friends. I think he was a little sad at how many people he used to know have passed away, but realized at 96 he had outlived many them. He enjoyed touring around and commented how things have changed. He left 56 years ago but has not been back visiting for about 15 years. He said he had lots of good times in the Legion Hut in Waseca and the Prince Charles Hotel in Lloydminster.
When Ben farmed he used a D4 Cat. He built a hitch so he could pull two 12-foot cultivators hooked together and two 12-foot seed drills. That was huge equipment in the 1950s. He also built a hitch so he could pull three binders together. He started going to Toronto to work for a winter job. Found a girlfriend down there and eventually she became his wife. They married and came back to Waseca to farm. Eventually the east pulled them and their two children back. The price of grain was low and there was very low quotas. He had an auction sale and sold all his equipment. He had many jobs in Ontario. First he worked for a trucking firm. He said he didn't like that much. You were always standing on a box to reach. Then, since he could fix anything he got a job as millwright in factories. He was in charge of keeping everything running. He finally retired in his 70s.
Ben is wearing a hat that says " I'm going to live to be one hundred, one day at a time. So far so good." I think he will succeed.
Joke of the week sent to me by Chris Koch. Written on a cowboy's tombstone in Utah
Five rules for men to follow to have a happy life:
1) It is important to have a woman who helps at home, cooks, cleans up and has a job.
2) It is important to have a woman that can make you laugh.
3) It is important to have a woman you can trust and doesn't lie to you.
4) It is important to have a woman who is good in bed and likes to be with you.
5) It is very, very important that these four women do not know each other or you could be dead like me!
