Another week of beautiful Aboriginal Summer and harvest weather. How long it will last no one knows, but we will enjoy it while it is here. Some well-organized farmers are done and some like myself have a ways to go. In my immediate area there is not much crop left, but as I drive around I am amazed at how there are acres and acres left to do.
On the home front, we are down to about three quarters of canola left to do. The crop is in the worst of my hills and the men are complaining this morning that they are doing short swaths and hills and valleys. Can't get anything done. I told them the Big Guy made that land like that and he let me buy it. Besides when you are done them, you are done them! The rest of the crop is hilly, too, but not as bad. I didn't say, "Suck it up buttercup," but I wanted to!
My amazing green feed is green and growing like winter is coming. It is a pleasant sight to drive through the hills and come to a pleasant green patch of crop. The wheat patches are showing some nice heads and I need to stop and check to see what is in them. This is all very well, but I know one night, it will all be over. They will be done just like the turkey at Christmas dinner. A little bit more global warming please, Big Guy. The oat patch is two and a half feet tall and no heads yet. As soon as we have heads we can swath or maybe not.
The trees are all done as every time there is a breeze, more of the ugly yellow leaves are laying on the ground. I have no love for trees, but if they are green they make good eye candy. If they are not and just bleak grey sticks standing there, bring the Cat and put them in a pile, burn them up and get rid of them. That's what I think. I have no love for trees. They are always trying to wreck your swather reel on the outside round or get in your combine and wreck something there.
We have had two unpleasant incidences on the farm. Someone put a three-foot piece of rebar in our swath. It never got to the cylinder so no damage was done. What would possess anyone to do that? The other one was son Ron went to turn on the west elevator and could not get any power. When he checked the fuse box someone had removed the three fuses. Apparently they were after the copper. Too bad they didn't get zapped when they were doing their dirty work. Why can't a person ever catch these SOBs?
In grain marketing the grain companies are doing their thing again. Once the wheat board was gone it didn't take long for them to show their real colours. They also smugly tell you that they don't handle Wheat Board grains. Good wheat now, just over four bucks. Canola they have it down to the eight dollars and change range. The orange elevator is the lowest. These prices will have a downward effect on the farming economy. There will be some cheap stuff at auction sales because after paying expenses, farmers will have very little money.
When it comes to the farmer, I think we are the same as comedian Rodney Dangerfield when he said he couldn't get any respect. Farmers are in the same boat. There has been some large companies created off the backs of farmers. Start with the railways. If it wasn't for farmers there would be no railroads. Before the railroads, the only product shipped was some beaver pelts and that was moved by canoe. To build the railways, the railways were given every other section for 21 miles on either side of the track. The railways turned around and sold it to, you guessed it, "farmers." A hundred years of history living off the backs of farmers. Now there is a big to do about the oil companies shipping hundreds of tanker cars. Well "hello," the tracks were already there and paid for by farmers shipping grain. It's not hard to be a big time oil shipper if the tracks were already there. Canoes or Red River Carts would not do the job.
Farmers had to make a living so they started growing grains, raising cattle and pigs. This was all shipped back east. It created terminals, flour mills and ocean shipping. Things haven't changed much as I would submit to you that to this day Ontario does not grow enough wheat to feed itself. It is dependent on getting cheap wheat from the Prairies. Farmers broke more land, grew more wheat and grain elevator companies were formed at Winnipeg, Man. The grain companies would not exist if not for farmers. They became so corrupt that farmers demanded the wheat board be formed. For 50 years the wheat board tried to give farmers fair prices for their grain. Farmers went on to start the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. It worked well until the suits got control. Bankrupt and sold out in three years. I feel we are right back where we started from 100 years ago. If I list off some of the companies who have grown off the backs of farmer I would list Agrium, Viterra, Pioneer, Cargill, Parish and Heimbecker, John Deere, Case/New Holland, Morris, Bourgault. I could list more but that is the picture. Just about everything we have in western Canada grew from people like my grandfather who came in 1902 and thousands like him. They came with the shirts on their backs and not much else and built a country.
In political news, the CNR has fallen behind in moving grain cars. The government is going to take them to task and they could be fined $100,000 per day until they catch up. About time I say. I don't always agree with Gerry Ritz but my hat is off to Gerry Ritz. Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch. What did farmers lose when not able to access the high wheat prices? The price was in the five to six dollars a bushel range but because there were no cars and now we are at four bucks and change.
Joke of the week from Chris Koch: Father Macdonald died and when to heaven. St. Peter met him at the Pearly Gates and assigned a position in heaven. Everything was fine except a taxi driver from North Battleford was in a higher position in heaven. Father MacDonald questioned St. Peter why the taxi driver was in higher position than he. St. Peter said it was based on results. In Father MacDonald's congregation, when he gave his sermon, some were sleeping, only a few were listening. In the taxi cab everyone was wide awake and they were praying to God.
