The weather has cleared up after the weekend. Combines are running. Guys can see the end and they are just like a horse with a bit in its teeth. Nothing will stop them except the barn door of breakdowns. What beautiful weather. Is it now aboriginal or First Nation summer? I hope this will last, but I can see the signs. All the leaves are turning yellow. The geese from the north are starting to arrive. The moose are starting to move around. One is dead just north of me in the highway ditch. Kissing Mack trucks on the highway is never a good thing. It doesn’t matter if you are a moose, a deer or a little car. It is never good for one’s health. I just know winter is coming and I am not looking forward to it.
I cannot stand for long or walk anywhere. I am currently crippled up, unemployable and retired, so I do what I like doing. I drive around with my V6, twin-turbo, F150 that gets really good gas mileage and I look at the country side. I call myself a fresh air inspector. I check on what all the other guys are doing. I am amazed at how much crop is out in certain areas. South of Waseca most crops are off with a little cleaning up to do on the odd field. I am also surprised at the vast fields in other areas of canola swathed and not combined. There is so much canola out there I am beginning to be suspicious that some guys are going for that really short crop rotation. You know the one. It goes canola, snow, canola, snow, canola, snow. So much for worrying about disease.
I also see many fields of standing canola. Obviously, guys are going to try to straight cut it. It is the same group of zero tillers who are now trying to straight cut canola. I am not convinced about this straight cutting canola. You need a perfect field with no green patches, no green hollows. I know, they have sprays for that. There you are living in the sprayer again. If you can get it all ripe at the same time, then you have to get it to become dry. Since it is a standing crop, the straw will get tough early at night so there will be short days. As soon as you combine it, if it is not cured, it will sweat and even if it tests dry it could become a big stinky mess worth nothing. Who wants that? I am a swather believer. I think that is the best way to handle a crop. If I had as many acres out standing as some people, at this time of year, I would be nervous. Have they never had an early snow that flattens everything? It is safer in the swath.
Swathing should be a nothing job but it is not. It’s a big job. You now seed with 50, 60 feet and you turn around and are swathing with 25 or 30 feet, half the size. I see more and more guys with 36 feet. That seems to be the new trend. I can understand guys wanting to skip the swathing and go to straight cut. When I was farming, as the farm grew, we added more swathers, up to where we were running six swathers in the end.
It was like a magnet as I attracted many duds and I never saw so many guys who could not make a decent swath. I feel it is a simple job. I had some really good people, but the duds just kept you running. When I thought we were the most efficient when doing wheat was when we had two swaths put together for 60 feet. Four combines on a double swath, on a half section is only four rounds each. You could go home or move to the next field. We did 750 acres in one day and then we came to the next field and the wheat was still green and tough.
You can only double swath wheat. You can’t really double swath canola as it is too bulky for the combine pickup. I did oats once, but it was so tough combining I never did it again. You have to do only what makes sense and saves time. Don’t be one of those zero tillers. Think for yourself, don’t just copy what the neighbours are doing.
In politics, we are down to about two weeks left until the election. This can’t come quick enough for me. I am tired of hearing how Justin Trudeau has nice hair, but he is just not ready. Mulcair is wanting change. The change he wants is to have himself prime minister. I hope that doesn’t happen.
The Crown attorney was cross-examining a woman charged with murder. “After you poisoned the coffee and your husband sat at the breakfast table drinking it, didn’t you feel any qualms, didn’t you feel any slightest pity for him knowing he was about to die?” “Yes,” she said, “there was one moment when I felt sorry for him.” “When was that?” the Crown attorney asked. “When he asked for the second cup,” she said. Ooooh boy!
