Another week of good harvest weather. This is the time of year my hoar frost calendar doesn't work anymore. My wife has something on her phone that predicts the weather for several days ahead. On Tuesday they were saying scattered clouds overnight. It started spitting in the afternoon and rained half an inch in the night. So much for the scattered clouds. I think those weathermen take money under false pretences. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong, they get paid anyway.
On the home front we are swathing wheat. I think I am the only swathing guy left for wheat around here. All the rest use high clearance sprayers and straight cutters. I don't have anything against spraying and straight cutting, I just don't own a high clearance sprayer any more or a straight cut header. I like the killing of perennial weeds in the spraying. Hiring a high clearance sprayer guy for me is added expense. Besides, I also want two swaths together anyway for less travel time for the combine. I want to travel slow with the combine. Straight cutting at seven or eight miles an hour in the hills is not for me.
Swathing is not all peaches and cream. There are downsides to swathing. There is upkeep costs of sections, guards and canvasses. Those might be similar to a straight cut header, I don't know. Tuesday was a bad day here. We had two swathers break down and the one-ton service truck would not run. The red swather had a little O ring under the cab let go. I guess there was not enough oil in the ground because it put $200 worth of oil on the ground. A trip to town and good oil sales for Keranda. I had to buy three pails. Most of the day was shot. I would like to sing that song to the engineer who designed that system where all the oil that runs the reel and canvases goes through the little shifting ram. You know the song "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose, May an elephant caress you with its toes." @##&%@ What works in a lab may not have trouble free operation in the field.
On the green swather, the table tried to fall off. After trying to get it back on with Jackalls, we gave up and drove it home. Using the front end loader is a much better system. It had a pin through the lift to keep everything together. It was gone, field seeded. It now has a half inch bolt, six inches long, grade 12 with a self-locking nut. That better stay on. Another trip to Keranda. It is hard to get anything done when you are running up and down the road.
The one-ton is still down there. We changed the fuel filter but as soon as we go to move it, it dies. We changed the slip tank for fuel over to the F250. We need gas for the swathers. The one-ton can sit there until we get more time to look at it. The fuel gauge says full but is it? I had a (un)friendly neighbour on more than one occasion slip a tea towel in the odd gas tank when it was parked out of the way from other passerbys, so who knows
Yesterday one operator got the swather stuck in a water run. Down we go to the hills with the four-wheel drive tractor and cable. Had to hunt for the draw pin. It was on the disc that they had fixed. You have to question the thinking of what good is a tractor without a draw pin? The draw pin is supposed to be with the tractor not left helter skelter anywhere in the yard.
After we got the swather out I will not tell you what I said to the operator. In less colorful language, I suggested he get his brain working. He is a good guy but gets in a big rush over nothing.
Today the red swather is in front of the shop getting the centre tube on the pickup reel welded. Pathetic how thin a metal it is. We will be all day Mig'n' it back together. One good day swathing and we would be done the wheat, if we could just have such a day. Three pieces of equipment in the hills and all broke down. Lord love a billy goat. My friend Lorne Topley used to say there would be days like that, but you had to go through the bad ones to get to the good ones. I really miss him.
One other drawback of swathing other than the fixing is your crop may be attacked by geese. The day after we started swathing a bunch came and landed. I was worried but a family of hawks came along and were hunting gophers and mice. With all the hawks circling the field and the screeching, I haven't seen a goose since. Good riddance. I will take a hawk any day over those crop-wrecking geese. Thank you Mother Nature for helping.
On a sad and tragic note is the story of the police finding a body in the Red River in Winnipeg. Tina Fontaine had just turned 15, She was wrapped in a bag and had been murdered. My Lord, 15 years old. I have granddaughters that age. She had her whole life ahead of her. What kind of a sicko would do that to a young girl or anyone else for that matter? The families are devastated as a person can well imagine. The aboriginal and Métis organizations are calling on Stephen Harper to hold a national inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal women. He has declined and I would agree with him. A national inquiry will not bring any of the poor women back, nor will it prevent the next one. All it would do is spend a bunch of money on high priced lawyers and the guilty people are still out there. There needs to be a task force of detectives put in place to solve these murders. The people doing these terrible things are not going to quit until they are caught and hopefully they will get maximum jail time. At the same time, can there not be organizations put in place to help these young women avoid high risk situations? The bad guys use drugs and alcohol to take advantage of these young women. Something has to change or it will go on and on. That's what I think anyway.
On a bazaar note, two young women on a flight from Toronto to Cuba for holidays, drank a bunch of duty free alcohol in the washroom of the plane. They were also smoking in the washroom and set off the smoke detector. After being ushered out of the bathroom they got into a fight with each other and threatened the flight crew. The captain turned the plane around and headed back to Toronto. NATO dispatched two fighter jets to escort the plane back to Toronto. On arrival at Toronto, the police entered the plane and arrested the two. They spent the night in jail and sobered up. They could face fines of up to $50,000. That was some holiday. A little over reaction by authorities, I am thinking. Bizarre or what?
