After finishing harvest Oct. 8, we started making plans to travel to Idaho to see family and friends. A couple of days later we dug our potatoes with the help of the neighbours, Leon and Audrey. October 12 we had one of our Eppich Quarter Horse weanlings go to her new home. As soon as the trailer was out of the yard, we loaded everyone in the Explorer and headed for the U.S. border.
We made it to the border shortly before it closed for the day, only to be turned around. The United States border guard denied entry to Gregory. We were more than a little bit upset by this development. After we fed the family supper, we decided to drive home to Handel with the plan that the next day I would head out again with the boys. It has been six years since Gregory and I have been to the States. My parents have been up to meet Joseph and they met James when he was only 10 days old, but other than that my family had never met my children. We simply had to go.
Once we made it to Idaho, we were able to see my dad’s parents, two of his aunts, his sister and two of her daughters and her grandson. We were also able to go see my mom’s mother and one of her brothers. My good friend Michelle also took the time to drive up to see us as well. It was a very good time for the boys and I was very humbled at the effort people made to see us.
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While we were in the States, Gregory just kept working. With John’s help, he made quite a few more bales.
Our visit did have to come to an end as we had an appointment Oct. 25 to get James’s cast off and get the pins out of his elbow. Heading home to Saskatchewan Oct. 24, some family accompanied us part of the way. My mom and dad drove across the border to have dinner with Gregory, John, Barb and the boys and me at a lovely little bakery in Consul, Sask. We then parted company with everyone heading home in their respective directions.
The doctor said that James’s X-rays looked very good. They pulled the pins out and put a light bandage to cover up the incision wound and the pinholes and then we took him home again.
Good weather helped
The end of October was fairly nice and Gregory and John were able to do some much-needed land work before winter. They were beginning to get caught up, but then the snow came. They had to switch gears from land work to hauling bales home. By Nov. 5 they had most of the ditch bales home.
It snowed that day and then the temperature dropped. We were trying to figure out how to deal with the snow and the sudden cold with the cows still out at pasture. Finally, we decided to have someone haul our calves to the sale in Provost, Alta. while we hauled the keeper heifers and the cows home.
Early Nov.9, we took the JD 3020 down to the horse pasture to catch my horse while John took the JD 4840 over to Landis to plow out the road to the corral with the blade. It was minus 25 C but the wind wasn’t blowing too bad.
The cows were pretty easy to round up. We got the sale calves all sorted off and had time for a bite of dinner before the hauler got there. After calves were loaded and on the truck on its way to Provost, we set to work hauling the rest of the cattle home.
We made it back to the farm and unsaddled Danny around 8:30 p.m. We were absolutely frozen and quite tired but it was a successful day.
