The weather was very nice for the end of October and the beginning of November. We had quite a bit of fall work and different projects to do. On Nov. 6 the last of the summerfallow was worked before winter.
That same day, Gregory started working on the fence over at Landis. There had been a fence around the grain land years ago and time has not been kind to it. Gregory took several days pulling wire out of the ground, splicing broken wires and pounding new posts. The shorter daylight hours made the job even more challenging.
On the 12th Gregory finished the Landis fence, including the three brand-new wire gates, and on the 13th, we loaded up the horses and headed up to the Ulrich pasture. We rounded up the cows and took them over to the pasture at Landis where we had the other cows. Once we had the whole herd together, we opened the gate and let them onto the harvested crop and summerfallow. They were quite happy in their new pasture.
On the evening of the 14th, my great-aunt Heidi Smith arrived in Handel from Parma, Idaho. It was quite a trip for her, but one she has been looking forward to for some time. She stayed until the afternoon of the 17th.
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She got to meet our horses and some of the cows when we did chores, and she played a bit with the boys. She spent quite a bit of time with little Anna as well, was always able to make her smile and even got her to fall asleep a few times. Gregory was working on building a cross fence in the Ulrich pasture, so he was quite busy during the day, but there was lots of visiting in the evenings and even into the early morning.
Aunt Heidi brought with her a kids’ saddle that she had bought for the younger kids. As if that wasn’t enough, she decided she wanted to spoil the kids even more and to take the kids shopping for early Christmas presents, so we went to Austin’s Saddlery in North Battleford. The boys got to pick their favourite western shirt and a belt. Joseph got a cowboy hat as well, and little Anna got a cute pink jacket with horses and horseshoes on it.
On Sunday the boys happily wore their new shirts and belts to mass to show the friends and neighbours. After brunch, Aunt Heidi had to leave for home. She did the drive home in two days and was able to miss most of the bad weather and hazardous driving conditions.
Less than a week after Aunt Heidi made it home, we had a serious snowstorm. I’m not sure how much we actually got, but the snow was knee-deep in the corrals. Just a few days before the snow, Gregory cut some slough hay and I baled it right behind him. We had about one more bale to make when a chain came off the baler. It was pitch black out, so we decided to go home and call it the end of haying season.
On the 22nd Gregory and John managed to haul the remaining ditch bales home. We still have all the slough bales and the straw bales to haul, as well as all the bales we made on one of the pastures at Landis. We will probably need to use the tractor and blade to get all of them, but at least they are not along the road. We wish the fall had lasted longer so we could have gotten more caught up, but we are grateful for the wonderful weather we did have.
