On Sept. 30, Gregory drove John and Barb to Saskatoon because Barb was experiencing severe pain in her side. She’s had trouble with her gall bladder for quite a while, but this time it was too much. She was supposed to have emergency surgery that day but ended up being pushed off until the next day. The surgery went well though and she was able to come home on Oct. 2.
Harvest continued on. We tried to help Barb out so she didn’t do any lifting or have too much activity. Jospeh stepped up and was a big help. He did a lot of dishes and odd chores and was quite dedicated to reading to Grandma to help her relax.
Gregory and John hauled the Reford ditch bales home on Oct. 3 and 4 because the barley was not quite dry enough. On Oct. 7 we started the barley and had two weeks of very nice weather.
On the Saturday of the long weekend we had a Thanksgiving supper with Father Rinesh from Our Lady of the Assumption, Anna’s godparents Phil and Tish Ulrich, Gregory’s sister Theresa, and John and Barb.
Read Also
Swather-sprayer retrofit a clever solution to winter wheat’s tight planting window
A system to spray pre-seed herbicide at the same time as swathing isn’t just a clever labour-saver, but could help overcome one of the biggest obstacles keeping Prairie farmers out of winter wheat: the timing.
On the 14th we switched the combines over to oats. God gave us a wonderful week and we were able to combine the oats reasonably dry and even finished harvest on the 19th!
We did stop the combines on the 18th to go to the funeral for John’s aunt, Sister Rosetta Reiniger. It was held at St. Anne’s in Saskatoon. I met the dear lady once several years ago and have sent her Christmas letters ever since. She will be dearly missed.
After the funeral, Gregory and the kids and I headed for home and continued combining. Gregory swathed until he got far enough ahead that he switched to the combine and we finished what was cut. The next day, John was back in the combine and as the sun was setting, we had three combines finishing the field.
On the 21st we dug our potatoes. It was a little chilly but turned out to be a good day. It is always a treat when we can get the potatoes in before the snow.
On the 23rd Gregory and I set out to round up the calves off Phil and Tish Ulrich’s pasture. We wanted to wean the keeper heifers and have the sale calves on hand for the next day. This year we had the herd pretty evenly split between our Landis pasture and the Ulrich pasture. We usually try to load up the sale calves and take them to Provost the day before the sale, but being that they were in two different pastures, we thought maybe we shouldn’t push our luck. It turns out we were right.
When we got over to the Ulrich pasture, we noticed there were some animals in the neighbour’s pasture. We rounded our cows up and then sorted off the calves. I was marking off the cows and calves so when we got to the end, I knew we were missing a pair. With the calves secured on the trailer we rode over to check out the other pasture. Early this year, a different neighbour’s cows had gotten in with ours. They are not used to being moved with horses and are very flighty and our cows are not used to being moved with quads, so we decided to let them stay there until after the surrounding crop was harvested and the neighbour could chase his cows home.
Our pair was with the flighty cows, so we needed to sort her off as quietly as possible. We got the pair sorted off and tried to get them out of a gate, but the calf decided he wanted to go back and when I turned him back, he jumped through the fence and took off.
The cow soon followed, so we changed our plan and I followed him around the stubble fields until they were outside the Ulrich pasture. Our cows were standing around the makeshift corral bawling to their calves on the trailer, so they were the perfect bait to get the pair back in the correct pasture. Once we got the pair in the corral, we put them straight on the horse trailer and hauled them and the calves home. This cow had discovered how to walk through fences this winter and was always out eating the bale I was feeding to the horses. Since she showed us she hadn’t stopped her fence walking, she is not working for us anymore.
The next day we headed out to Landis to get the rest of the calves. This pasture doesn’t have a corral yet, so we’ve been setting up panels around the watering system. This time they would not go into our corral, so we changed our plans and moved the panels to a different location. It worked great and in no time we had them corralled and sorted and the calves loaded.
We then headed back home and sorted the sale calves off from the group that was at Ulrich’s. We loaded all the kids up and headed to Provost. It’s become a bit of a tradition to take the family to Provost to unload the calves and then take the kids out for supper.
