This year I had the opportunity to learn something new. I had never combined with a straight cut header. We had some organic barley that was very short. Gregory was afraid that we would lose most of it if he swathed it, so he put the straight cut header on my combine as well as on John’s. Not only did I get used to looking at 30 feet of header, we both had to deal with molehills and the occasional rock. It was a bit stressful and frustrating, but we eventually managed.
After we harvested the organic barley, we moved over to John’s wheat and straight cut it as well. What a difference the height of the crop makes! The wheat was a breeze after the barley.
While John and I combined, Gregory was swathing oats. The wind did quite a bit of damage and so it was very slow going for him as he cut it very short, trying to get some of the broken-off heads into the swath. He also had to stop swathing to come over to the wheat field and fix a combine or unload a truck for us.
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We finished John’s wheat Sept. 12. The next morning it showered a bit — not enough to really do any good for our pastures, but enough to make the oats and barley tough. Gregory continued swathing oats and then John did some swathing while Gregory went out and made a few more bales.
Things didn’t quite go as we had hoped and we may be short of hay bales this year. We still have a few sloughs to work on but we weren’t able to make as many bales as we wanted on the pasture we had saved. It was so dry this year that the pasture grass looks good from the road but is actually quite short and thin. Gregory made a few bales and then we decided to leave the rest for the cows. They will be better able to use it and they may be able to help seed some new grass as they walk and knock off the seeds.
September 19 it was raining and so Gregory called Kenny Reiniger, a neighbour, to help us move the cows. Gregory’s horse was not behaving at all and we were very appreciative of all of Kenny’s help. It lightly rained on us all day as we pushed the cows off of the pasture we had fenced this spring, onto the native pasture and into the corral. It was slow going as we loaded the 39 pair and seven heifers onto the trailer, a few at a time. We lost track of how many trips Gregory made. We were able to load the cows without sorting because we hauled them over to the corral in the other pasture so that the cows and calves could pair up.
On the last trip we had the big trailer full, and a cow and four calves on the horse trailer. Kenny generously offered to haul our two horses in his trailer over to the pasture. After giving the cows a few minutes to find their calves, we turned them loose. They were more than happy with the new pasture.
It will take a few days for the oats and barley to dry so that we can finish harvest, but in the meantime the boys are helping me to finish harvesting our garden.
