September 3

View of the day-Canadian wildlife. An extended family of moose parade by the field south of Kisbey, SK.

WOW we have been harvesting for a long time and you see a lot of different things as you combine but today we saw a first while working not one or two but four, yes four moose or is it mooses not quite sure. Two bull moose and a cow and a calf. Al kept wondering where Rocky the flying squirrel was because we sure saw Bullwinkle and his peeps.
We had a slight change of plans from last night (imagine that a change of plans...) we thought we were going to be in canola but the change put us in the wheat instead. This meant we had to road the combine 20 miles east of Carlyle, just south of Kisbey.

We started in on some organic wheat and with the smaller swaths we made good time. We were working with the farmer and his brother in the same field. What a change from the day before...going from lots of technology and big machines to regular old time farming. Two three ton trucks with a pull type 914 International combine and a self propelled 915 International. The 915 was having pickup head troubles, and went back to the farm yard 1/2 mile away for repairs a couple of times, but the 914 stuck with us.

We had patched the belt on our pickup head to try and make it through the day, and it did do the job until the sun went down and the straw started getting tough. It would start jamming under the pickup teeth and stop some of the belts, so we quit around 8:30pm and drove back to the camper.

It wasn't a good day for brother-in-law Kim and his 2388. His top sieve decided it didn't want to stay in the machine and tried to exit the back of the machine...good thing the chaff spreaders were back there to help slow it down...well, until one of them went flying too. He did get up and running after a couple of hours of down time.

Oh dear, the leaves are starting to change color...