September 30

View of the day-The farmer’s fleet sort of lined up...still can’t get the straight line thing going.

We woke this morning to a knock at the door; it was the farmer inviting us to go into Fort Qu’Appelle for Sunday brunch with them and two other couples. Since we didn’t stay long enough in Esterhazy to enjoy the brunches there, we jumped at the chance. We decided to go in with our own vehicle so we could go do laundry after we were done dining. We got into the last buffet of the season at the motel and sat drinking coffee almost long enough to get in on the lunch buffet…nothing to rush home for…

As usual, “it only rained a tenth at the field”, the familiar phrase that comes after a rain when you’re itching to get back out into the field. We were combining five miles north of where the farmer was and it appeared we had more rain than they did. They were combining canola, so the straw wasn’t as much an issue for them as it was for us and our downed oats.

The farmer figured it wouldn’t be worth it to try anything today, which really didn’t hurt Al’s feelings since it was NFL football day. He was a bit miffed at the Laundromat when they only had “peasant-vision” local over-the-air TV…the usual Sunday crap that comes on. He resorted to reading yesterday’s city paper to kill time, but just as we were leaving, the station we were watching switched over to football…perfect timing.

Back at the camper, Al busied himself with the remote control while Marilyn continued transferring video tapes to DVD. It’s amazing what you forget you taped over the years. We used to have a harvest supper for all the people we combined for in Canada…eat some great food, have a good chat, drink some “beverage”, watch the video from the summer’s harvest…that sort of thing. Since the local theatre group started having their dinner theatres in December, we just started buying tickets for that and never did have the videos again.

One of the tapes was a supper we held in the Grayson hall where we had some of the local “hams” crash the party hillbilly style, and proceed to try and take our customers. They offered to do their combining for “two cents an acre, but since our thrashin’ machine ain’t got no wheels, you have to bring your crop to us”…what knuckleheads…they were pretty funny going off the cuff…and everyone was so young…nephew Gordie was one month short of being two years old.

Good times…

The farmer was complaining that his fleet wasn’t shown in it’s best light in one of the view of the days, so when he said they were lined up better today, Marilyn decided to go out an do an updated photo with the added machine he had gotten. When she got out to the field, two of the machines were combining and two were sitting, one with its “wings” open. Apparently he didn’t want to combine too much…

After taking a few photos and chatting with some of the people out at the field, Marilyn went up to field where our combine was to see that everything was still there and write the blog before heading into upload. The elevator to make it a quick trip, or Fort Qu’Appelle to bring home a pizza?

Hmmm…or should it be Mmmmm…