November 7, 2009

View of the day-A bald eagle showing a coyote who's boss. He must have been used to the traffic on the corner or been really hungry because he let us get reasonably close.

What a crazy day. We left home for Esterhazy, planning to stop in town like we normally do, but thanks to repairs on the railroad tracks near the highway, we ended up taking the scenic route. We live 3.5 miles from the main highway and there is only one road that branches off to anywhere along that 3.5 miles, it is at the 3 mile mark. They put the blockade up a half mile from the tracks, which are 1/3 mile from the highway...sound like a math problem? Well, they certainly never figured it out and we had to turn around and take the back roads east and south to the highway. The worst of it was that Marilyn didn't get her coffee...we even drove around Saltcoats looking for some. We ended up going to the field through Esterhazy so we were able to stock up there. Rant off.

Al got the truck and cart unloaded while Marilyn greased and serviced the combine, then we started right in combining by 11:30am. The neighbors had a few green ones move in to do a couple of fields of swathed canola...actually for the farmer that we had just finished for the other day. He had hired them when the plan was that we would be going to Dyersville and the weather would be good...we were okay with that since we had found other work to do in the area.

We got the field finished around 3:30pm, then moved over to the last of the flax. We got to combine along side Eugene and his 9500 JD and Al was the lone truck driver...but he was able to keep up, quite easily with the short haul. We got that field done by 8:30pm and that was also the end of Eugene's harvest for the season. Another 100+ acre day for us, which felt pretty good. Occasionally we had a lineup as you can see in the mirror in the picture.

The sun was shining and the wind was blowing hard again, unfortunately, the temps weren't anywhere near what they were yesterday...nice in the cab, but nippy by the bins. Al had a small chain issue with the auger...a trip into town and a few back to the shop trailer got him fixed and it was business as usual.

We decided to bring the shop trailer home with us, since we would be moving everything back home and after getting the clearance lights working, we headed north. We got through town and just as we hit the first set of tracks north of town the red and blue lights started flashing behind us...the mounties were pulling us over. Al is never in the mood for these guys and couldn't figure out what the problem was...the lights were all working, we weren't speeding, we stopped at the lights...we sat and waited to find out what the deal was. We did have a panic moment when we thought maybe the registration on the licence had expired...we couldn't remember because we usually let it go for the winter and this year was really late...they could have expired.

The officer finally made his way to the window and said he had run our plate number from the trailer and they told him it hadn't been registered since 2007, but after he got up to it, he realised he had one of the alphabets wrong...a G for a C, or something. Once he had the right letter, it checked out...Al mentioned the registration thing and he told us we were good until the end of this month, so we were good to go. Relatively painless.

Marilyn is sure it was the wafting aroma of the donut box on the dash...