January 25, 2016

View of the day-The front yard shop is looking rather festive.

Kind of fell down on the job, but it has been so hectic over the past two months that the harvest would seem like a holiday right about now.

Since the last post, there have been toy shows, drama festivals, more toy shows, dinner theatres, harvesters convention...and work.

Al and Roger did the toy show in Regina, then headed down to Dyersville for the big show down there. They got back from Dyersville just in time to make it to Marilyn's performance at the drama festival hosted by the theatre group that she is involved with. Or, as Al refers to it when they need to borrow a trailer or something..."That effin, theatre group". He has been officially elected the president of that Paper Bag Players auxilary group.

Marilyn was acting in a short play about two women in an elevator, with another long time Paper Bag Player member, Teresa...her husband Allan is the vice-president of the effin theatre group. We did manage to win runner up to best play, or as Marilyn refers to it "first last place", we also got honorable mention for both actresses and our director got a nod as well.

With that out of the way, we had to scramble to get ready for the big toy show at AgriTrade in Red Deer, Alberta. A long drive, but at least the show is four days long, so it didn't seem like we were running in to ourselves on the road home. The weather was absolutely gorgeous this year, which made loading and unloading somewhat less painful, not to mention the great roads on the way home...no snow.

The toy show was in a different building this year...a nice change from having to take turns hauling stuff up the two person elevator that we had to use in the past, and the change of venue didn't hurt sales, which was a bonus.

We nicely got home after the toy show and it was time for Marilyn to get ready for the dinner theatre, the last two weekends in November...followed by the annual convention for the Association of Canadian Custom Harvesters...this year in Lethbridge, Alberta.

We got to Lethbridge...again with fabulous weather and that was a great change from the last convention there two years ago, when a terrific blizzard hit the area. The weather brought a good turnout, so we got lots of visiting in with everyone.

This wasn't a "big machinery" year, so we didn't have a lot of tires to kick, but we still managed to get a pile of information from all the vendors that attended. Marilyn was finally able to hand over the secretary-treasurer duties to Jenny Bashutski, one of the younger members who are still involved in the USA harvest run...one less iron in the fire for Marilyn.

Once again, there were a lot of cool items up for grabs at the auction...CaseIH came up with another original offering...a smoker make out of a muffler from a combine. Al was really wanting to get the neon MacDon light, but it went a little to high for his wallet. 

We did, however, come home with a CaseIH flag, a jacket and toque(stocking cap for you southerners) and a 1/64 New Holland 9090 combine...special, because it is a rare, blue colored, chase unit.

We got home on Friday, then Marilyn had to take the toy trailer, which was loaded with set pieces, to Preeceville...about 60 miles northwest...for the final performance of the Christmas play. This was for Preecvilles town party, so it was a great crowd and once the booze starts flowing, everything gets funnier. That's booze for the audience, of course...not the actors.

Finally a break in the mayhem...for a week, at least. Marilyn and her theatre peeps treated themselves to a drama weekend in Saskatoon, where they got a backstage tour of Persephone Theatre, before watching a performance of a play they had done for Christmas a few years back.

We had Al's family Christmas on December 23 in Grayson at his brother, Ed and Sandy's place. Then did Marilyn's side, going to her sister, Marg and Kim's at Carlyle for Christmas day dinner. Marilyn had to work Christmas Eve day and Boxing Day, so we didn't go far.

For Christmas this year, we decided to get each other one big gift, so we are now the proud owners of a Phantom 3 Professional 4K drone...wait until you see the video and pictures this thing will take. We haven't done any flying with it yet...we want to make sure to do a lot of simulated flying with it before we actually send it up. Plus, we live four miles from the Yorkton airport, so we will have to get a bit farther out.

Marilyn did decide to test out the first part of the video she watched by putting it in beginner mode and starting the propellers. Everything worked just as instructed. She used the controls to lift it off the counter and hover about two feet...still worked perfect. Then, without touching any of the controls, it started to drift ever so slightly towards the patio doors. Rather than panic and hit the wrong levers to send it, God knows where, she decided to use the "return to home" button on the controller, which she assumed would set it back down where it had taken off from. Doesn't work that way.

The drone was close enough that she could have just grabbed one of the legs and just shut it down by hand, but that hadn't been covered in the video, so no way she was doing that. Al, meanwhile, was sitting at the table watching this unfold, ready to duck at any moment, should it aim for him. This whole episode took no more than 45 seconds, but at the time it seemed like a lot longer. Anyway, when Marilyn hit the return to home, she had not gotten to the part of the video, which states that when the button is pressed the drone rises to 98 feet to clear obstacles before heading home! So now it is heading for the patio doors and once it contacts the draw string for the verticle blinds, down it goes, then it lays there with lights flashing, buzzing like a mad wasp that had only been caught with half a swatter swipe.

Nothing was broken...the cable wound around the props helped to set it down somewhat gently. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't rolling. Several lessons learned.

January is here and we are back at the driving thing again. We had the toy show in Saskatoon the weekend of the 16, then we got home Sunday night and left for Brandon, Manitoba to set up the ACCHI booth at AgDays. 

We set up Monday and looked after the booth Tuesday until 3:30, got spelled off by some Manitoba harvesters so we could get back to Yorkton for the Terrier hockey game.

Now we are getting into crunch time for the Yorkton Farm Toy auction, February 12, that Al is organizing. The toy show follows that on the 13th and 14th. For the past 8 years we have done up 35 "show tractors", this year was the 450 Versatile with Grouser blade. We create stickers for the tractors and boxes...here is the fleet. 

Oh...and Marilyn finally got her auto-steer! We had to get a different combine to do it, since Al wasn't going to add an aftermarket system to the 7088. We bought a used CaseIH 8230 loaded with everything but field tracker. This machine was one of Al's toy buddy, Roger's, combines. They were upgrading, so the timing was perfect for us. It is the same year as our 7088 but it has less hours.

AND IT HAS AUTO-STEER...