The wait has been unbearable. Every day Al would call to see if this would be the day to give it a try and every day the farmer would go out and test, then come back with the bad news. Too wet. Problem is, the days are getting shorter and even if the sun comes out by noon, it is disappearing by 5pm.
While we were down Marilyn was able to work on show tractors for the 2019 Farm Toy Show at Yorkton in February. We always do a show tractor...only 35 of them, which are spoken for by regular customers. Al chooses the 1/64 scale 4 wheel drive tractor for the year(this is the 12th year), then Marilyn makes stickers for the boxes and tractors, then boxes them up. This year it is a tracked black Challenger and it is the earliest we have ever gotten them done!
Finally on Wednesday, Oct. 10, Al got the call that the canola was "close enough"...which, by this time, meant it was still wet, but what the hell. Al drove up to the farm and got reacquainted with the combine...it started, no problem and at 5pm he was back in the saddle. He got 45 acres in before they had to shut down.
Al was going to stay in the camper, but the water system didn't want to cooperate, so he just drove the 45 miles home. The next day was a good one for acres, he combined 110 acres. The farmer has three New Holland combines along with Al, so they covered a lot of ground once they got going.
The next day it rained...and the day after, it snowed. We decided to bring the camper home and winterize it. We had taken the 200 gallon tank of water to use in the camper and it had gotten a little "hard" around the edges from the freezing temperatures. The rough road on the way back home broke it up into smaller chunks...now all we needed was some warm sunny weather to thaw it out.
The tanks on the camper had fared well...we had kept the furnace at 45ºF and had a radiant heater keeping things from freezing inside. Oddly enough, when Marilyn shifted the radiant heater (an oil filled heater that looks like the old time steam radiators) there was a dead mouse under it. And not in a trap...one less to worry about. She turned on the tank heaters...which Al was unaware that we had...to thaw things out down under for a couple of days.
By Tuesday, Oct. 16, the weather was starting to turn around. It wasn't raining as much and it was warming up. Marilyn got the camper cleaned up and winterized. Just the thought of all the mouse crap in the drawers meant that everything was going to get scrubbed and sanitized. Those little bastards chewed on tin foil, cardboard, rubber, hard plastic, and...for those who use the "shaved Irish Spring soap repellent" theory...they even ate the soap!! Those bright green turds didn't seem as rank.
We don't usually have issues with mice over the winter in our camper when it is parked in our yard, likely because of the "community cats". No one seems to have ownership of them and they do have a path worn out across our yard to the neighbours on either side of us, so we must be sharing. I did see the momma cat carrying a mouse to her kittens the day I cleaned the camper, so perhaps we will have another rodent free winter.
With the camper nestled in and the water tank thawed and emptied, we were done with that "harvest" aspect. Now to finish combining. The weather was great...all the way up to double digits in Celsius, we even hit 20º one day. A lot of combining was getting done in the area.
Al was driving back and forth, while Marilyn just kept working at Staples. The guys were covering a lot of ground and we had hoped to get done in time to take part in the Regina Toy Show which was to be Oct. 20 & 21. Al just couldn't bring himself to attend with all the harvesting left to do, so we had to bow out. It sounded like there were others in the same boat and with more farmers trying to get finished, the crowd was down quite a bit. Can't have every year a bonus year like last year.
Sunday, Oct. 21 we got finished at Canora. Marilyn actually went up for the day...mostly because she had to bring the shop trailer home. Since Al was going to drive the combine home, rather than getting it hauled, it made sense for both of us to go up in one pickup, then everything would get home in one trip. We had some red backup in the field for the last day as two CaseIH 2188's came to help finish the job.
Al roaded the combine back to our place last night, then parked it on the lawn as he usually does. This morning before Marilyn left for work, we emptied out the remains of the DEF barrel into the combine. We have one more job to do about 15 mile SE of us, so Al had another drive ahead of him.
He got down to the field mid morning and was able to get 90 acres combined before shutting down.
There is light at the end of the tunnel...
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