SOCKS, one hundred and one uses

You know how you go back and re-read something and realize you maybe shouldn't have written what you wrote. Ya, I did that in my last couple of posts. Personal stuff that maybe I shouldn't have vented about, not wanting the whole world to know about my financial difficulties ahahaha.  Ergo, the sock solution comes to mind. Stuffing to commence at the close of this post.

To quote from one of my favorite HBO series "THE GAME OF THRONES"
Winter is Coming.  

What does that mean, hmmmm, well for starters, Robt spends days changing oil in all the equipment that gets used in the winter months, changing to a lighter viscosity so it doesn't thicken up like molasses when the temperature drops to -40*c     ugh....I hate it when it gets that cold, there is so much stress involved...worrying about pipes freezing, cattle dying and Robt getting frostbite.

The Cows are herded home making it easier to feed and water them once the dugouts are froze over.  Just the two of us to herd a hundred + cows home along the road...some of the neighbours land has no fence between it and the road the damn bags always want to take off onto the open fields. Robt tries to keep them moving by luring them along the roadway with a prime bale of hay on the tractor....and I follow either on the quad or the pickup depending on how cold it is...to keep the rear of the herd moving along and not dawdling or going where they are not suppose to.

All the bales Robt hauls home need to be stacked....one on end like a soup tin and then one on top sitting the normal way...the rain and snow hits rolls down the curved sides of the bale and drips to the ground not hitting the bottom bale at all, in theory anyway...but the main reason we stack them like that is for the wind break they create...up here on the hill as we are the winter wind chill can be ferocious...any wind break is a good thing...so we line the outer fences of all the corrals with stacks of bales, mostly straw, so the cows don't break their necks trying to reach a hay bale they shouldn't be.

Rain gutters need to be cleaned, the chimney for the wood stove cleaned and the summer clothes go away for another year and out come the heavy gear.

The corrals have to be cleaned of last years manure and it needs to be hauled out to the field, normally we have a fellow come and do that job but this year to due to lack of funds we will only clean the two important pens pre and post calving and the rest will wait. We'll do the work ourselves, haul it out in the old truck and just dump it in piles to be spread later by tractor. Normally, when the manure crew come, they have a huge loader tractor whose front end bucket is so big it holds the combined volume of three of our tractor buckets full.  He brings 5 big semi trucks with manure boxes on the back, the box is equipped with a big beater at the back end and the floor of the box has chains on it that move along the length of the floor to move the manure toward the back of the truck box, until it reaches the beater where it is flailed into the air, landing on the field behind the truck as he travels across the field. When they are done, Robt goes with the big tractor and discs it into the soil to benefit next years crop.  That job normally costs $4,000. - 5,000.  When we do it every other year, which happens some times due to timing,( Once it freezes we can't do it), the job costs a lot more...and takes two days....the last bill like that was $7,500. 

We managed to get the rest of the crop off....normally we curse a strong wind, mostly for the damage it does, blowing big trees onto the fences and letting the cows get out, taking the tin roof off the machine sheds etc....but last week the wind blew here for three full days....gusts up to 70 km. 24 hrs a day...and dried the swathes of grain so much after the snow we had the week before that we were able to combine and get the oats off dry enough that it will keep in the bin for the winter and not spoil. That was a HUGE relief....our friend Raymond came to run the combine and Robt hauled the grain to the bins with the two trucks and I baled the straw right behind the combine so it wouldn't blow across the field and be lost...Without that straw we would have had to buy bedding for the cattle ....so Robt was adamant that I do the baling as soon as it came out of the combine.  

The first day we combined just us two....and the wind was horrendous...as the straw came out the back of the combine after the oat kernels were rubbed off, it should have normally just fallen straight to the ground in a neat row...but the wind was blowing it in some places more than ten feet to the side of the combine and only half of it was hitting the ground, the rest was scattered across acres of stubble field.  I had to follow so close to the combine that the front grill of the new John Deere tractor was just covered in Oat chaff and the engine temp kept heating up because it couldn't breath, I had to stop and remove the chaff to the engine from over heating.  The worst part was the time Robt forgot I was right behind him and for some reason decided to back the combine up....I saw the huge blue combine coming back towards me and threw the tractor into reverse, but it didn't engage and he hit the front of the tractor with the back end of the combine.....it happened in slow motion...that piece of equipment, three times bigger than the tractor I was in, our $ 150,000.oo Once in a life time brand new tractor, backing slowly but inexorably toward the front of the tractor... and then bang, luckily not at a great speed but it hit none the less, a not so gently nudge.  All I could think then and since was, Robt is a very lucky man, and thank God we ordered the tractor with that heavy duty grill protector...or the whole front end would have been caved in...and I would have wept like a new born baby crying for the tit....and Robt would have had to leave the country of course....  But the only damage done was a bit of paint rubbed off the protector and a bit of metal peeled off.  Whewwww....dodged that bullet.

Well, Robt has come in for breakfast finally, so I have to go bang out some porridge...  Talk to ya later...