We celebrated Ryan's second birthday a few days ago with family and friends. He was especially thrilled with the cow cake that Auntie made for him! He is a happy little man, with lots of new books to read with his mama and dad and a new knitted hat made by cousin April-May. And just in time too, fall is definitely upon us.
Yesterday I dug down in a couple blank furrows near our house to see what was going on under the soil. My suspicion were confirmed when I found several what plants that have curled and crimped because a crust formed on the soil after the rain last week. We only had a third of an inch, but it was enough to cause trouble.
There are places in the field where the wheat is not going to germinate at all, due to the drought, but it's heartbreaking to see the tiny plants that did have enough moisture, struggle and then lose the effort to make it to sunlight.
After a nearly two week delay, waiting for rain, that didn't actually turn in to much rain, we are back in the seeding game this week. We have never seeded this late. This year however, everything is inside out and upside down. It's terribly dry, and most of the seeds are not even going in to moisture, and those that are, have had enough rain to make a crust, causing the little wheat plants to accordion and go sideways, attempting to find a way out!
A little piece of good news is that the rain that did fall, was enough to germinate the cheat grass, so we have a chance to eliminate at least one flush of this invasive annual grass. Controlling cheat grass is an ongoing battle that we will never win, but this year we get to make at least one strike at getting rid of a few plants!
We carry on, do what we can and hope for the best.
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| I was called back in to service Thursday afternoon to run the coil packer ahead of the drills. |
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| It was nice to be back on a tractor again for a few hours, and kinda cool to have three tractors working in the same field! |
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| The afternoon sun cast cool shadows as we were working. You can see the tinge of green in this field, which shows that there are trillions upon trillions of tiny cheat grass plants growing! |
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| A closer look at the cheat grass. So thick that plants are growing on top of each other! |
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| Another shot of the green tinge. |
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| And more shadow play. Matthew and Reynald are filling the drills as I continue to coil pack and the shadows grow longer! |
A few images of Reynald and Alicia heading off to their respective tractors to start seeding. This makes me smile.
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| Eyes closed but cute nonetheless! |
A week ago today we celebrated New Year's Eve on the farm. We started doing this several years ago, the night before we start seeding our winter wheat crop, which begins our new crop year. And, since we're going to work in the morning, we don't stay up until midnight!
