Challenges seem to be never-ending

Last week seems like just a blur.
Our cereal performance data was due Thursday. Although I knew we were cutting things pretty tight, it all went bad when I went to enter the numbers and discovered our 1000 kernel weight machine was giving us false readings.
There was no way we would have time to re-do all of them and still make the deadline. So we did what we could and had to ask for forgiveness.
Fortunately, they were happy to have our yield data at least.
So those are big trials and it’s a big bonus to have them behind us, although they are going to haunt us for a few more days yet. Thankfully, I have come up with a plan to hopefully deal—or potentially deal—with our tillage issues.
A local farmer is planning to come in and chisel plow at a certain depth, and we will see if this helps with some of our issues. If not, we will have to re-visit this next year, as well.
Although I have been at the Emo Agricultural Research Station for so many years, the challenges certainly never end and perhaps get more difficult as times passes (or maybe I’m just getting old).
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Thankfully, we chose a great day Saturday for preg-checking cows, as well as vaccinating, and de-worming them.
We also welcomed a special guest as Melissa Friesen joined us to see what life was like on the farm during these activities. I got up early to go get the bigger group of cows in before we had all our company because they tend to get suspicious if too many people appear.
We even had time to go and lock up the group at Nanny’s, so we were starting off successfully.
Preg-checking went well–we only had one open cow and one open yearling.
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The Rainy River Cattlemen’s Association will hold its final cattle sale of the season this Saturday (Oct. 29) starting at 9 a.m.
At our last regular RRCA meeting, we decided to add another sale date to our fall sales for next year. Based on the survey responses from our members earlier this year, it was evident that people would like us to try for a sale later in the season.
Our biggest hurdle is water. With open pens, the water freezes on us (we likely could be dealing with that this weekend, as well).
We are working on a solution for this and have decided to try these dates on for 2017: April 22, Aug. 26, Sept. 30, Oct. 21, and Nov. 4.
We welcome any feedback on this, too.
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The first Wednesday in November is Canada’s National 4-H Day, or better known as “Show your 4-H Colours Day!”
So be sure to show off your 4-H green on Nov. 2!