August has arrived. The time of year when we often see some hot, dry days. This year we have only seen hot, dry days. The rain even appears on a radar that it is heading our way and it still manage to dissipate or go around us. We ended up getting 2/10 of an inch on Friday night. It was the best rain we had in a long time! We finished haying finally. We could have finished a while ago, but it was depressing so we didn’t mind missing a day or two. And the other reason was we weren’t working around the rain. Last year we made 700 bales and this year on the same land it was 265. (I think….) Quite a difference. My plan of keeping my cows out of the main pasture for a couple more weeks failed as the calves were crawling out through the barb wire and were on the road. The last thing I needed was to have one hit on the road, so I moved them out of that chunk. Funny thing is they won’t touch the electric fence but are smart enough to weave their way through the barb wire. Thanks to Jacob for calling and giving me a heads up!
Friday marked a year since we lost our dad. We made plans to head to Mine Centre to put up a memorial marker, but the plans had to change to Saturday. My Uncle Jimmy is always very welcoming, so we spent the day with him and some of his family. The memorial plaque was placed on my dad’s favourite lake. We then spent the rest of the day fishing. My dad loved to fish for $ so we all chipped in $5, and the biggest walleye got the pot. We ended the day with a fish fry, just the way my dad would have wanted it. Though it was a great day, it made me a little sad. A whole year without him, my first time to Turtle Lake without him. We are hoping that we can go up to the site and have a traditional shore lunch with more of the Bliss family once we can have an open fire again.
Rainy River Soil & Crop is hosting a crop tour on Wednesday August 4th. It will begin at 9:00 a.m. at Joe & Melissa Sletmoen’s. If you need more information you can give Joe a call/text at 807-275-6545.
For you beef producers out there, applications are now available for the $800,000 in temporary hay. If you have an email listed when paying check-off it should be in your inbox. If not, please let me know. The funding for fencing and water will be announce this week so watch your inbox for those details as well.
It is going to be crunch time at the Sales Barn for the rest of the month! If you think you have some spare time and would be willing to go and tackle a few jobs, please get in touch with Louis Bujold. His number is 807-276-3493. We are sure hoping to have things in place for our August 28th Sale.
We finished combining our winter wheat at the Station. The spring cereals are not far behind. As well we did don our 2nd cut forages of the ones that we felt worthy enough to cut. We have some newly seeding forages that are doing a bit better since they didn’t get hit with the frost like everything else this spring. What a year!
