The scurs were looking for a cloudy, cool damp weekend and by gum we got one. Will we see more of the sun this week? Starting Wednesday, mostly sunny with a high of 45 – 50 and a low near 35. Partly cloudy and warmer on Thursday and Friday with highs of 50 – 55 with lows Thursday night near 35 and around 45 for Friday night. Warmer Saturday with a slight chance of rain during the day with rain likely for the overnight. Highs 60 – 65 and lows of 30 – 35. Brace yourself for Sunday, highs of only 35 and lows falling to 25. Partly cloudy to mostly sunny for Monday and Tuesday with highs of 30 – 35 and lows of 20 - 25. The sun will rise at 7 a.m. on the 8th, the same as it did before the time change back on the 21st of September. The normal high for Veterans’ Day is 44 and the normal low is 29. The scurs will be flying Old Glory proudly regardless of who won the election.
It seems odd to be looking at the calendar while seeing or hearing very little field activity. Sure, there is the occasional drone of an anhydrous ammonia rig or the odd primary tillage operation, but no corn dryers running or combines rolling up and down the fields. There are aeration fans running, but that’s just background noise. Anhydrous ammonia has gone on about as well as most can remember. The rain we received around Bugtussle in early September carried a long way and the rain on October 25th was the icing on the cake. Subsoils remain extremely dry as anyone tiling can attest. This lends credence to the last estimate of soil moisture from the SROC and the rainfall records from many area rain gauges.
In the garden at the ranch, the rains have actually made it too wet to till for fall. The amount of evaporation and transpiration when the weather is cool and the season is at its close is very minimal when the temps remain as cool as they did over the weekend. The frosty temperatures have started to take their toll on the leaf lettuce that was a hit for making BLTs. Unfortunately there aren’t many of the tomatoes we harvested that remain edible at this point, to a human anyway. The sheep on the other hand don’t seem to care. The winter radish tops are also showing signs that Jack Frost has been visiting them with greater frequency. It will soon be time to harvest and find a place to put them. A giveaway program for some may be in order as well. Hopefully the recipients won’t mind their little extra giddy-up.
With fieldwork being largely over with, it has allowed some time to get at some of those tasks that have accumulated with work being hectic, storm damaged and unwanted trees among them. The lamb crop and a few cull ewes were sold on Thursday, freeing up some time and making chores bearable once again. Doing an hour’s of chores following a 10 – 12 hour workday gets old real fast. The bumps and bruises from loading them are well worth it. Saturday meant more hay to stack and after that, cleaning up the trees behind the barn that were sawed down last spring. They’d begun rubbing on the building and since the space is tight between the tree row and barn, not a lot of room to get at them. Getting dried out with leaves still attached they were becoming a fire hazard so it was definitely a job needing doing.
Sunday after church meant more of the same, this time sawing down the bottom half of the spruce tree that the wind stuck into the side of the garage two years ago. Pruning off all the dead limbs on the rest of the spruce trees took a good chunk of the afternoon. After putting the forks on the skid loader, much of that wound up in the huge brush pile south of the house. If you look from Bugtussle and see a glow to the east, you’ll know that I lit it up. Oh, and in between these jobs, the tree watering goes on, with the hose being moved every few hours to help the fruit trees and smaller evergreen trees make it through the winter. Next up: barn cleaning and getting those leaves ground up on a dry afternoon this week.
The birds being attracted to the feeders and yard are changing ever so subtly. On Saturday, there was a bright red male cardinal under the apple trees. There are 5 of the huge blue jays that monopolize the feeders briefly and are then off to parts unknown. Chickadees are remaining loyal to this point anyway and the goldfinch numbers continue to increase ever so slightly, with a dozen now at last count. Some have pointed out the pheasant numbers still appear to be low and that’s definitely the case. I saw a couple roosters in the ditch across the road from our pasture and that’s been about it. Like last winter however, there is ample corn on the ground in the fields again this fall, largely the result of the high winds from the September 5th thunderstorms. Even though the fields have been worked, the pheasants will still have plenty of ears they can access provided the snow doesn’t become too deep or if the fields get iced over.
Was paid another visit by Vista’s noted Swedish astronomer and he left me with all kinds of wonderful information for the early morning and evening skies in November. Thus far they have been nothing short of spectacular for viewing the planets Venus and Jupiter. Jupiter rises about two hours after sunset in early November. By the end of the month it will rise about sunset. On the 10th and 11th, the planet Venus will be very close in the sky to the crescent moon shortly before sunrise. Venus rises in the east about three hours before sunrise. I think this is roughly the same time the noted Swedish astronomer gets up to check on the progress of the road construction by his house.
See you next week…real good then.