The scurs resurrected the Weather Eye to its former self, delivering some wonderful harvest weather this past week. Will it serve up another beauty, or will the beauty be in the eye of the beholder? Starting Wednesday, mostly cloudy with a good chance of rain and snow showers. Highs in the mid-40’s with lows in the low 30’s. Thursday, mostly sunny with highs in the low 40’s and lows in the upper 20’s. Sunny on Friday with highs in the low 50’s and lows in the mid-30’s. Saturday, sunny becoming cloudy with a slight chance of evening showers. Highs in the upper 50’s with lows in the low 40’s. Mostly sunny on Sunday with a slight chance of rain. Highs in the low 50’s with lows in the mid-30’s. Monday, partly sunny with a slight chance of rain. Highs in the mid-40’s with lows in the low 30’s. Cloudy for Tuesday with a slight chance for a shower or thunderstorm. Highs in the low 40’s with lows in the mid- 20’s. On the 27th we slide below 10 hours and 30 of daylight for the first time since back on Valentine’s Day. The normal high for October 27th is 54 and the normal low is 33. The scurs are feeling entrepreneurial. They’ll be selling empty feed sacks to all the kids for their Halloween candy.
Last week was what most corn and soybean farmers had been waiting for. The sun shone and winds blew, allowing harvest to progress once again. It was still difficult to get soybeans to cooperate at first, but once they did the result was that most were able to get them harvested and sold or in storage someplace. Yields, as the season progressed, were generally less than desired as the later harvested fields were frequently those that were planted last as soil conditions permitted. White mold was a factor as well as several other diseases that nickeled and dimed yields. Anthracnose in particular was noticeable in stubble of fields that were soil sampled last week. Corn harvest also picked up speed as soybeans were harvested. Moistures finally came down some after being stuck on 25% in many cases. Yields here too were disappointing where brittle snap had affected fields significantly. In other cases, yields were close to last year.
It was good to hear the corn dryers running once again. The Ten Man dryer in Bugtussle had run for a brief stint earlier then was on hiatus. Last week however it was back in business. Neighbor Jon’s dryer is still my sleeping pill at home. Something about the frequency between the hum of the fan and roar of that burner knock me right out. Most nights Ruby and I can’t make it through the second Gunsmoke and sleep until The Big Valley comes on before turning the tube off. I wake up through the night though when the dryer shuts off to refill or when it runs out of corn. I think it would be a good idea if Jon put in more wet corn holding capacity. I’d sleep even more soundly. In fact it would really be great if he dried corn for the entire neighborhood. I might turn into Rip Van Winkle.
The warm weather wasn’t all peaches and cream. Those pesky multicolored Asian lady beetles were out once again in full force Saturday and Sunday. They also became squatters in many area houses. Some are still convinced that the lady beetles only come out of soybean fields, but that theory doesn’t make much sense. There simply isn’t much for them to eat when the soybean aphids leave for the buckthorn once the soybeans turn. They do however have food in the corn in the form of bird-cherry oat aphids and English grain aphids. This was very evident when I drove past a recently picked field of sweet corn on Saturday. The lady beetles were practically flying out of there in swarms as they bounced off the windshield.
The autumn winds mean that baseball will soon be at an end. No Yankees! Yay! It also means that the leaves on the trees will be coming to a close. The sheep at the ranch appear content with that. With pastures running lower and likely getting monotonous, some freshly fallen leaves offer some welcome variety. The ewes certainly seem happy going leaf to leaf, gobbling them up soon after they’ve fallen. It makes for an interesting line between the yard and the pasture after a while, leaves on the lawn side of the fence with none on the pasture side. I’m guessing if we opened the fence up they’d probably eat the leaves off the lawn. I’m also guessing they’d eat them along with anything else they could reach.
More of the fall birds are coming to the feeders as well as the squirrels on their ear corn. There’s a large group of chickadees in seemingly perpetual motion between the twigs and the red feeder during daylight hours. The large blue jays have arrived too, contending with the squirrels for kernels of corn from time to time. Some wonder why I feed the squirrels. There is a method to my madness. There is plenty of ear corn left over from yield checks to feed squirrels and pheasants when needed. It helps keep the squirrels from attempting to raid the bird feeders and watching them gives Ruby something to occupy her mind since we hide the TV remote when we’re gone. Don’t want her watching Gunsmoke unsupervised.
Mrs. Cheviot and I were finally able to make one more trip in the Studebaker with the nice forenoon on Sunday. Auntie Mar Mar and Unkie Gregory joined us about 10 a.m. and we motored for one of our favorite little spots in Madison Lake. Tweed no longer owns it, but it has maintained its integrity. The leaves were somewhat disappointing along the way as the winds beneficial to harvest were detrimental to our leaf watching. Around Madison Lake itself and even locally there was still some color. The rest of the area was past peak with many of the leaves being down already. Didn’t matter. The food was tasty as always and we kept ourselves entertained without constant reliance on cell phones or other annoyances. Unkie Gregory and I discussing the Silver Hawk overdrive was about as deep as we needed to get into technology. Of course Auntie Mar Mar left some cookies for me to nosh on gain. Reckon she knows it’ll be another long hard winter.
See you next week…real good then.