Farming- Part 7

The fall harvest is in full swing after a week of great weather. This helps the farmers get their crops dried and ripened to be able to harvest. 

The canola crops are starting to come down into swaths. They will lay on the ground until the seeds inside the pods have ripened. The seeds will become black and the oil will no longer be green.

There is also lots of machinery in the fields and on the road. Grain trucks, swathers, combines, and tractors will be doing the harvest, and moving between fields. Watch for these in your area, and where you are driving for these pieces of machines.

The cereal grain crops are also well in harvest. They are taking the crops down with combines. The combines cut the stock, and then take the seed away from the stock. The seed is then stored until a grain truck comes to take the grain away. The stalk is then left behind in rows called swaths. These swaths will be baled up eventually and used as straw for animals.

Farming- Part 5

Well it is time for the latest version of the Prairie Farm Report, or my version anyways.

Things here in Alberta are kicked into high gear now! Many farmers are sitting in their combines, tractors, and trucks right now doing the silage for this year. Silage is when grain is cut before it is fully ripe, and chopped up. Instead of laying it down on the ground, it is put into large trucks and hauled to a pit. The silage that comes in in not a dry feed, so when it makes it to the pit it must be packed to be air tight so it will not mold. The feed is then stored until the winter months and fed to the livestock, mainly cattle. This can be used as a replacement for hay or instead of supplementing with grain.

Anyways, back to the crops! Here are the latest pictures of my two fields I have been watching since spring.

The canola crop looked like this 3 weeks ago. It was in full bloom and had such pretty yellow flowers. Those flowers have now all fallen off as the crop ripens. Soon it will be cut and let lay there to ripen and let the seeds in the pods turn from a green to a black color.

This barley crop is also coming along nicely. It is starting to turn a golden yellow color, and lose the green color. This crop could go for silage and be cut early, or it will be let to fully ripen and dry and be a really nice golden yellow color when it is ready to be harvested. I will keep an eye on it and see what happens!

Weekend With "the Eng"- Part 2

Day 2 of our weekend started with a little walk to Starbucks. After how much we had ate last night, we needed to get up and moving around.

We jumped in the car and headed towards Breton so that "the Eng" could meet my parents. We had some time to kill, so I thought it might be neat to show him where I grew up. That place was Lewis Farms, and we drove by the main farm as well as the Bull Farm, where we lived as kids. It is always neat to go by Lewis's as it is pretty grand in comparison to most farms.

We then headed onto the farm, only to be met by this 10 mins into the drive....

Yes there was a bike race going on. We thought that there was just a group of ppl out biking, but about 300 bikers later, and driving 20-60km/hr, we went right through the race. The drive went from being 1 hrs to 2hrs, and us almost missing our tee time in Breton!

Along the way though I was able to educate "the Eng" all about farming. We talked about what the different crops were, the difference between silage and hay, and also the timing of crops. It was great to see some canola crops coming into bloom right now!

Pretty yellow fields of Canola

Once we finally made it to Breton, we had a quick 9 holes of golf with my mom and dad. We got a chance to look at the calves at home, and see how they are changing. I had not seen them for a month, so they had grown and changed lots in that time frame.

The next stop was the Ponoka Stampede to watch the finals of the rodeo and Chuckwagon racing. It was a great night out, and there was some awesome action on the infield. The final heat for all the cash in the chuckwagon's was won of the best I have ever seen, with the winner getting to the wire 0:00:01 of a second faster then that guy in 2nd, who also happened to be his son!


It was a great weekend after all, and nice to be able to just relax with some great company along the way. Guess I will really have to do something great this weekend to compete with that!

Farming 2011- Part 3

I have been trying to track the progress of some of the crops in the area over the last few weeks. In the area by my house there is a lot of canola, wheat, barley and oats grown. There is the odd field of peas and corn grown, but our weather is usually just not hot enough for the corn to get the yeilds that they can in some of the US states.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been getting a lot of rain. Last count at the farm was about 8" in the last 10 days with more to come in next few days.

Finally a day of sunshine

Because of all of the rain both before seeding and then during seeding many fields have areas that are flooded with water. These areas can be either low spots in the field, or areas that do not have good drainage. When this happens it effects the yeild (how much crop comes off the land) and it can also make things difficult when seeding having to go around these spots so you do not get stuck.

Field with a washed out section

Right now the crops in my area are coming in nicely. Most everything is seeded which is nice as there is still some land that has not been touched. It is getting really late for the farmers to do seeding, so most of the land that is not planted already will either be left until next year, or planted with a crop that they can make green feed bales with.

Canola crop that is coming in nicely

Barley field that is looking really good.

The next step for these farmers will be to spray for pests and weeds. I hope to get a few more pictures this week as the crops have already grown so much. Can't wait to show you the canola fields in bloom!