Combining combining and pirates

We started combining the crops, wheat and barley, today. And I understand tomorrow is supposed to be Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I'm not the first person to notice that combines look rather like ships, sailing steadily and majestically through waves of grain. And while you wait on the truck, or run up the combine ladder to check how the wheat is coming in, and the warm wind blows through your hair, you do feel as if you could be on a ship or even up the mast, especially when you scan the horizon to see if you can spot your neighbors in their combine.

So for all the western Canadian pirates out there, I offer hearty harvest wishes, and the words of this little ditty, written and performed by the Canadian musical comedy group The Arrogant Worms; and also performed lustily by the Edmonton band Captain Tractor (you can't combine farming and sailing any better than with that moniker):

The Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Well, I used to be a farmer and I made a living fine,
I had a little stretch of land along the CP line.
But times got tough, and though I tried, the money wasn't there.
The bankers came and took my land and told me, "Fair is fair"/
I looked for every kind of job, the answer always no.
"Hire you now?" they'd always laugh, "We just let twenty go!" (Ha ha!)
The government, they promised me a measly little sum,
But I've got too much pride to end up just another bum.

Then I thought, who gives a damn if all the jobs are gone,
I'm gonna be a pirate on the River Saskatchewan! (Arr!)

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, you'd think the local farmers would know that I'm at large
But just the other day I found an unprotected barge.
I snuck up right behind them and they were none the wiser.
I rammed the ship and sank it and I stole the fertilizer.
Bridge outside of Moose Jaw spans a mighty river
Farmers cross in so much fear, their stomach's are a-quiver
'Cause they know that Captain Tractor's hiding in the bay.
I'll jump the bridge, and knock 'em cold, and sail off with their hay.

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, Mountie Bob he chased me, he was always at my throat,
He'd follow on the shoreline 'cause he didn't own a boat.
But the cutbacks were a-comin' and the Mountie lost his job,
So now he's sailing with me and we call him Salty Bob.
A swingin' sword, a skull-and-bones, and pleasant company,
I never pay my income tax and screw the GST (Screw it!).
Prince Albert down to Saskatoon, the terror of the sea,
If you wanna reach the co-op, boy, you gotta get by me! (Arr!)

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

Well, the pirate life's appealing but you don't just find it here,
I hear in north Alberta there's a band of buccaneers.
They roam the Athabasca from Smith to Fort MacKay,
And you're gonna lose your Stetson if you have to pass their way.
Well, winter is a-comin' and a chill is in the breeze,
My pirate days are over once the river starts to freeze.
I'll be back in springtime, but now I've got to go,
I hear there's lots of plunderin' down in New Mexico.

And it's a heave (ho!) hi (ho!), coming down the plains,
Stealing wheat and barley and all the other grains,
And it's a ho (hey!) hi (hey!), farmers bar yer doors
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores.

When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!
When you see the Jolly Roger on Regina's mighty shores!

Harvest jubilee

Evans cherries before pitting:













and after:

Combine time

It's combine time now. [Updated to add: When I first posted this earlier in the evening, I was just recovering from the suppertime whirlwind that was my kitchen, complete with grain moisture reader on the kitchen table, and the rosy moon wasn't up yet. Then I realized, after we've been gazing at it all week that it's finally the full, Harvest Moon. Not just great timing, but a great gift of extra light when the men are out working in the fields till midnight. Shine on, indeed.]

Tom arrived home just before eight and was grabbing a quick supper when his friend arrived and it was time to start combining the wheat. With good luck (no breakdowns and no rain -- only the latter is a virtual given), they may be done by Saturday. Tom will run the grain truck back and forth from the combine in the field to the grainaries, and his friend will run the combine. The kids were getting ready for bed, Laura already in her nightgown, when our friend arrived, but they switched gears very quickly. "Please, please can we go?" Harvesting/
combining for the junior set around here is like Christmas -- it comes only once a year and doesn't last nearly long enough.

And like Christmas, I have to plan special meals. These have to be ample, tasty, and portable. So far I think it's chili and plum tart for tomorrow, pork roast and peach pie for Saturday.

Since Saturday

Finally made it to Staples on Saturday for our fun school supplies, mostly for Davy, who is overjoyed about starting first grade: oversize (5"x8") index cards with primary ruling for beginning writers; Laurentien's new best quality "Studio" colored pencils (not as pricey as Prismacolor Juniors which are more than Davy needs right now, but better than the usual store brand -- even he noticed a difference, and Laura our colored pencil expert said they compare favorably to the Prismacolors); Crayola IQ Sketching markers; oversize index tabs long enough to peek out beyond the plastic page protectors; yet another package of aforementioned page protectors; new binders for Davy (orange, because purple and green have already been claimed); stickers for everyone (Hot Wheels x 2, and farm animals x 1); a new Mead "Upper Class" student planner for me (where I can write each day what they actually did for the day rather than what I planned for them to do); the Staples "house version" of the Desk Buddy (Desk Jockey? Desk Buddy?) with 10 slots (three of each -- how did they know I had three kids? Plus the one extra in the middle for my own stuff) that will make it easy for us to keep pencils, rulers, erasers, etc. on the table and corralled while the kids do their seatwork; and an impulse buy from the Teacher's Aisle, a $10 Multiplication Songs CD.

******

The leaves and the sun, sadly up later and down earlier, not to mention the geese and ducks gathering together in droves, are all saying "autumn", but the air temperature, still near 90, is saying "summer". Rather a nice if unusual combination for the prairies, all in all. No rain either, good for harvesting and for leaving sneakers on the deck, but the trees are starting to get pretty thirsty again.

Tom decided to celebrate Labor Day and the good weather by inviting some family and friends to say goodbye to our incubator-hatched wild ducks -- once and for all identified as blue-winged teals. After chores on Monday morning, he and I boxed them up, and then we all drove over to our pond, where we released what I still think of as my eight babies. I suppose I expected them to waddle out of the tipped over cardboard toward the water, but as soon as the lid was lifted, all of them took flight and circled around the dugout, practicing their takeoffs and landings. The kids gasped and giggled and said their goodbyes. For the past few mornings, the kids and I have taken part of a loaf of bread to feed our former babies, and while we can't tell which ones of all the ducks swimming around are "ours", they all seem to be more than happy with the treat. We wish them goodbye and goodspeed, literally and figuratively, in evading the arriving hunters and heading south.

We ended the day rather differently, by the side of the road 10 miles north of home, the kids and I standing by in the dark with pails of water, a shovel, and a fire extinguisher while Tom welded one of the bearings that had piled up (this is apparently a technical term) in the swather, the part on the tractor that cuts the grain stalks and lays it in a tidy, erm, swath. All the fire precautions, including moving the tractor out to the side of the road from the field, were to prevent a stray spark from the welder causing a fire in the ripe grain, which is after all just dry grass. Think tinder. Tom finally got everything fixed by 9:30, and if the kids hadn't needed showers before we left the house, they certainly needed them on arriving home. So much for my grand plans of an early bedtime before our first day of school.

******

All the more reason, along with our early harvest, to start yesterday's back to school efforts gently, and with lots of coffee. The day began with the "goodie bags" I started a couple of years ago, when I realized that I didn't really want to squirrel away the really fun books, art supplies, and CDs I had found over the summer: the American Girl Kaya story collection and the AG school planner for Laura, a few Jim Weiss CDs, some DVDs, a Timex learner's watch with the dinosaur strap for Davy, a couple of Robert McCloskey books for Daniel, a couple of small Lego kits for the boys. The kids each did one lesson of Singapore math and some penmanship, we looked after the animals, then headed to town after lunch for the first music lessons with new teachers, piano for Laura and Daniel and voice for Laura. Both of the teachers seem personable and pleasant, and I needed to make some changes to keep Laura interested and inspired in lessons.

Today we did some more math, penmanship, and managed to read aloud some of the goodie bag books (George Shrinks, Lentil) before Tom spirited the kids away to work on the new-to-us grainaries at the corrals. This morning Daniel asked for a spelling test, so we may start spelling tomorrow, then grammar and history in next week, and science the week after that.

****

I'm predicting a pretty slow day tomorrow too. Tom didn't get in with the kids until almost eight, and after a quick dinner and necessary baths, they're all unwinding by watching the "Bridges" volume from the goodie bag DVD, "Building Big" with David Macaulay (did you know that there's an activity/experiment with the kids from "Zoom" at the end of "Bridges"? I didn't). Or I could just consider that the science lesson for the day and go ahead and check it off my list, knowing full well the kids will attempt the activity on their own tomorrow...

Still here but busy with harvest and back to school,

or, more appropriately, back to the kitchen table and extracurricular activities like piano lessons (with an exciting new teacher), etc.

Today the field trip is to the corrals, to watch Dad and his hired man move the secondhand grain bins -- needed for the new harvest -- from their old home to their new one. Requires bin lifters, giant trolleys, and various other fun stuff.

Last year at this time I wrote this; I'll see if I can update it a bit with some more resources, and if/when I do, I'll let you know. Also good for this time of year are this and this, for last year's International Literacy Day (if I had the time, which I don't, I'd look up the date of this year's celebration); and ditto on the updates. Reruns are all I can manage right now, especially while the sun is still shining and the mercury is, unusually enough, near ninety.

Getting back into the swing of things

The school bus rumbled by Wednesday at quarter of eight, for the first time since late June. Meanwhile, I enjoyed my cup of coffee and the thought that my three were still in bed.

On Monday the kids and I did some visiting, stopping off with a casserole and some potted plants -- a purple aster and two sunny rudbeckias -- for a recently widowed elderly neighbor. Then we headed off down the highway a way to some other friends, an older couple with no grandchildren of their own who like to borrow our three every once in a while. On our way out, we were surprised with several huge boxes of books that had belonged to their (now adult) children, including a complete set of (be still my beating heart), the 1950 edition of Olive Beaupre Miller's My Book House. I'm so glad they feel comfortable sending their family treasures home with us.

Tuesday we ran some errands, and at just about every stop there was someone who would ask the kids, "So. Are you ready for school tomorrow?" to which the kids gave an enthusiastic "No, sir!" (or ma'am). "Well, why not?" would come the follow-up. "Because we're homeschooled!" and they'd collapse in giggles.

Wednesday we hunkered down on the kitchen floor, sorting through our "official" Rubbermaid homeschool organizing system. The Pottery Barn and even Ikea basket types would shudder, but the containers are sturdy and washable and that's what counts. The kids each have a plastic shoe box for their school supplies -- pencils (regular and colored), erasers, small sharpeners, reinforcements, rulers, and so on -- and then, because we're so high tech around here, they each have a Rubbermaid dish tub for their books and other curricula (Tom has one too for his papers because when I started the system a few years ago, Davy had to have a tub too, even though he was three, because big brother and big sister had them. Well, Tom thought it was a rather handy system and hijacked Davy's tub, so I ended up getting him one of his own). The only thing I don't like is that until we build our kitchen addition with the built-in storage unit, there are no cabinet doors for the tubs to hide behind, so they live on the kitchen floor, lined up underneath the china cabinet. The finished, used up, filled out books went in one pile, the nonconsumables were passed along to the next child down the line, and things we aren't using for the moment (Minimus) went into another pile to be reshelved. Then I washed the floor to clean up after all the pencil shavings. The kitchen fall cleaning is almost done, with just the cabinet fronts and windows to wash; since we're going to be spending much more time in here, I want it to be clean and tidy.

Yesterday evening we gathered down the road for the annual Horticultural Society corn roast and pot luck, the group's traditional ending to the summer. We're not society members, but neighbors are welcomed with open arms, especially if they bring food and garden produce for the raffle, and the kids look forward to the visiting and the corn every year. And the raffle, where last night they won two big boxes of tomatoes and some beautiful rosy apples.

Tom plans to start swathing the wheat and then the barley on Saturday afternoon; the weather is supposed to hold, sunny and still unusually warm except for the odd day, through early next week. We start school, and music lessons with new teachers, on Tuesday, and I'm hoping that harvest and next week's organic certification inspection visit don't completely torpedo the first week. What I would really like is a slow, easy, and gentle return, perfect for Davy who is starting first grade and all three who've been busy making the most of the summer. I'll write another post about our back to school plans, though we've been sneaking into the French and enjoying ourselves very much.