Since arriving back at the ranch after my 10 day whirlwind adventure through parts of Canada life has been quite tame in comparison. I spent more time working with the young horses and I suppose that provided some excitement at times. There are 4 who are still entire males and they can be quite the handful compared to the other 3. They are all only partly halter broken really but I managed to get saddles on 2 without too much hassle. I am hoping to go to a horsemanship clinic mid-August, so hopefully that provides me with more knowledge to really work with the colts.

When I arrived back one of the crazy things to see was how much the crops had changed. All the winter wheat in the area has started to hay off, while the spring wheat is greener than ever. The canola fields were flowering so there were plenty of bright yellow fields, although most of the flowers have since died. Most impressive of all though would have to be the corn. It doubled in size the 10 days I was away, from around 3.5 feet to 7 feet and in the past 2 weeks it has probably grown another foot at least. Perry is obviously super excited about this and can't wait to silage it, even though that won't happen until the end of September after the cobs have grown.

Last week we headed over to one of the paddocks where Perry is putting cattle on agistment to check a fence and shift the heifers. The guy who owned the paddock told Perry it was in pretty good nick and wouldn't need much fixing at all. Well I'm pretty sure he probably hasn't looked at his fence in the past 10 years because it was an absolute mess and took us about 6 hours to fix up. In one place there wasn't even a top wire for about 200m. I have since realised that fences are not on the top of the list for Canadian farmers. I have also found out that when a fence gets to the stage that it is no longer fixable…they just build another one 1m inside the old one instead of pulling it down and doing it properly.

The only positive thing to come out of our day of fencing is that there happened to be some bee hives right on the fenceline. Initially I was worried about being attacked and killed by the bees because it was really hot and they were swarming. That may sound pretty stupid but to give you an idea of how loud they were, I could hear them over the top of my motorbike from 100m away. Anyway the cool thing was that the people who own the hives were out collecting honey and one of the guys happened to be a student that Kristy has taught before. He asked us if we wanted to try some fresh honey and we obviously said yes. So off he went to get a slat from one of the hives. It was pretty cool to see and he just scraped off a bit for each of us, wax and all. Then we just chewed on it until the honey was gone and spat out the wax. He told us that the queens can lay over 1500 new bees each day and that they live for 30 days. So that's up to 45,000 bees per hive, and as you can see from the photo there were heaps of hives there (not sure of the exact number but somewhere around 30 from memory). So there could have been over a million bees there!!! Unfortunately I didn't have my camera that day but managed to get some photos when we went back the next day to finish off the fence.

We have also spent time checking and moving cattle on agistment in the area. Some cattle have been treated for foot rot as well as pink eye. This is all done in the field with Perry roping them and me having to get them on the ground and needled. I suppose this is another entertaining thing to do and the cows are often quite angry by the time I am done jabbing them 4 times with the needles. I then have to try and get the rope of their neck without being trampled when I am done. I really think Canadian cattle farmers need to come to Australia for a bit to figure out that taking them to the yards can often be so much easier than roping!!

Pretty much the rest of the time has been taken up with finishing off the silaging. We only had one more field to do but it took about 4 days because the swather kept breaking down. I didn't really explain it before but how it works is the swather goes first and cuts the Lucerne and piles it all in a row. The chopper then come's behind and chops it into the bin on the truck. The truck I was driving holds about 11 tonne and the one Bob was driving holds about 9 tonne. We then have to take the chopped silage back to the pit to dump it. The tractor is then used to push it into a pile and also to pack it down by driving on top of it. The aim is to get as much oxygen out as possible and then when that's done it is covered with plastic and allowed to do its thing. Which I think is to convert the sugars into starch….or maybe it's the other way round!!

So harvesting is done for now, although I think there is some barley that needs something done with it. Not too sure if I'll be involved in that or not though. Other than that it is pretty much just maintenance time and making sure that the cows on agistment are looked after. This coming weekend is August long (they have a long weekend each month here) and we are heading out to Moosomin Lake. There is a fireworks competition, live bands and also a softball tournament so hopefully it's a good one!!