Didsbury Happenings – September & October 2013

While it was still summer weather in mid September we headed to a nearby lake with Jeremy and Micaela and the Stewart’s cousin Marty, and tried out skurfing again before it got too cold. Then back at the Stewarts we had a lovely outdoor dinner with Wanda’s brother and sister and their families and a few others, so it was great to meet a few more people!

Jeremy

Marty

Sunset supper at the Stewarts

While the harvest was happening things were pretty busy here, but there was also a lovely little baby born, which called for a baby shower, at the end of September! Wanda and I made a ‘diaper cake’, which was kinda fun, and decorated it and hosted a baby shower for Heather and little Kallie, and in doing so I met a few more of the locals, which was great!

We had a great day and ate lots of naughty foods, and little Kallie was SO cute! She pretty much slept through the whole thing…

 

Very happy Grandma Stewart with little Kallie!

Diaper cake

Mmmmm...

Some of the friends

Kallie

Aunty Leanne (Heather's sister)

Kallie and Great Grandma Willa

Wanda and I also visited Bryce and Rebecca (some nearby friends) and played with their little kittens, horses and adorable little kids, Bentley and Bella…

Bentley

Bella

Bentley and Bella

And before it got too cold and closed down for the year, Robert and Wanda and Lawrie and I went to visit the nearby Wildlife Discovery Park in Innisfail, whose star attraction is 3 bears which have starred I different movies and TV ads (as well as a whole bunch of other bears). These were pretty cool! It’s amazing how ‘tame’ they can get, although obviously you’d never trust them properly… We weren’t allowed to take photos while they were showing us what these bears could do, but one was a black bear behind a very small fence and electric fence, and the lady inside had her arm around it and kissed it and fed it by putting food in its mouth with her hands… And he did things like holding a honey pot and licking it, and a few different poses, which was cute!

Cute little European squirrel at the wildlife park

Hilarious young ostritch

Reindeer! Also known as caribou

And we finally saw a wolf... 

Bull Elk

Jaguars - so not mess with...

Movie star black bear in 'high security'...

The other 2 show bears were grizzlies, behind considerably larger fences with bigger electric fences, and one of these was absolutely massive, about 1600 pounds they said! NOT something you’d want to come across in the wild! (although with our luck for seeing bears, not exactly likely anyway..). One was a female and did a few tricks and poses, one of which was ‘smiling’ and waving on command! And the other, ‘Whopper’ (for very good reason) was best known for his ‘scary’ pose (also named for very good reason!) which they put sound effects to in the movies… He also played with a ball for us, and they said he’s able to drag a stunt man around by the leg to put him in a certain spot… Not so keen for that one myself! When feeding the grizzlies, the lady touched them sometimes and spooned some cereal into their mouths, but otherwise just through them the food – there was a pretty big difference between the black bear and the grizzlies!

Gigantic grizzly bear 'Whopper'

We were able to pay (yes, touristy…) to get our photo taken with any one of the 3 bears, so we chose the massive grizzly and got him to stand up behind us and make his ‘scary’ face J - We were a little unsure of how this would actually happen, so it was a bit of a relief to see the thin electric fence wire between us and the bear’s head half a metre behind us when we sat down! But we could definitely feel the moment he stood up behind us!

Photo of a photo, of us with Whopper

Didsbury Harvest – September, early October

Things have been pretty busy since we arrived in Didsbury… A few days after we got here the grain harvest officially started, so a fair amount of wheat and canola to be worked on! The Stewarts have about half wheat and half canola, and maybe about 5 (massive) fields of each, and having never been involved in a grain harvest before, Lawrie and I learnt a fair bit!

There was a lot of rather large machinery which looked vaguely familiar in most cases, but which I really didn’t know much about! Gigantic sprayer for the crops, massive combine (header in Australia) with different headers for different purposes, big swather for the canola, a range of different tractors and augers, and a grain truck! Not to mention the grain bins in the yard and some of the fields…

Workshop, combine, grain bins and swather in the yard

Workshop

Lawrie working on the swather

As the wheat has to be dry enough to cut while standing up, but it’s actually beneficial to have more moisture in the canola, which was to be swathed, Joel and Brett got to work on swathing the canola before the wheat harvest could start… I have no idea whether canola or other crops are swathed in Australia, but it seems pretty common here, for wheat as well as the canola! The swather goes through and cuts all the canola crop off the stalks/straw without processing it, and it lays piled in rows to dry out and ripen for a few weeks. The swather also ideally has a roller wheeling behind it to squash the cut canola down a little more, so it can withstand more winds and stays in place to be collected by the combine later. So there have been lots and lots of fields wherever you drive nearby with rows of cut crop on the ground J

The swather having a break...

Field of swathed canola

Field of swathed wheat along the road

Meanwhile, the wheat crop kept drying out until it was ready to be cut too – like most of the wheat crops that I’ve seen in Australia, it was straight-cut, so cut while standing. So Lawrie’s job was driving the grain truck alongside the combine a lot of the time, or collecting the grain from the combine at the end of a row, and carting it to the grain bins nearby in the field or back in the yard a few kilometres down the road, and emptying the grain from the truck into a grain bin by an auger, so that semi trailers could come and collect it from the grain bins by a separate auger. Lawrie also took grain samples as needed from each load, and tested the moisture content before cutting to make sure it was dry enough. It was pretty cool to be in the truck alongside the combine and watch the wheat standing up on stalks just in front of the machine, then suddenly swirling in the front of the header with a bunch of other wheat stalks, then suddenly all the chaff from that wheat is being spat out the back of the combine, and there are wheat grains filling the hopper!

As there is so much wheat processed by the combine, and it quickly fills the hopper of the combine, it was pretty hard to keep up a lot of the time with the grain truck! But after working right through a few nights, and many other days, the wheat was finished!!

Taking supper out to the field

Darwin (young worker) out helping with the combining - he used to work for the Stewarts

Lawrie and Wanda watching the combine

Grain from the grain truck into the auger

Emptying the grain from the truck into a grain bin

Pretty wheat :)

Combine from the grain truck

Lawrie driving the grain truck

And onto the canola... As the canola has already been swathed, and is laying in rows on the ground in each field, a different header is put onto the combine, as there’s no need to cut it… So this header picks up the cut rows instead, and processes them in the same way, spitting out the chaff out the back of the combine and leaving the grain in the hopper (again, with much being done inside the combine for this process…)

The canola grain takes a lot longer to fill the combine’s hopper (or the grain truck!) than the wheat, so it was a little more relaxing for the grain truck driver in the middle of the night than with the wheat! But very busy all the same… And after a couple of weeks, now the canola is finished too! After several breakdowns of various degree…

Combine at work picking up the swathed canola

Lawrie and the grain truck

With the combine coming up behind

Emptying the canola into a grain bin

Meanwhile, I was enjoying being a farmer’s wife and getting all domesticated, with Wanda and I taking lunch and supper out to the boys in the fields every day, and baking a lot in the meantime (they eat quite a lot at harvest time it seems!). I learnt to bake bread, which was very exciting! And bread rolls/buns, which were delicious! And also had a go at making jam/jelly, as well as canning apple sauce, sliced peaches and sliced pears! Things I’ve never done before, but were quite fun!

Fresh bread!

Picking apples and crabapples to make jelly and pie filling

Wanda and her mum Willa making crabapple juice and apple pie filing

Canned apple pie filling

Canning crabapple jelly

My other job however was outside, on the ride on lawn mower (also fun to use!) – there are about 70 acres of tree farm on the property here, and most have grass between the rows of trees, which grows very efficiently in the summer, and still pretty efficiently in the early fall this year apparently! It took me about 3 full days to mow the tree farm the first time… By which time it was nearly ready to be mowed again! And there are lots of grassy areas here too, being a convention ground, so lots of mowing too!

When we started mowing and started the harvest, it was pretty much summer… Singlet and shorts were necessary, and a little sunburn was had. A few weeks later, however, my lawn mowing gear was quite different! 2 pairs of pants, 2 jackets over a long sleeved shirt, thick socks, joggers, 2 beanies (one to cover the face…), snow gloves, and still getting cold! It seems that although the mower moves around a lot, you don’t when sitting on it… So is a little chilly! So bracing ourselves for a shock of winter here sometime soon, as it gets colder – Aussie winter here so far, but is only a month into ‘fall’ at the moment! Hoping for the snow soon though J And got the harvest finished just in time!

Tiny part of the tree farm

Looking down a row of the tree farm

Summer!!

Not so summer...

There’s still a bit to go to prepare for the crops next year before the snow is here to stay or the ground freezes though – rocks need to be picked out of the fields, and the straw is in the process of being harrowed (pretty much being mowed down by a big machine swung around behind a tractor, it looks like fun!) – then the crops for next year can be planted after the snow melts/ground unfreezes after the winter!