Hhahaaha and to those of you suggesting both, that is very tempting but you are overestimating both my stamina and how much time I have for fun things! (I've got a LOT of hay bales to get from the field today...)
Lovely bike ride! We had a couple of very windy days, so most of the fall colour is already gone off the trees. Not too many animals out besides birds, and most of the birds have migrated away already. But I saw a grouse, and some good footprints (deer, moose, badger!) in the muddy roads.
Also had to stop and dig mud out of my bike fork with oat stalks (from the edge of a harvested field) which might be the most Saskatchewan thing ever.
Got all the hay bales from the field. The downside of very large Saskatchewan farms is that I had to drive the tractor almost half a mile to get the farthest ones. Glad I only have to do this once a year! That's enough tractoring for me for a while...
Oct 17, 2026, 5:27 PM@sundogplanets I can't believe I've got two GenX references for you in one week, but I cannot hear grouse without thinking of Curly Howard and this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=493jZunIooI
Glad you got a bike ride in!
@sundogplanets Someone's got to get the hay out of there.
@sundogplanets The only reason farmers in my area mow hay on the wetland meadows is because the government pays them for that. And sometimes they just mow, but leave the hay in place. The two saggy bales are from last year, the other two are just over a month old.
@Szescstopni @sundogplanets In Ontario, dome hay just to get a farm tax deduction, then just leave it in the fields.
@CStamp @sundogplanets Fuck this system. What worries me is the amount of plastic left on the meadows
@Szescstopni @CStamp I hate the plastic shit they wrap it in. My neighbour does the baling for us so we don't have a say in what he uses. Something better to work up to...
In Sask you have to have some absurdly high amount of income from farming (50k-ish?) and there aren't any huge benefits unless you're a huge farm. So the bales here really do get used, at least.
@sundogplanets @CStamp The ones i see are in hard to reach areas. It probably doesn't pay to come back and pick them up. There are less and less small farmers and it's almost impossible to keep just a cow or two. So this hay gets dumped, but much of it gets to businesses like mushroom farms.
Oct 18, 2026, 1:32 AM@Szescstopni @sundogplanets Here it's mandatory to mow or get a fine. Mulching is no longer allowed, so it gets baled. Most does get collected at least, although not all. The local dairy industry is dying and exporting hay is not cost efficient.