Race Day

There is a marathon in Drumheller every year, I never have gone to it, had no desire to go to it.  But what I never realized was there was also a half marathon, a 10K and a 5K.  Well after talking with friends, I figured surely I can run 5K even if I haven't been doing a lot of running this year, even if I have to walk half of it, well I told Neil and he decided he wanted to try and just walk it to see if he could, so we entered.

It started at 8 so we were there by 7 to get registered, no preregistering for us, lol and that was nice, sure a lot of excitement going on down there, they even had a warm up lady for us to get us going.  We started and I started slowly jogging and it was all good till about 1K and I just wanted to fall down crying my shins hurt so much.  The route went by the seniors home and I was super temped to just stop and sit with them and watch the rest.   I was kinda angry I been resting like I was told and I had lots of air and energy coulda gone a lot farther but now I could hardly move.  Neil come and passed me and so did a lot of other people.  It was all I could do to keep going, I walked awful slow and stretched till about 3K and they felt a little better so walked a little more normal and even made it back to a jog for the last half K.  It was awful, I come in with a time of 47:45, Neil with 45:59.  The first guy crossed at 23:23 haha no way I could ever do that but that was a lot slower than I wanted, I was pretty upset.

But at the finish line was a guy handing out water and medals and fruit and all along the route was cheerers and it was kinda cool.  I would so do it again when my shins get better which I am gonna have to be more proactive about healing them up but I have till next fall to go in this one again.

Odds and Ends

We had a lot of mosquitoes this summer, the horses were miserable, staying in the worked up ground in the shade and Jess all covered in fly sheet and mask and still got irritated with bugs.

And the cows just stuck all bunched up.  Finally they forecasted snow and freezing temps, was kinda early but I was so tired of mosquitoes it was kinda wanted...not snow just a frost then it could go back to being warm again.  Well the day came and luckily even though being miserable and cold, we never got a killing frost and only rain.  I expected it to turn to snow overnight but we only had a skiff in the morning, whew!  But it did kill a bunch of mosquitoes probly from drowning them, lol.

Well it went away and the temps got super warm again that was nice but rather unexpected!  I headed to Calgary a couple days later to get a bike from the rental place next to my sisters store that sells all their rental bikes and water skis and whatever other summer stuff.  I got a really nice bike I am super excited about it, but they still had snow in Calgary but it was warm so I even went for a ride to try it out.

But on the way home I had a look at all the crops, what a mess, I feel for them farmers it just looked all trashed, gonna be pretty hard to get some of them off.

We finally got our water fixed from no shower all summer (at least the toilet and sink worked)  But we been heading down to Emerson Campground to shower and they were closing up for the season, which was good it was getting too cold to go right outside after a shower.  Wasn't all bad, lots of times we headed to Brooks for supper afterwards and one day we saw Cookie Monster in the Tim Horton's drive thru, lol

Other than that been riding and amazed at how green the grass is this late in the year.

Harvesting and Putting it Up

This year was a good year for me and not so much in my garden except for the crabapple tree, but I got lots of peaches and my sister and I went down to the Heritage Park annual harvest sale.  They put it on every year, the fruit and veggies are donated and sold at a low price and all the money goes to charity.  It it a good deal for the buyers, and its getting towards the end of the year so the growers wanna get rid of stuff as well.  Not all local stuff, after all I got coconuts and bananas but whatever.

 So I been making jams and jellies and salsas and juices and its been fun but exhausting and I am giving a bunch of it away but turns out I still got a little carried away (again)  I ended up with 12 jars Saskatoon Jam, 17 jars crabapple Jelly (of which a bunch is going to my cousin cause its her kids favorite), 10 salsa, 7 jars tomatoes, 7 jars Rhubarb Raspberry Jam (which are going to a friend cause her and her daughter need them), 7 Crabapple juice, 4 Peach Salsa (which is going to my Mom who cant east tomatoes), 7 jars peaches, and 7 jars Crabapple butter.

I think we are more than enough set up for winter, lol

Threshing Day

Well if you made it through that whole last post I applaud you, it was a bit much for one day, lol but I didn't wanna make a whole pile of posts even though I coulda talked on and on and on about it....now onto a more reasonable length one, lol.
So since I love the drafts but have no team of my own I have to take in them whenever I can.  And since old time horse stuff I love, this threshing day was just perfect for me.  It was down at Alberta Carriage Supply again and they had planted 4 acres of barley and the week before they cut and binded it.  I missed out on that, maybe next year I can get in on that part too.  But it was all stooked and ready to be loaded.  That was mine and all us other grunts work, lol.  Actually wasn't that bad.

Then the horses took the loaded wagons back to the thresher and threw it on and we had grain!

They had 3 teams, Nelly and Shelly, the white greys, a lighter leggier Percheron team and a Belgian team, the light team had to be held at the thresher, they didn't want any part of that noisy contraption even though they do it every year.

Lots of help as well, 3 different kinds of wagons, one was a little fancy to be doing farming but he said it was OK and then the one that had to be loaded at the back and the one with a low middle, the best for this job and it held twice as much as the other wagons.

Once the grain wagon got full, they hitched the light team but they wouldn't pull together so couldn't move it, so the Belgians pulled it, but it was a hard start but they got it.

It took a little over 3 hours and we filled the grain wagon and a mini bag in the back of a pickup, they figured about 125 bushels.  Pretty cool I'd like to do that but I have no crew.