Moose Jaw -- Part 1 of 2
September 2014
"Look deep into nature, and
then you will understand everything better."
~ Albert Einstein
Woke up to a rainy Sunday... a good day to finish sorting my Moose Jaw pictures. I didn't take many of Moose Jaw itself this time. I have lots already. If you're curious about the city itself, I put some links at the bottom of this post from a visit a couple years back.
We had a wonderful visit with family. Great home cooked food, good conversation and lots of laughs. The weather was cool & and we had rain off & on but on our three excursions out on the prairie, luck was with us. We had comfortable temperatures and mostly broken cloud & sunshine.
Our outings on the prairie are mostly on the secondary highways and back roads. Less traffic so it's easy to pull over to soak in some prairie air and take a few shots.
Our first day out on the prairie was to Buffalo Lake, north of town. On the way we spotted some combines so we went for a closer look.
This is a huge operation. These 11 combines would cost well over $5 million. My nephew thinks he leases them... would make sense. My nephew also says he probably has 10 sections or more of land. A section is a square mile or 640 acres. So 10 sections is the equivalent of a strip of land a mile wide and 10 miles long (1.6 km x 16 km). It would be scattered though, rather than all connected.
Shots of the prairie look much better if they're large--remember to click on any image to enlarge it.
The new look in tractors. The treads give more traction and exert less pressure on the land than wheels. They must let them get back on the land quicker after rain as well. Big bucks here too. He has 3 of these tractor-trailer combos.
Everything was parked, waiting for the land to dry out. Saskatchewan has had a lot of rain the last few years.
A field of golden wheat. It's next to the combines. We're in the breadbasket of the world here--one of them anyway. I did a quick calculation. Assuming he planted only wheat, and all 10 sections were planted (both assumptions very unlikely), at current prices and with a good yield per acre, he might get around $1.5 to $2 million for his wheat.
I have no idea how the profit column works out for him, but I don't think he's hurting.
It's a good crop. I checked the kernels.
Jane likes to crouch in wheat fields. It was pretty windy. It commonly is on the prairie. Sometimes a strong wind, sometimes a gentle one. Sometimes no wind... but only sometimes.
As we looked across the fields we saw what is a familiar sight on the prairies--a truck on the highway, outlined against the sky.
Leaving the combines behind, we headed for Buffalo Pound Lake. A few miles down the road we spotted several hundred snow geese in a slough. A slough (pronounced "slew") is prairie talk for a semi-permanent patch of water that isn't a pond or lake. Often as not they're in the low spots of fields where there should be a crop of some sort.
I learned that snow geese (sometimes called blue geese) have a white or blue plumage morph. The darker ones here are the blue morph--more charcoal or grey than blue to my eyes. Bluish-grey maybe.
They're on their way to the southern U.S. and Mexico after spending the summer in the Canadian arctic. They were constantly lifting and shifting positions, accompanied with lots of loud honking. A beautiful sight! A beautiful sound too.
Buffalo Pound Lake, the source of Moose Jaw's drinking water and a popular picnic, camping, boating & fishing area. It's less than an hour's drive north of Moose Jaw. Some Moose Javians have cottages on the lake.
This was news to me when I googled it, out of curiosity. Fish in the lake include...
Walleye, sauger, yellow perch, northern pike, cisco, mooneye, lake whitefish, white sucker, channel catfish, burbot, bigmouth buffalo, and common carp. I've never heard of half of them.
Something different.
We spotted these Mule Deer in the lake valley. They were browsing on the tall weeds.
We didn't get out of the car--didn't want to disturb them. But a little whistle and they perked up their ears--and Mule Deer have big ones. We've seen White-tails here in other years, but not this time.
On the way back from Buffalo Lake, we went to Marquis on a whim. It's a small village NW of Moose Jaw. Typical of villages, it had one simple store, but it included a liquor/beer outlet too, so it had the bases covered.
Villages and small towns in Saskatchewan have extra wide main streets. Even with angle-parking, there's lots of room for traffic.
We were about to exit the town to get on the highway when we saw, and heard, this huge flock of Yellow-headed Blackbirds, lifting & shifting from one set of cattails to another. What a racket!
As nature lovers, this was another unexpected treat for us--more migrants. Beautiful ones at that, and only a few feet away. They're heading south in this flock of 100s, if not a 1000 or two.
The yellow on their breasts is especially brilliant when the sun hits it.
It was quiet enough that you could hear the whoosh of their wings when they rose and flew.
"Is it time to leave yet, Mom?"
A few Red-wings joined the fray.
Back on the highway. It's not water on the road. Mirages are common on the longer stretches of road, even in cooler weather.
Sloughs are 'everywhere', with ducks and/or coots in most of them. Grain elevators are becoming an endangered species but there are still a few around.
One of the few combines we saw in operation this trip. The land is just too wet.
When the prairie is flat, it's flat. But there are many areas that aren't... if you get off the Trans-Canada.
I'll post one more set from the trip.
Here are the links I mentioned earlier (from a 2012 visit)... if you're interested. Shots of town, etc.
http://rgbell.blogspot.ca/2012/06/moose-jaw-1.html
- fini for now -
posted by Bob Bell @ 10:37
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