More songs to sing myself to sleep

 In a previous post I wrote about the songs I sing to myself inside my head (or out loud if I am walking the dog). At night they keep my thoughts organized and help me to go to sleep. Here are a few more that I enjoy and I hope you do too.

A great holiday in Turkey

 

Panorama of the beach. The safety guide rope is visible on the right.

Tourism is huge business in Turkey, the 6th most popular tourist destination in the world. People are drawn there for archaeological sites such as Ephesus, cultural sites such as the Blue Mosque or the Hagia Sophia and the beach resorts along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. In 2019, 51 million tourists entered Turkey. This year they expect 25 million as the world recovers from Covid and Turkey battled forest fires all summer.

Russia is #1 country of origin for tourists and Ukraine is #7

We took our first holiday in Turkey in 2008 in July. Never did that again. 40C+ is out of our comfort zone. So after that we went in late September and sometimes into early October. Weather is still warm and the water is too. Also the price is way down. Our experiences have been mixed, to say the least but the swimming has never disappointed us. 

Antalya, the tourist capital of Turkey, sits on top of the Gulf of Antalya with resorts down both sides. Until this year we stayed in resorts in the Bildebi area, north of Kemer on the west side of the gulf. This year we tried one south of Kemer, Club Akman Beach Hotel in the Camyuva area and were so happy with it. I'd give a 5 star rating to this 4 star hotel.

Location of Club Akman

Overhead view of Club Akman Beach Hotel

Tanya in front of the hotel. Everyone at the resort is double vaccinated
 or had a negative test within 48 hours of arrival
so no masks inside but if we went out we wore masks

For great pictures of the hotel, go to www.clubakmanbeach.com/en/ or watch https://youtu.be/eiVQ5HVK8FU. Far better photography than I am capable of.

North of Kemer the beaches are very bad. Narrow with coarse sharp gravel. You need rubber sandals even in the water. Not very good for kids. The beaches in Camyuva are not perfect but far superior and great for kids. The sand is coarse grey but not impossible to walk on in bare feet. The sea does not drop off quite as soon so there are decent shallows. Club Akman was swarming with kids, ranging from babies to toddlers to preschoolers and a few 6-10 year olds. Little ones were in flotation devices with parents close by. Even the babies. 

I can't swim but here, I can't sink either. It takes little effort to stay upright in the water and paddle along. Tanya swims like a fish and is usually way out from the beach area. I stay close to the safety guide rope where it is only 5 to 6 meters deep and would paddle back and forth between the two docks in the picture, about 400 to 500 ft.. The water is so clear you can see the bottom. 

Just paddling along, vertical to the horizontal

Tanya off to the left along the safety guide rope.

All of the resorts we stayed at over the years, including this one, catered to Russian speakers. Up and down both sides of Kemer, even the people in the shops spoke enough Russian to make sales. So I was a bit of a curiosity and got many questions, "Where are you from?" The Activity Director (6 ft blonde model, 1/3 my age, 6 months making money in Turkey, 6 months spending it in Moscow, flawless English) said I was the only foreigner at the hotel, maybe in all the Kemer area. 

That cracked me up. Housecleaning staff were Tajik or Uzbek, grounds maintenance were from Turkmenistan, the night receptionist was from Armenia, some guy who looked homeless but told me he was director of maintenance, was from Manchester. But I was the only foreigner.

Women outnumbered men about 2 to 1. Mothers with kids. Wives holidaying while husbands worked. Men, by and large, wore boxer swim trunks and sported washtub abs. A few 6-pack abs but mostly two-four pack abs. I felt right at home.

Women's bathing suits were much more varied. A few one piece but mostly two piece. Some were mainly strings which, like barbed wire fences, protected the property but did not obstruct the view. The rest of the tops fell into five categories. Orthodox which were divinely iconic. Catholic which supported the masses. Presbyterian which were staunch and upright. Salvation Army which lifted the fallen. and Baptist which made mountains out of molehills. 

Watch this space next week

Tanya and I are vacationing in Turkey. We are staying at the Club Akman Beach Hotel South of Kemer. We will be home late on 19th and a full report asap after. Our friends Vitalik and Natasha are staying at our place and looking after our critters. 

Best holiday ever. Best resort we have found in over 10 holidays to this area. Weather is perfect. Sea is perfect. Food is good, beds comfortable, grounds well maintained.

I burned my face out swimming so now I have appealing eyes and a peeling nose.

Marketing Forced-Birth as Pro-Life

Since Roe vs Wade, the religious right have been fighting to have it repealed and abortion made illegal again. Many states have passed laws which eventually were thrown out by the Supreme Court. However the five Injustices, three of which were appointed under Trump have changed the nature of SCOTUS. They refused to even hear the new Texas law before it went into effect Sept 1st. They are currently hearing the Mississippi law which if they find in its favour will end Roe vs Wade. 

Dr Heather Cox Richardson provides an overview of the Texas Law and what it means to women in Texas and possibly in every other Red state and a brief history of the anti-abortion movement. The Republican Jesus Red Southern States claim it is because they are "Pro-Life" however they rank at the bottom in terms of poverty, infant mortality, maternal mortality and anything else that might make it easier to carry a child to term and raise it to adulthood. Their politicians are opposed to any programs that might improve the lot of the actual living, even vaccinations or wearing a mask.

Their argument, in favour of advocating for forced-birth only, is spelled out in this article which will likely make you nauseous but read it anyhow. John Pavlovitz, whom the "Pro-Life" people hate because he calls them out for what they are, summed it up quite eloquently. His articles  are Here and Here. 

Embryos are relatively easy to advocate for. They don’t encroach upon people’s privilege or confront their politics or challenge their theology or require much from them in the way of lifestyle change. . .

. . . By opposing abortion, religious people can feel the intoxicating, easy high of self-righteousness and moral virtue—without having to actually love or help people: strange, disparate, uncomfortable-for- you-to-be-around people. That’s because embryos can be idealized into something pleasant and palatable, devoid of any of the messy characteristics they find undesirable in actual walking-around human beings. They aren’t yet gay or Muslim or liberal or Black or poor or atheist (or whatever other qualifiers trouble you), and so affinity with them is uncomplicated, solidarity with them does not cross the lines of their tribalism.

Anti-abortion believers get to feel like noble advocates for Life, while still holding onto their prejudices and hang-ups and hatred.

 Or as George Carlin put it, "If you are pre-born, you're fine; if you are pre-school, you're f**ked".

One of the advantages of pushing an extreme position is that you are not bound by facts or reason. Emotion beats rationality any day. Two examples of the misinformation used to oppose abortion:

Life begins at conception. What is life? The sperm is alive. The egg is alive. The embryo (<8 weeks) is alive. The fetus (>8 weeks) is alive. Science can define the stages of pregnancy but cannot define when life begins. That requires theology. Genesis 2:7 (KJV) says And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. So when a baby draws its first breath, it becomes a living soul and a human being. This is what the Jews believe, that existing life should take precedence over potential life, and a woman’s life and her pain should take precedence over a fetus. I expect most rational people would agree that Jews are just as moral as Republican Jesus Christians.

A fetal heartbeat can be detected at six weeks. Yes and no. Ultrasound can detect a small flutter in the area that will develop into a heart. These are electrical impulses from the cells that will be the heart's 'pacemaker'. The sound is made by the ultrasound machine itself. The heart has no valves so cannot beat. A true heartbeat caused by the sound of heart valves that can be heard on a stethoscope usually occurs after about 10 weeks. The term 'fetal heartbeat' is very misleading as used in forced-birth laws.

The 'forced-birth' crowd like to talk about 'murdering babies, or murdering children'. An embryo or a fetus is not a baby or a child though it has potential to become those, and then a teen ager and an adult and an old person but they don't talk about abortion as 'murdering teenagers'. They are playing on images with their language which is good marketing, of course.

When the forced birth people talk about a pregnant woman, you are always shown images like on the left, never like on the right which is what most women look like if the seek an abortion. In 2018, 92% of abortions were preformed at under 13 weeks.

This is what embryos look like at 6 and 8 weeks. Bean size. When 65% of abortions occurred in 2016. mid-term (2nd trimester) abortions are usually because the woman had to come up with the money or if young teens, because they feared their parents to deal with it earlier. Third trimester abortions which account for about 1%, are usually tragic, either the mother's life is in danger or the fetus is terminally malformed. 

Of course it is the third trimester  abortions the 'Pro-Life' people focus on because they are the most gory. They talk about children being torn limb from limb, even as they exit the womb. 

These images are how you are to imagine aborted embryos and fetuses. Ruddy cheeked, blonde, blue-eyed, healthy and white. . . because these are the only children that matter. . . so long as they are not poor. Or gay or atheist or. . .

You are never to imagine these children. They may well be very much loved but their mother may not be able to afford another mouth to feed.  In 2014, 75% of abortion patients were poor or low income. And 59% of patients who obtained an abortion already had one or more children.

CDC Stats were available for 2018. There is no mandate for states to report abortions and not all do. Of 48 reporting areas in 2018, there were 614, 820 abortions reported: 11.3 per 1000 women aged 15 to 44 years and 189 per 1000 live births. Early medical abortions accounted for 38.6%. Women in their 20s accounted for 57.7% of abortions. 

Guttmacher Institute provided the following data. in 2019, 29 states with 58% of women of reproductive age were considered hostile to abortion, 14 states with 35% of women of reproductive age were considered supportive. using 2014 rates, 1 woman in 4 will have an abortion before age 45.  Adolescents made up 12% of abortion patients in 2014: 18-19 8%, 15-17 3% and <15 0.2%. Of abortion patients in 2014, 39% were White, 28% Black, 25% Hispanic and others 9%; 17% mainline Protestant, 13% evangelical Protestant, 24% Catholic, 38% no religion, 8% other. in 2014, 51% of abortion patients were using birth control the month they got pregnant, 24% condoms and 13% a short acting hormonal method.

Criminalizing abortion won’t stop it – it’ll just make it deadly. Women will continue to terminate pregnancies and put their lives in danger in the process. In 1967, 42% of American maternal death rate was attributed to botched abortion. This does not matter to the 'Forced-Birth" movement as they were likely poor anyhow. And be sure that if the wives, daughters and mistresses of the 'Pro-Life' lawmakers and their wealthy friends need abortions, they will get them in a safe clinic.

The government cannot (yet) require Americans to follow the Catholic Church's prohibition against divorce or (yet) forbid a woman from using birth control. And neither should it utilize one particular interpretation of Christianity to make a woman bear a child. but the Republican Jesus Christians are will on their way to establishing an authoritarian theocracy. They may have stirred up a hornets' nest or be the dog that caught the car, but the voter suppression laws may well keep the rabble at bay.

And regardless of what O'Toole is telling Canadians, the religious right vote solidly CPC and will fight to once again make abortions illegal in Canada. 

The Revenge - A ballad of the fleet by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

 Long narrative poems appeal to me for some strange reason. Noyes' The Highwayman, Kipling's Ballad of East and West, Macauley's Horatius at the Bridge, Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, Service's Cremation of Sam McGee, and on and on. I usually manage to memorize a few lines of each and sometimes in the night reach for lines I cannot recall so I wake up and re read the poem. And so it was with The Revenge. 

Spanish Galleon

In the 16th century, the galleon was the standard ocean going battleship of the western European nations. The Spanish Galleons, as well as being armed with cannon, had high fore and aft castles which suited their battle tactic of boarding. The English Race-built Galleons had low fore and aft castles and depended on superior speed and maneuverability as well as superior gunnery to keep the Spanish at a distance. The most famous of these was The Revenge (of which some 13 ships were to carry the name eventually). 

The Revenge

The revenge was Sir Francis Drake's flagship in 1588 when the British defeated the Spanish Armada with help from the weather. In 1590, The Revenge, under Captain Martin Frobisher plied the Spanish Main to intercept bullion laden treasure vessels bound for Spain. In 1591, the British fleet, under Lord Thomas Howard was charged with patrolling the Spanish coastal area to blockage Spanish ships and prevent Spain from rearming as Phillip II did not give up easily. The Revenge was part of Howards patrol and captained by Sir Richard Grenville.

The Spanish set out with 53 ships to put an end to Howard's blockade when his small flotilla was harboured in the Azores with many sick and the ships in need of resupply. Tennyson says The Revenge had only a hundred seamen, while other sources say 250. Two hundred fifty was the standard crew size so I will go with Tennyson. So our story begins. 

The Revenge, a ballad of the fleet by Alfred Lord Tennyson

At Flores, in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,

And a pinnace, like a flutter’d bird, came flying from far away;

“Spanish ships of war at sea! we have sighted fifty-three!”

Then sware Lord Thomas Howard: “’Fore God I am no coward;

But I cannot meet them here, for my ships are out of gear,

And the half my men are sick. I must fly, but follow quick.

We are six ships of the line; can we fight with fifty-three?”

 II

Then spake Sir Richard Grenville: “I know you are no coward;

You fly them for a moment to fight with them again.

But I’ve ninety men and more that are lying sick ashore.

I should count myself the coward if I left them, my Lord Howard,

To these Inquisition dogs and the devildoms of Spain.”

 III

So Lord Howard past away with five ships of war that day,

Till he melted like a cloud in the silent summer heaven;

But Sir Richard bore in hand all his sick men from the land

Very carefully and slow,

Men of Bideford in Devon,

And we laid them on the ballast down below:

For we brought them all aboard,

And they blest him in their pain, that they were not left to Spain,

To the thumb-screw and the stake, for the glory of the Lord.

 IV

He had only a hundred seamen to work the ship and to fight,

And he sailed away from Flores till the Spaniard came in sight,

With his huge sea-castles heaving upon the weather bow.

“Shall we fight or shall we fly?

Good Sir Richard, tell us now,

For to fight is but to die!

There’ll be little of us left by the time this sun be set.”

And Sir Richard said again: “We be all good Englishmen.

Let us bang these dogs of Seville, the children of the devil,

For I never turn’d my back upon Don or devil yet.”

 V

Sir Richard spoke and he laugh’d, and we roar’d a hurrah and so

The little Revenge ran on sheer into the heart of the foe,

With her hundred fighters on deck, and her ninety sick below;

For half of their fleet to the right and half to the left were seen,

And the little Revenge ran on thro’ the long sea-lane between.

VI

Thousands of their soldiers look’d down from their decks and laugh’d,

Thousands of their seamen made mock at the mad little craft

Running on and on, till delay’d

By their mountain-like San Philip that, of fifteen hundred tons,

And up-shadowing high above us with her yawning tiers of guns,

Took the breath from our sails, and we stay’d.

 VII

And while now the great San Philip hung above us like a cloud

Whence the thunderbolt will fall

Long and loud,

Four galleons drew away

From the Spanish fleet that day.

And two upon the larboard and two upon the starboard lay,

And the battle-thunder broke from them all.

 VIII

But anon the great San Philip, she bethought herself and went,

Having that within her womb that had left her ill content;

And the rest they came aboard us, and they fought us hand to hand,

For a dozen times they came with their pikes and musqueteers,

And a dozen times we shook ’em off as a dog that shakes his ears

When he leaps from the water to the land.

 IX

And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea,

But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.

Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons came,

Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and flame;

Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and her shame.

For some were sunk and many were shatter’d and so could fight us no more—

God of battles, was ever a battle like this in the world before?

 X

For he said, “Fight on! fight on!”

Tho’ his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,

With a grisly wound to be drest he had left the deck,

But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,

And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,

And he said, “Fight on! fight on!”

 XI

And the night went down, and the sun smiled out far over the summer sea,

And the Spanish fleet with broken sides lay round us all in a ring;

But they dared not touch us again, for they fear’d that we still could sting,

So they watch’d what the end would be.

And we had not fought them in vain,

But in perilous plight were we,

Seeing forty of our poor hundred were slain,

And half of the rest of us maim’d for life

In the crash of the cannonades and the desperate strife;

And the sick men down in the hold were most of them stark and cold,

And the pikes were all broken or bent, and the powder was all of it spent;

And the masts and the rigging were lying over the side;

But Sir Richard cried in his English pride:

“We have fought such a fight for a day and a night

As may never be fought again!

We have won great glory, my men!

And a day less or more

At sea or ashore,

We die—does it matter when?

Sink me the ship, Master Gunner—sink her, split her in twain!

Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!”

 XII

And the gunner said, “Ay, ay,” but the seamen made reply:

“We have children, we have wives,

And the Lord hath spared our lives.

We will make the Spaniard promise, if we yield, to let us go;

We shall live to fight again and to strike another blow.”

And the lion there lay dying, and they yielded to the foe.

 

XIII

And the stately Spanish men to their flagship bore him then,

Where they laid him by the mast, old Sir Richard caught at last,

And they praised him to his face with their courtly foreign grace;

But he rose upon their decks, and he cried:

“I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true;

I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do.

With a joyful spirit I Sir Richard Grenville die!”

And he fell upon their decks, and he died.

 

XIV

And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true,

And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap

That he dared her with one little ship and his English few;

Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew,

But they sank his body with honor down into the deep.

And they mann’d the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew,

And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own;

When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep,

And the water began to heave and the weather to moan,

And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew,

And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew,

Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags,

And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain,

And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags

To be lost evermore in the main.

And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own;...
...To be lost evermore in the main.

Dr. Peter J Van Soest 1929-2021 Legendary Ruminant Nutritionist

 This blog could also be entitled "I know you don't care but..." I do care so I will write it for me.

Dr. PJ Van Soest

When I was a kid, skipping school to go to Agricultural Short Courses organized by Alan Rugg, the local Ag Rep, beef cattle were the simplest farm animals to feed. What ever you fed them was torn apart in the rumen by the bacteria and protozoa, recombined by them to suit their needs and the cow digested their by products and the bugs themselves. Nutrition was pretty crude, all done by wet analysis ; crude protein (N x 6.25), crude fat (ether extract), nitrogen free extract (not crude protein, fibre, fat or ash) and crude fibre, all added together (fat x 2.5) produced TDN (Total Digestible Nutrients) which was a crude estimate of useful feed value in use since 1860s . 

We knew the basic requirements for different classes of animals and fed to those. Dairy cattle were a bit different as there was as much art as science because things worked but at the time people didn't know why. Reading Hoard's Dairyman from the last 135 years is an education in its own right. But beef cattle were my main interest, so that is how I ended up in the University of Saskatchewan, College of Agriculture studying Animal Science.

Dr. Dave Christensen graduated from UofS in 1958 and started as Associate Professor at Animal Science the same year I started as a student. He was a Ruminant Nutritionist, specializing in dairy nutrition but taught the general ruminant nutrition courses. We learned that TDN tended to over estimate the feed value of forage because it underestimated the cell walls. The contents of a cell are highly digestible and the cell walls are quite variable. 

We also learned that Dr PJ Van Soest, a brilliant scientist from the USDA Research Centre at Beltsville Maryland, had come up with a superior method of estimating feed value, including TDN. Instead of Crude Fibre he developed two analyses ADF (Acid Detergent Fibre) and NDF (Neutral Detergent Fibre). ADF is used to estimate energy eg TDN, and NDF is used to estimate animal intake (rumen fill).  Van Soest’s detergent analysis gave researchers a way to precisely separate the chemical components of feeds into three categories: parts that were digestible to all animals; indigestible without fermentation; and completely indigestible. Those two analyses today form the basis of estimating feed quality ruminant nutrition and permanently changed animal science.

In Fourth Year, we had to write a thesis which was basically a heavy duty term paper. Dr. Christensen was my supervisor and my topic was Estimating forage Quality as I recall. It was anticipated that I would focus on Van Soest's work. However in May 1968, Lofgreen and Garrett had just published their seminal work A System for Expressing Net Energy Requirements and Feed Values for Growing and Finishing Beef Cattle.

Well! This was mind blowing and right up my ally. I paid lip service to the original intent and then poured the coals to net energy. Besides the Lofgreen and Garrett's formulae were based to a great degree on Van Soest's Analyses. Dr. Christensen was not overly pleased and gave me a B. He said it deserved an A but he had to nag me constantly to get it finished (by end April 1969 after all the other students had gone home).

In 1968, Dr Van Soest moved from Beltsville to Cornell University in Ithica NY, where he spent the rest of his career. At Cornell he was as a co-inventor of the Cornell Net Carbohydrate and Protein System, a cattle nutrition model currently used to formulate diets for over 70% of dairy cattle in North America and used in over forty other countries. 

Net energy estimates and net carbohydrate and protein system revolutionized ruminant nutrition all based on detergent fibre analysis. Dr Van Soest once said, “I participated in something that was very remote, a backwater in science, and then it became very important.”

Dr Van Soest died in March 2021. I ran across his obituary while searching for information for a Saskatchewan rancher. He should have lived forever. After retirement he continued teaching and research, publishing hundreds of papers over his life time, the last at age 90 in 2020. He was the kind of researcher that should have been sent funding, no questions asked.

Remembering the Farm: Barbed Wire Fences

 When my grandparents bought our farm in 1914, the closest firewood was 30 miles away. That was likely the closest willow pickets for fences too. They bought two quarter sections (160 acres, measuring 1/2 mile by 1/2 mile) and leased two others which were mostly prairie short grass (likely Stipa comata or needle grass). That worked out to 7.5 miles (15 half mile) of perimeter fences and likely another 1.5 miles of cross fences. 

By the time I was old enough to help fix or build fence, it was all fenced using willow pickets and two strands of barbed wire with split cedar posts or used railway ties for corner posts as needed. Willow was tough and durable, not rotting easily. Dad could now cut pickets on our own land as poplar and willow grew in the low areas once the prairie fires were under control. Poplar made terrible fence pickets as it would rot out in under 5 years. Soaking it in Bluestone (copper sulphate) would maybe give you 10 to 15 years but it was a slow process. 

A willow picket would be maybe 4' to 4.5' long and 2" to 2.5" in diameter, flat on top and sharpened with an axe at the bottom. A hole was punched with a crowbar as deep as possible and the picket driven in with the flat of an axe. We had a maul but the willow would not take heavy pounding too well. The barbed wire was fastened to the picket with a staple or in many cases especially on old pickets with baling wire (#12). Pickets or posts were spaced 1 rod (4 paces, 5 meters, 16.5 feet) apart, 181 to the half mile.

Posts were needed on corners and in low spots. Post holes had to be hand dug which was hard work in baked dry soil. We had a hand auger for digging and another for removing the dirt from the hole. Usually the hole needed widening with a spade to handle a used railway tie. Then there was a tamping bar to firm the dirt around the post. At the estate sale, all I wanted for souvenirs were the two post augers and the tamping bar. Funny that but I had a soft spot in my head for them. They were in the machine shed when my brother managed to burn it down so the metal parts went in the scrap.

As we rebuilt and repaired perimeter fences we gradually added a third wire. Dad did buy a few spools of new wire (80 rods to a spool and two spools to the half mile) but most of the wire was stuff he bought at auctions. Not always in the best condition and constantly needing mending. Working with barbed wire was somewhat hazardous. I always wore jeans, a long sleeve heavy work shirt, and leather gloves. My tan stopped at my collar.

In the early 60s dad cut the top off a 53 Chev sedan, took the back seat out and made it into our fence mending truck. It got about 15 miles to the quart of used oil and you could not turn it off or it would not start for a few hours. After idling for 30 minutes while I repaired a stretch of fence, it would blow a smoke screen that would hide the Queen Mary. The dog used to swim in a slough while I fixed fence and when I would rev the motor he would come running, up through the back and over the seat into the front, then lie on my lap. 

Willow pickets were getting hard to come by and times must have been better as dad bought a post pounder that mounted on the front of the tractor. Then we bought commercial pressure treated 3" to 4" pickets and 6" posts from Glaslyn and our fences started to look professional. I drove the tractor and dad sighted in and pounded the posts. The post had to be held to keep it straight while it was being driven into the ground. One day dad absently minded held the post too near the top and the driver took a nice bite out of his glove and some of his finger and thumb. He got it stitched up and it was not too bad. I did the same thing at Cumberland House many years later but I got really lucky. It just wrecked the glove and missed my hand. Farm accidents are caused by carelessness!!!

In the early 60s dad rented and eventually bought another 3 quarter sections: 2 cultivated and 1 prairie, adding another 5 miles of perimeter fencing. 

A word about barbed wire gates. The wires were always loose, no matter how often they were rebuilt. From one of our cultivated quarters there was a 1 mile trail through the pasture with a wire gate at each end. Dad had bought a used 1 ton at an auction that had no brakes. Coming through the pasture meant he could avoid the roads. One fall, I had JUST fixed both wire gates and dad decided to drive the grey truck home with a load of wheat. He forgot to slow down so he could stop and drove through the first gate. By the time he got to the second gate, he forgot to slow down again and drove through it too. MURDER was too good for him. 

Dad sold the cattle in the fall of 1982. He was 60 years old, it had snowed in late September, he had no winter feed ready and he was tired. Since that time, the fences have fallen into disrepair except for those around the pasture area which was rented out for grazing. The unused fences desperately need to be torn down and the wire rolled up and scrapped. There is nothing worse than old barbed wire lying around to catch and injure animals. We had a horse get wrapped in old wire and  though she was stitched up and doctored, she never healed and was no longer rideable.

Three strand wire fence, showing proper wire spacing

Three strand wire with good posts.

A barbed wire gate in the usual disrepair

Typical wire gate, closed with a rope tie

Corner post, built right but a bit worse for wear

This abandoned fence needs to be torn down and cleaned up

Front mounted driver. The heavy steel weight is raised by hydraulic
and then suddenly dropped onto the sharpened post

Sorry for not using metric units but once you are off the highways it is Imperial Units all the way. Land was surveyed in Imperial units of rods and miles. It is bought and sold by the 160 acre parcel called a quarter section (1/2 mile by 1/2 mile, with 4 quarters making up a section. Grains and oilseeds are harvested and stored in bushels even though they are sold in tonnes.