Perhaps someone in the farming business can help me out on this.

With the recent pop in wheat prices, US farmers can forward sell some or all of their expected crop at prices almost 50% higher than they were a month ago. Do Western Canadian farmers get to do this, or do they just have to wait and see what the CWB offers them?

Who could have imagined flat could look so good......

KIDDING!!! Great photo Kate. Your artists eye really shows through.

Sight is not the only sense invoked by that photo. I can smell the prairie, too. Fresh and invigorating. And I can feel the warmth.

Good shot!

Would that field in the background be flax in bloom?
And is the windbreak around the homestead caragana or Saskatoonbushes?
And where are the oil pump jacks?
Afterall, Saskatchewan sits on solid potash which floats floats on oil does it not?

Maybe I need glasses, but I have to ask (and since I own one of your prints I assume the privilege...)
Painting or photo?

It's beautiful.

As it is illegal, here in western Canada, to sell your wheat to anyone but the CWB....we get to wait and see what the CWB will give us. (There are no offers)

The yellow stuff looks to me like weeds. And the blue looks like water, after a big rain on rain-soaked soil. No flax in that pic, according to my eyes. Kate can prove me wrong, of course.

Kevinb: you can hedge using wheat contract on the CBOT (or is it the CME?) and then compete it using the opposite side of the contract in the fall, but that can be a bit cumbersome and the CWB gets its rake and it also takes forever to pay you so you have to carry the cost in the meantime and pay interest to do so.

I have been out of the loop for sometime and I seem to recall that the CWB had some lame form of hedging but I do not know the current status.

When I worked in Ontario years ago we hedged our winter wheat, beans and corn all the time and almost always were able to lock in a profit well before we began harvesting.

The blue field is flax in bloom.

There's a bad time to live in Saskatchewan?

Chances are the windbreak is caragana, though saskatoons are prevelant in the nearby South Sask River valley.

The weed is the Canada Thistle. They are prevalent this year and only wimps wear gloves. They are like people, beautiful in bloom, guards itself, forms a type of colony system to survive, hardy and cyclical.

Flax in bloom......

YES!!!!!

Just an old guys childhood Manitoba memories rekindled by a photo.

Thanks for that Kate!

When I was little we derisively called those things Elbow flowers because they didn't grow as far north as Hanley, where we lived. Now I have them in my field in Saskatoon. Blecchh. Would have to move very far away for a very long time to feel sentimental about Canada thistle.

It is a wonderful year to be living on the prairies, period. I can't remember the last time it was GREEN in August. And thanks Kate for linking back to one of Sean's pics; I'd forgotten about his light painting since he's been so focused on his landscapes as of late (and boy did he get some cool ones last night of the lightening storms around here).

A shot of Round Up will get rid of that Canadian Thistle problem ;-)

I would have sworn the blue was a lake.

Thanks for the link in the referenced post, Kate. Quick note: The linked post goes to my old site, which was taken down well over a year ago. My photography now resides at:

http://www.neutralhillsstills.ca/

What Speedy said.

How to get rid of Canada Thistle ~ old English rhyme (add a month for north America):
Cut them in May, they're sure to stay;
cut them in June, they'll be back soon;
cut them in July, they're sure to die.
______________________________

http://www.albertburger.com/wild%20plants.htm#thistle

Wonderful picture Kate!

Canada thistle is one miserable damn thing when it turns brown and dries up.
If you ever stepped on some dried up thistles, in bare feet, as a kid you ended up face down on the kitchen table with your Mom pulling them out with a sewing needle and tweezers.
Brings a whole new meaning to pain.

Even thistle looks good through the right photographer's lens. I recall that thistle in the plugged cylinder of my Dad's Massey Ferguson "Super 92." Brutal! Especially f you forgot you gloves in the grain truck!!

To Al in Ottawa: I have the answer to your question "There's a bad time to live in Saskatchewan?" The answer is winter!

catbird- I beg to differ. Winter is what you make of it.
If you're in to ice-fishing, hunting, snowmobiling, x-country skiing, hockey, curling, the bar scene, or even curling up in front of the wide-screen, or with a 800 page novel, couldn't be better!.. Hey, we even have the internet out here! Imagine that!
So naturally, small dead animals fills a certain void in our pitiful existance.

Er, you might have heard.... it's a dry cold...
But we do have the bestest blizzards. :~D)

I dunno Kate.

I would have removed the two dead heads; plucked the purple plant thingy and moved it over to the left and the camera down a bit such that the building was at the building was a bit lower and three quarters to the right, with the purply things just above, at the left. :-)