One hell of a mess

We’re back in Buchanan.  During the day we can hear the sound of a very large jackhammer woodpeckering away at the old concrete

where the elevator used to be.  The summer after 1st year university I worked on the crew that built the Cargill elevator at Langbank.  I can’t really remember how big the one here was but I don’t think it was as big as the one we built.  We poured 275 yards of concrete in one continuous pour for the one at Langbank so even if this one was smaller there still is a lot of concrete to bust up in order to clean up the site.

The piles of grain appear to be mostly canola with some wheat mixed in.  That wouldn’t be hard to separate in a cleaning plant but I’m not sure what you’d do with the grain even if it was cleaned.  It certainly wouldn’t be saleable into the food chain.  The wheat might go to a hog barn I suppose or maybe into an ethanol plant.  I have no idea what you’d do with burnt canola – biodiesel maybe.

There’s some new rail lying in the weeds by the siding so CN must plan to replace the twisted rail.  There’s some kind of a plant further up the siding that I suppose is cut off from the rail right now.  It would get pretty exciting if a train went through there tonight.

It’s really amazing how much stuff we had in that little van.  The more so when we remember how much crap we got rid of before loading the van.  Now that the van is pretty well empty the next

step is to load up all the crap that the previous owners dumped on us when they moved out and make a trip to the dump.  Yesterday I got the water inlet winterized.  At least I hope I did.  We won’t really know until next spring when we come home to either a flooded or a no-problem house.  Our new shingles look really good and even better because we didn’t have to put them on the roof.  I’d still like to get a coat of paint on the place this fall but I seriously doubt that will happen.

Yesterday our neighbour came over with his tractor and worked up the weed patch that the previous owners called a garden.  I had dealt with it with Roundup and we had asked the town to mow it but evidently the message never got to Clarence (the mower guy).  It was a hell of a mess but now it is kind of blackened.  Maybe we’ll even get some raspberry canes stuck in there before freeze-up.

One of the first things I did when we started unpacking was to refresh my library.  I’ve now got a pile of boating books to work my way through and I still need to replenish my supply of novels. 

Our next destination is on the west side of Wyoming but your guess is as good as mine as to when we will head for that job.