wild oats
f: that part wasn't r- working right before. it's, we
worked on ... I guess the chain was so tight it couldn't
work right
m: and now is it?
f: now it seems to work right
m: well that's good. get some work done, achieve something
f: it would skip
m: pinched fingers and whatnot
f: there'd be a lot of changes there if I were to rebuild a drill
m: is she coming?
d: are you nearly finished?
f: no it won't be. we're waiting for wild oats for a little
while, next week
d: oh, you wait for it to come up. and then you kill it
m: see there's a back
f: then you kill it mercilessly. yuh, well, it's so
expensive to put chemicals on it. I do it on rape but
(nose blow)
d: so you just wait and you cultivate it
f: but the trouble is, usually the next batch coming.
next batch comes.
d: they don't all come at once?
f: oh, no!
d: (laughs) they've got their timing worked out
f: the department of agriculture sifted some land
someplace I don't know where. they found seventy
bushels of it in an acre
d: wow! old and young
f: yuh, various stages. that's the problem, it doesn't
germinate. it's very, uh .. what's the word ..
erratic? when it comes to, uh, germination. it's
very bad and that creates the problem
d: sounds like a smart species
f: it's, uh .. a real enemy number one. 'cause of the
nature of the beast. until they find how to put
chemical into the ground that will kill the germination
d: of only it
f: oh only it, yes, or even ..
m: (saying grace) father we thank thee ... for this food ...
amen
d: (coughs)
f: .. the year we summerfallow it could be applied, then it
would kill more or less all of the wild oats. and it's
all that would be necessary. the day hasn't come yet
m: here are the potatoes
f: if I were a multimillionaire I would, I would support, uh,
d: research?
f: research on that, yes, because I think that would
financially and physically help more people in the
west here than any other way I know of but in the
medical field
d: isn't there a way people could enjoy eating wild oats?
f: well, uh, no, no ..
m: they don't seem to have any food value
d: oh
f: well, yuh, it's reasonably good but .. uh, what, how
can you raise it? I said, it may not grow. you seed
it and it may not grow
m: and when you don't seed it it'll grow
f: well, just a certain .. a certain percentage
m: well, why don't people harvest their, when they have a
good stand, then harvest it as wild oats?
f: well there's so much against it! it, uh .. it
shells so easily, and oh there's so many things that make
it so worthless. and the beards on it, how do you
harvest it? it clings to everything and
d: worse than barley?
f: they, the beards knock off barley but not off wild oats
(silence)
d: it must be the ancestor of the other oats
f: no .. yeah .. no, I think it's the other way around.
oats turns wild eventually. but where they got the oats
to start with I don't know
m: what do they call those ... sons .. that turn out bad?
d: yuh, we don't, what, we don't know whether it's that way
or the other way around
f: oh yes we know that tame oats goes wild
m: most of .. isn't there the law of deprec -, oh, uh,
deterioration?
d: no but you see, that can be .. that can be by, uh,
.. throwing back, not deterioration but, but just by,
reversion it's called
f: mm-hm, it can be
m: yes
d: lots of things revert. good chicken
m: very good chicken
(sound of kettle boiling up)
d: chicken is hardly every good anymore
(kettle works up to a scream)
m: oh .. noisy thing!
(kettle subsides with a last protest)
m: you noisy thing!
f: can't you bring wild oats into the country too -- into
the film? because that sure is a big part of the
Peace (Peace River Country)
d: i'll have to think about it
f: and, you, in the fall, if you remember, record the
noises it makes when it jumps
d: it jumps?
f: it jumps like a jackrabbit. but it takes
d: all at once and that's when it's letting its seeds go?
f: yes, you can't contain it in your swath
d: really?
f: you have a shower at night and the sun and the wind
comes out and then they start jumping
d: wow, they seem to be really smart
f: well. you can record that?
d: i would think so
f: oh, yuh
m: the jump of the wild oat. maybe the dance of the wild
oat, if you have enough of them jumping around, you
could record it as a dance
d: you could think of it as a migration
m: migration, yuh
f: see it has the beard to cling to something, so it
will be broadcast, and then it'll jump. that beard
is barbed, uh, that beard is .. is bar, barbed
m: barbed
d: it seems to combine a lot of tactics
f: oh boy
d: 'cause some things jump, and some things have beards
(laughs) and some things have staggered germination
and this one ...
f: and some things need two years before they'll germinate,
and that's wild oats. so it fits in very poorly with
our rotation of our, our practices
d: poorly from your point of view
f: oh boy
d: i'm starting to admire it
m: tenacity and all that
d: well just how many, .. many ways it's got
f: it makes a pretty good picture too if you take a wild
oat that stands alone in the field, like the drill has
missed, missed an area and then there's a wild oat in
there. then the heads are whoppers
d: mm
m: sneaky wild oats ... they sing about it -- wily creatures.
they have all sorts of names for ..
d: they sing about wild oats?
f: yeah well that's treflon they're trying to sell, or
d: (giggles) oh i see!
f: .. herbicide
d: i thought it was like a cowboy song
m: well maybe somebody has already put it into a ..,
they should put it into a song
f: you can maybe make one up and sell it to the herbicide
company
d: sell it to the wild oats. sounds like they're so smart
that there has to be a way of joining them
f: yes, uh
d: do we get to have another piece of chicken?
m: this is a two chicken day, two piece ... two
chicken-piece day
(silent pause, then m and d burst out laughing)
f: these were on sale, so ..
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