2026, Business, chickens, crops, education, Farming Update, Gatherings, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

AN OAT-STANDING DAY* 

65 Comments

This week’s Farming Update from Ben

You know, it was so warm last week, it was so freaking muddy. It was terrible. And I know it’s gonna happen the next time it warms up again. But that’s next month’s problem!

I’ve always found it interesting the clumps of snow and ice that accumulate on the far side of railroad crossings. When a vehicle hits a bump like that and the ice chunks fall off and skid up the road a ways. Newton’s first law about an object in motion I think. It’s kinda cool to me.

Wednesday this week I went to an oat producers meeting. Got another really good free meal! 

It was a very good meeting. Lots of good speakers and interesting topics. I did critique the font of one guy’s slides… I’m such a snob. The meeting started at 10:00, and people wandered in for another hour. And it reminded me how hard it was to get anywhere before about noon  when milking cows and doing chores in the winter. Feed the beef cows, feed the dairy cows, milk, chase the beef out of the yard, let the dairy cows out of the barn, clean the barn, haul out the manure, throw down hay from the haymow, spread out straw bedding, spread out the hay, and put the cows back in when they’re done eating outside. It all took a while. 

Excuse me, can you keep your heads down…

There were 159 farmers in attendance (because the host said now she knew how long it took to get 159 people through the line for lunch.) 

One guy kinda looked like Robert Duvall. 

I wore a peach colored shirt. I was the most colorful person there. A lot of plaid and dark colors. And a fair number of women at this meeting too. 

It was mentioned that 26% of the farmers in Olmsted County planted cover crops last, involving 20,000 acres. 

As one speaker went through his slides, he’d show a field of oats and call out ‘Eye candy!’

*He’s also the guy that said it was an ‘Oat-standing day’.

I saw them in concert back in 1984 just to impress a girl. I Broke up with her anyway.

Several of the speakers, and many of the farmers, are growing a few hundred acres of oats. They talk about their 40’ air seeders and stripper heads for oats and growing 140 bushel / acre oats and I sit there quietly with my 30 acres, and 40 bushels / acre and think ‘You don’t have any deer do you?’ I asked a question if anyone is dragging their oat fields. Crickets. One speaker finally said they do no-till planting. Oh. yeah meaning they don’t have bare dirt like I do. Several said that. One of the benefits of no-till, is being able to get out and plant in March without needing to wait for the ground to warm up and dry out to do tillage before planting, like I do. 

Several of these farmers are responsible for the surge in oat growers. They’re the founders of the oat mafia.

One guy shared his spreadsheet for his crop input and expenses. If input costs are going to be high, and crop prices are going to be low, then we hope for high enough yields to make up the difference. One example was a 1400 acre farm. If he does 700 acres corn and 700 acres beans, expenses will be this much, income theoretically this much, and they’re losing money. However, if they do 466 acres corn, 467 acres bean, and 467 acres oats, they can make some money. Oats cost less than corn to produce. Remember, less yield or a thunderstorm or a lower price and it’s all out the window. 

Jochum Wiersma, from the U of M is always a good speaker. He’s from the Netherlands, and he’s got a bit of an accent, and he is funny, and a very intelligent good speaker. He asked the group if we thought farming was more like NASCAR or a European Rally race? Obviously, a rally. “NASCAR is all left turns, you always know what’s coming.” If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. That’s why farming and raising oats is all about managing risk. 

I took home several good lessons. My crop rotation has been soybeans, corn the next year, then oats the next. Repeat. I do it that way because soybeans add nitrogen to the soil meaning I spend less on nitrogen for the following corn crop. When our son was in high school, he did a report for some class, comparing corn after oats and corn after soybeans. Surprisingly, the corn after oats did better. and I don’t really recall when or why I changed up the rotation order, but it was said several times, DO NOT PLANT OATS AFTER CORN, it’s more susceptible to crown rust disease. And maybe that’s why my oat crop has been so lousy lately. So, we’ll try planting oats on the fields that were soybeans last year. 

I cut down a bunch of dead Ash trees last Saturday. Thirty years ago, I planted two rows of ash trees and some arborvitae shrubs, hoping to create a windbreak in which I planned to put calf hutches on the south side. It turned out to be a pretty wet area. All the arborvitae died off a few years later. The ash trees got to be 40′ tall and were kind of a pain to mow around, now they’re all dead from Emerald Ash borer. There’s a few I’m waiting for a tree company to take down as they’re too close to the feed storage building for me to cut down. I left the stumps about two feet tall for the moment. I’ll trim them off at ground level this summer. 

Using the tractor and loader I was pushing the trees into a pile, and that’s when a tree branch rolled around the inside of the rear tire rim and snapped off the valve stem. Have I mentioned the chloride fluid I have put in the rear wheels for additional weight and traction? It sprays out when you break off the valve stem. My friends at Appel Service and $650 fixed that on Monday. I put the grapple bucket on the loader and picked up the rest of the trees to move them.

I need to remember, a tractor is not a bulldozer.

That worked much better. Until I got the tractor I over a stump. Not really sure how I did that. Bent a shield underneath…

I parked the tractor in the shop and let it dry off and warm up for a couple days, then I rolled under with wrenches and removed the shield. Trying to bend the shield enough to reach the bolts and I remembered Newtons third law: me on a rolling creeper pushing against a larger tractor…doesn’t move the shield, it moves me. An equal and opposite reaction! SCIENCE!

I’ve had chickens living in the garage again. I chased three out of the rafters one evening. The chickens hop from one rafter to another, and the dogs got all riled up and daughter thought the whole thing was hysterical. 

Chicken!

TALK ABOUT LEARNING TO RIDING A BIKE.

TALK ABOUT BIRDS / THINGS YOU’VE SEEN PERCHED IN ODD PLACES

2026, Computers, Family, Government, home, Media, Uncategorized

Approach/Avoidance

39 Comments

Yesterday Husband and I successfully closed out a small retirement account he has had for years. The occasion marks a finale in business actions we have been deluged with for the past 14 months.

When I say “we” I really mean “me” since I am the one who has handled the bulk of address changes, registrations, and monetary decisions needed with our retirements and move. I am so sick of dealing on-line and over the phone with faceless beings, automated “helpers”, and pressing the needed number on the phone keypad to get my work done.

For some reason I was dreading this final transaction more than any of the others. I kept putting it off, finding more pressing things to do instead. It left me sleepless, and gave me bad dreams. I think the issue was that Husband had to do the bulk of the work on the phone, and that left me feeling out of control. I really didn’t want the control, but that is the essence of anxiety, I think. I am a master of avoidance.

Yesterday’s transaction went without a hitch. I am so relieved! Now it is just a matter of getting everything to our accountant to do our taxes. All I need to do is mail it, since I collected everything needed. My new task is to find the next thing I need to worry about.

What are you avoiding? What makes you anxious?

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2026, Food, Health, Nature, Uncategorized

Go Fish

23 Comments

One benefit of living in the oil patch in ND was found in our local grocery store. To entice oil workers who came up from Lousiana and other southern states, the Cashwise store made a point of having a wide variety of very fresh and frozen seafood.

I don’t care at all for oysters or shrimp (shrimp is no better than eating mice, in my opinion) but the cod, salmon, lobster, clams, mussels, halibut, and crab were wonderful. I especially came to like Chilean Sea Bass.

I am somewhat disappointed with the seafood choices around our new town. The local grocery store has no fresh fish. The larger stores in Sioux Falls are better, but no sea bass. When did tilapia become so popular? I like to make a North German Fischgulash with cod or sea bass, shellfish, and scallops. The sea bass makes it particularly good.

Tuesday Husband and I made a quick SF grocery run and went to a specialty gourmet grocery and there was sea bass! I bought 3 pounds of filets and they are all safely frozen.

Our town had an ice fishing derby for kids and adults on February 14 at a spring-fed pond in town. It was 60° but the ice was 10 inches thick. They hauled out pounds and pounds of crappie, bluegill, perch, and carp. I am not sure if it was catch and release or if some of them were kept and eaten. I won’t eat freshwater fish because of all the contaminants in the ponds and lakes. The seafood I eat is probably not much better, but I can only hope.

Who is the pickiest eater you know? When was the last time you went fishing? What is your favorite fish to eat?

2026, Art, books, crops, Food, History

Spice of Life

37 Comments

I’m having fun churning through a bunch of “listicle” books in preparation for Blevins.   Shipwrecks, Nellie Bly, plants, more plants and Phineas Fogg.

The latest is The History of the World in 100 Objects, which was a BBC radio show awhile back.  I found the CDs through Interlibrary Loan and it’s prodigious – 20 discs!  It comes with a pamphlet that have 100 teeny little black and white photos of the items.  Luckily I was able to find a website that has nicer photos of the objects, so I’ve been keeping that open while I listen to the CDs.

It’s well done – not nearly as stuffy as I was expecting – and I’m enjoying it, although I’m having to keep at it since you can’t renew ILL items.

All the items are in the British Museum, including a statue of Chicomecoatl, the Aztec of Goddess of Maize and Sustenance.  The narration starts out with an overview of food having a divine role throughout history and then moves on to the history of maize, the plant it derives from and where it grows (just about everywhere).  Then came this funny bit:

“But crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit.  But it is, let’s face it, pretty stodgy, and so from very early on, farmers also cultivated an ingenious – and tasty – accompaniment, the indigenous chili.  It has virtually no nutritional value but, as we all know, it’s uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates – and it shows that we’ve been foodies for as long as we’ve been farmers.”

I laughed out loud especially since I had just added a slug of frozen poblanos to a dish I had made about an hour before.  Now I want to go to Penzey’s to see if they have any good chili mixtures.

Do you have any “go-to” spices?

2026, books, Health, Uncategorized

Age And Experience

38 Comments

Husband started guitar and cello lessons, and also attends OT to improve an injured wrist. He enjoys all his activities and finds they are mutually beneficial.

The other day he mentioned feeling disconcerted because he suddenly realized that all his teachers, helpers, and guides are younger than he is. His cello teacher is in his late 20s. His guitar teacher is 40. He went on a nature hike on Sunday led by a very young naturalist. He tries to share experiences, music, recipes, etc, with them that they don’t know about or haven’t had. They are very interested in the things he talks about. He sees himself as having experience without expertise, while they have expertise without experience. He hopes that he and the others are all learning together. He says It’s like being an old book in the library that is still good but no one takes out anymore.

I don’t know why it took Husband this long to finally feel his age. Perhaps working full time until he was 71 had something to do with it.

What kind of a library book would you be? How old do you feel these days?

2026, Family, Food, Gatherings, Uncategorized

Decadence

35 Comments

This past weekend has been one of fun and simple excess. My birthday is February 1. Son’s is February 10. We decided to celebrate together this past weekend.

Son had arranged a Valentine’s Day treat for his wife in Sioux Falls including a live production of Moulin Rouge at the Washington Pavillion and dinner at a really exquisite Italian restaurant. We watched the 7 year old and the 6 month old while they were in Sioux Falls. We celebrated with birthday cake when they returned after dinner and the musical. They all spent Saturday night with us.

Son and I agreed that we wanted a German/Central European cake to celebrate, and he found a lovely recipe for Schwartzvald Kirschtorte. It was a fairly easy recipe for an experienced baker, and I baked the three cake layers on Friday. Grandson and I assembled the cake on Saturday afternoon after I had made the massive amounts of sweetened whipped cream, excessive chocolate ganache, chopped dark, sweet cherries, and kirsch syrup that completed it. Grandson loves to bake and cook. He really loved licking the spoons. It was a 9 inch cake that served 12 people. The header photo is all that is left after we all had second and third helpings on Sunday. It was a decadent cake..

It was also decadent to spend so much time with grandchildren. Granddaughter frequently fell asleep in our arms after her bottles. She smiled and blew raspberries and cuddled. Grandson was so excited to play basketball and Scrabble with his Opa. He also got to roast marshmallows in our fire pit on Sunday morning. How decadent is that?

What is the most decadent thing you’ve eaten or done lately? When was the last time you took care of a baby?

2026, Computers, crops, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Uncategorized, Weather

DIGGIN’ IN

61 Comments

This week’s farming update from Ben

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY.

How about this weather! 

Way too warm for February. But the chickens sure enjoying having some grass and sunshine. The dogs, too. And if we can get rid of some of the ice between the house and shed, maybe Luna will chase the ball over that way instead of standing here watching it go. 

I’m thinking I’ll use the tractor loader and try to move some of the piles of snow and gravel from the grass back onto the the road. Although I’m pretty sure we’ll get some more snow this winter. I mean, it’s only February. We just never know anymore. 

At the college I had to create a new computer password. The muscle memory has not formed yet and it takes me four tries to log in.

At the local school district, their passwords have to be 15 characters plus all the special stuff. Seems like sometime last summer I couldn’t get logged into email and I kinda forgot about it. I don’t get that much email on that account so it didn’t really matter. Every now and then I’d try to log into a computer and get frustrated and just give up on it. Eventually I got around to trying to get the password reset. I can’t do that from home, it has to be on a district computer. So I tried that, and it still didn’t work. I talked to my boss who had me contact IT. That guy looked me up in the system and said “Huh!”. Hate it when people say that in regard to me… He said I wasn’t in the system and eventually sent me to HR. HR said I wasn’t assigned to a department and therefore, I ceased to exist. Well, I beg to differ! I use to exist. Yep, they knew that, but I don’t anymore. So it was a whole thing to start over and get back in the system. I got a new ID badge complete with a photo of my choosing from my phone, because the lady in HR readily admitted their camera takes lousy photos. So that was nice. 

Another guy in the room said he hadn’t seen an ID badge as old as mine in a long time. I was two versions behind. Huh!

A while ago.

So now I’m able to log in, using a password that’s a practically a short sentence. And no way to see it as you type (they’ve had some security issues in the past).  I check my email more often and I get a lot more emails too. Be careful what you wish for. 

This weekend is the 60th Annual National Farm Machinery show in Louisville KY. 

https://farmmachineryshow.org

It’s the largest indoor farm show in the world, with over 900 booths on “27 acres of interconnected indoor exhibit space”. Admission is free if you’d like to pop in. Expect to be overwhelmed. Many of the YouTube farmers I watch are there. Of course this has all the newest big shiny equipment on display. Oh, there’s a few older tractors for show, but this is the place to show off the latest and greatest. 

I spent a couple hours Friday in a meeting at the local Soil and Water Conservation office meeting with Angela and Jenna. After clearing all the tree’s and reshaping the waterway two years ago, I learned I really should have talked to them first. So last year Angela and I looked at a few areas of the farm and she put together a plan to stop the erosion and repair this gully in the pasture. 

Another project in the works

At the top, a small dam would be built, about 4 feet tall and 150 feet long. An upright pipe would be installed at the front with a drainage line running about 50’ downhill. That structure would collect the water funneling into this area, slow it down, and release it over several hours. That in turn, would prevent the erosion happening further downhill. At the bottom, the gully would be filled in, the area re-shaped, and a proper waterway built. There are some springs down there which would be directed into the new waterway once fully seeded and established. 

Because our farm is in the Zumbro Valley Watershed area, cost sharing would bring our actual cost down to about 10% of the total. Well that sounds like a plan! 

I also asked about a program called RCPP. Regional Conservation Partnership Program. I heard about this program last week at the soil health meeting. I have part of one field edge that has a pretty good slope too it, and every spring I get a small gully along the edge. The edge of a field where a person turns for the next pass, those areas are called headlands. I’ve tried to create a berm to keep the rainwater off the headland rows, but every spring I get a new gully. The RCPP program would do some cost sharing to create a permanent grass area there so rather than working up the ground of the headlands, I’d be turning on the grassy area. 

And since the office is having their annual tree and shrub sale, Kelly and I were discussing where we could plant some trees. One thing we thought was to plant a wind break where we put the snow fence. Guess what? Cost sharing for that too! It was a very good meeting! 

Check out the spurs on this rooster. 

You’ll poke your eye out with those things!

He is one of the roosters who’s kind of a bully to the hens. He’s pretty though. And isn’t that the way? All looks, no class. 

Last weekend I got the new shop exhaust fan wired up, and I put a new gasket under one toilet this week (a project I put off for two months because I’d never done it before and I had some concerns.) In the end, I spent more time cleaning off the old wax gasket and cleaning the floor around the toilet than the actual repair took. This weekend I’ll be changing the kitchen faucet spray wand and tubing. This is the fourth one I’ve ordered. The first three were wrong. Now we’re changing the hose as well. Kudo’s to Moen and their lifetime warranty for admitting their mistake and shipping parts to me no charge. 

WHAT WAS YOUR CHILDHOOD PHONE NUMBER?

WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING FOR WHICH YOU NEEDED A PASSWORD?

2026, Automotive, home, Medicine, Uncategorized

Just Like That!

29 Comments

I continue to be amazed by the speed at which we can access goods and services here. Our town in ND was 20,000 people. Our current town is about 4,900 people. You would think it would be easier to get things done in a bigger town, but that has not been the case.

A couple of weeks ago I finally had it with the front right tire on my van losing air with sudden temperature changes. This has been going on for a couple of years. No one in ND had offered a solution. We randomly chose a tire shop here to deal with the matter. The nice young mechanic/owner explained how he would fix it, and then told us he could probably squeeze it in that afternoon. What? I didn’t have to bring it in the following week? Well, he fixed it in a couple of hours. There was a leaky pressure sensor that needed to be replaced. I then figured out from his last name that his grandmother and my mother had been members of the same sewing club, that his parents lived across the street from us, and that I graduated from high school with his aunt. The tire has behaved admirably ever since.

Wednesday I was feeling awful with a flare-up of diverticulitis. I phoned the medical clinic at 9:50 am. They said they had an appointment for me at 10:15. I took it. This was the actual clinic, not Urgent Care. There is no Urgent Care here. The clinic is a 3 minute drive from our home. By afternoon I was feeling better.

The wired-in smoke detectors on our new home were all a faded, aged yellow. They looked original to the home, which was built in 1998. They should be replaced every 10 years. When our son tried to brown the Thanksgiving turkey at 500°, the upstairs was filled with smoke yet none of the smoke detectors went off. Yesterday at 12:15 pm I phoned an electrician to get them replaced. He told me he could come over that afternoon. He was at the house by 12:40 pm, and by 1:10 pm all seven of them had been replaced. They are white, not yellowed.

What are the wait times for you to get goods and services? How are your smoke detectors? What is the longest you had to wait for a medical appointment?

2026, books, Family, holidays, Mysteries, TV, Uncategorized

BritBox vs. Libby

36 Comments

For the holidays, YA gave me a marvelous (albeit completely unnecessary) gift:

Since the discovery that I could get Libby to work through my hearing aids, my reading has been up a bit and I was happy when I had hit 14 by January 31.  I was thinking that maybe it might be a banner year.

Another gift that I received this year was also an unnecessary bit of fun.  When I visited my friend Susan in Madison last year, one of our conversations was about television and all the shows we liked.  I mentioned that I loved a lot of the British shows that I could find and that I wished BritBox wasn’t so expensive; I’m just not willing to pay anymore for tv in our house than I already do.  When I opened the envelope from Susan, I expected a gift card; it turned out to be a coupon for two months of BritBox paperclipped to $22 cash.  I laughed and laughed.

I launched the two-month gift on February 1st.  I took the book counter photo yesterday morning.  Not one book added since January 31.  That’s because I am flippin’ LIVING on BritBox – part of my psyche says I should get as much seen as possible while I have this two-month gift.  Death in Paradise (Season 15), Vera (just a few shows…on the edge of too dark for me), Ludwig (the whole first season – can’t wait for Season 2 later this year), Hamish Macbeth (only a couple of these), Poirot – Death on the Nile.   I’ll stop here.  So far I haven’t wandered off the murder mystery path, but I’m sure I will eventually.  

It’s actually really enjoyable since I’m pretty good at skipping shows I don’t like.  Heaven knows there are enough available.  I turned off Riot Women 10 minutes in; ABC Murders lasted about that long as well.

Truly the only regret I have about having this two months is the hit it’s taking to my reading.  Truly, if it weren’t for cds and Libby when I’m doing errands in the car, I wouldn’t be reading at all!

Do any of your hobbies/past-times fight each other for your attention?

2026, Business, Food, Uncategorized

Product Reviews

38 Comments

Husband and I quite regularly purchase specialty foods from a Spanish and an Italian importer, as well as things now and then from Amazon. We also order quite a bit from King Arthur Baking Company. I usually ignore the pleas from these entities for reviews of our purchases.

I mostly have better things to do, and I would hope my continued ordering would let them know we are happy with their products. I know the reviews are all in the aid of marketing.

The other day, though, the King Arthur Baking Company hooked me with an offer of a possible $100 if I reviewed our recent purchase of all-purpose flour. I really do like their flour. I told them it is the only all-purpose flour we use. It was impossible to submit the review, however, and I finally gave up in frustration.

What products do you order on-line? Ever submitted a review? What products would you like to honestly review?