2021, Farming Update, Kids, Uncategorized

Fall Has Fallen

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Today’s post comes from Ben

Rainy and cool today… talking lows in the upper 30’s this week… might get a frost yet. Or a freeze in the valley’s.

Ducks are good.

As of Wednesday, I’m still waiting to get my soybeans out. There’re not too many soybeans out in the fields yet. People are surprised when I tell them mine aren’t done. The neighbors who will harvest mine are working in the neighborhood; they’ve got a field right across from one of my fields so with the nice weather predicted for this week I would expect by the time you read this, soybeans might be done. Fingers crossed and the creek don’t rise. It’s out of my control; they’ll get them when they get them.

Things are busy in my real job world and I’m almost stressing out over them. Got the college show to open on the 28th. Got an open house for the remodeling at another theater scheduled for the 6th of November and I need to get those bathroom stalls installed. Plus class. Plus “life”. It’s enough to push a man to drink.

Doing a local field trip come Monday in geology class. It’s hard to do field trips during Covid. Everyone drives themselves… Trying to fit 3 or 4 stops into 2 hours. I predict it will be like herding cats, but we’ll see. Just a 1/4 mile up the road from campus is an exposed hillside of St. Peter Sandstone. And a little bit further is some other rocks and then there’s a spot I specifically keep asking the teacher about because of the layers and colors in this exposed hillside. Isn’t it amazing to realize these rocks are a BILLION years old and that the layer of darker rock on the top was put there 60 MILLION YEARS AGO?? MAN!! That just blows me away. I know just enough from class now to be dangerous. I’m just beginning to understand that rocks can change and become other rocks. Pressure or erosion and now it’s a different rock. Huh! I just thought they were rocks. I’m far to old to remember all the terms, but it’s interesting.

Last week and we talked about finding things and that reminded me of some other stuff we’ve found in the woods or in the fields.

November 1st one year, I was going in to do some plowing and down one of the field roads was a car. Tires were gone, stereo ripped out, one of those “key Keeper” things the car dealers used to have on the rear window was in the back seat. I called the deputies. Seems like if you find a car before it’s reported stolen, they don’t know what to do with it. They contacted the owner. He had consigned it to a dealership to sell and it had been stolen off the lot. But it was still his problem at this point. So now it was considered ‘abandoned’ and the owner had to hire a tow truck to come and pick it up.

One time a friend was leaving and a few minutes later was back to say there was a car tipped over in the woods but there was no one around. I drove up there to see it and it appeared from the tire tracks they had been fishtailing up the road, lost control, hit a bank and tipped the car over. There was just a little bit of blood on the door frame from pulling themselves out, but no one around. This was way before airbags or cell phones. I waited, Kelly went back and called deputies. I saw a car come in, see me, and back away again. I don’t recall what all became of that. There’s been several situations of me chasing people out of the fields. Twenty years ago, before we put the gates on the end of our driveway, it was worse. With the gates, they didn’t have a place to hide and trouble moved on.

Just yesterday I noticed someone over at a rented field, vehicle tracks off the road, made a loop through the soybean field, and back on to the road. Sigh. Could be worse; could have made a lot more tracks through the field. This will only amount to a few bushels. Dad always told the story of kids driving through the hayfield. Except they lost the license plate in the field. Deputies were able to track them down. Somehow dad arranged that their punishment was for them to come out one Saturday morning and help clean calf barns using a pitch fork. He said they were good kids, and they were just screwing around. But stay out of the fields next time.

We got to know some of the sheriff deputies pretty well. One night Kelly saw several cars come down in the yard, turn around and go back out. Well, that pretty much means ‘Party’ so she called deputies. I was coming home and from the highway I was seeing this line of car headlights coming out of our driveway. What the heck?? Eventually I could get in and there were 3 deputies. There was a party down a field road, out of sight, and the kids had just tapped the keg when the deputies showed up. Officer Kirby was pretty excited about breaking up the party. Of course, the kids took off running and the officers told them, ‘We got your cars, you may as well come back.’ I think everyone got a warning that night. And I found plastic cups all over the corn field that fall.

TALK ABOUT BEING PUNISHED. As a kid, As an employee? Or punishment given as a parent or employer.

99 thoughts on “Fall Has Fallen”

  1. Who do employers thimk they are anyway? “All employees must do so and so. Failure to do so may result in disciplinary action being taken against them.” Stuff it. We didn’t get all that on the farm.

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  2. I’ve never been punished by a employer.
    My parents on occasion used the belt or paddle but preferred the isolation technique. Sit in the corner or go to your room. Later it was grounding.
    At about 7 years old, I was all dressed up to attend a wedding. A suit and tie on a kid was a rarity. “Stay inside until we leave” was the instruction I disobeyed. Outside playing tag with friends. Mom was livid. She had expectations of nice family photos. “You wanna be dirty?! I’ll give you dirty!” She drug me through a mud puddle and took a picture of me. I was left at home with Grandpa.
    The assignment was to rake the leaves. This 13 years old didn’t even start. Dad came home from work, didn’t say a word and began to rake. I knew I was in trouble so went outside to rake. He took the rake from my hand and calmly said, ” I don’t want your help”.
    I would rather have had a whipping than the look and those words. I went inside and wept.

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    1. Man, isn’t that the truth? Disappointing my dad was just the worst. When I was very young we lived in a house with a non-operating well. I was so curious about that well, which, of course, I was not to go near. BUt that pump handle was so enticing—I just wanted to pump the handle and see the water come out. I was constantly in trouble for trying to play near it and with it. With mom I was just defiant. One sentence from my dad saying he was disappointed with my disobedience and I was flooded with remorse.

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        1. So all 10 of us get to the Extension Office to work this morning, just to discover that the employee responsible for giving us the 100s of bulbs we are to plant today, went dark this week. So we did a little maintenance and that was it. She needs to be punished. I say that the logical consequences of this would be that she must plant the 100s of bulbs herself.

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      2. I agree with both of you regarding the feelings of remorse. Mom would sort of scold me, dad yelled. But it was the teacher who caught me with a note in my hand during a test that said “I’m very disappointed in you“, that one hurt the most.
        It’s sort of fascinating to us, the discipline that worked on one child, doesn’t work on the second child. For that matter, we haven’t figured out anything that works for the second child, ha ha.

        Sometimes at the college when we don’t follow the rules on a purchase, we have to fill out the dreaded “chapter 16 A form“. It’s a form that says why you did what you did, and how to fix it so you don’t do it again. I filled one out this spring because I used the word “invoice” rather than “purchase order”. I sort of tried to explain I hadn’t really done what they said I did but it didn’t really matter. And then two months later, the head of purchasing said “oh, well then you didn’t need this” and deleted the 16 A form. Whew, I didn’t want that on my record.

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    2. Sorry. They’re just hanging out these days. I gave you a header photo of ducks so I thought that would help. And if you notice the one pretty gray rooster right in the middle? He’s Rooster #3 on the self-proclaimed rooster ranking scale. But he’s working on the #2 position.

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      1. He looks like he has the strut down. How does their vying for dominance manifest, Ben? Do they fight, or is it more posturing?

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      2. I tell the light board operators for shows, that if they screw up enough that the audience notices (like a blackout in the middle of a scene for example) they get three strikes then they have to punish themselves by drinking a ‘Rusty Nail’ at the bar. * A Rusty nails is scotch and drambuie and something else… as I recall from the last one I had 30 years ago, it was pretty rough.
        So for me, please don’t make me drink an amaretto sour! Don’t make me take a nap! Don’t make me eat ice cream drumsticks!

        *If they’re too young or don’t drink, I tell them they have to pick their own punishment.

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  4. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    The worst punishment ever is when I have to face the consequences of my own behavior and there is no way to wiggle out of it. You know, when you are speeding, you know you are speeding, the cop pulls you over and you have to take the ticket and pay it. I had that happen last winter in AZ, and I knew I was wrong so I could not even be mad at the unfairness of it all.

    Or you say the thing, whatever it is, and then someone disagrees or shows you the flaw in what you said, and you have to change. I hate that. Or you are not being careful in the garden, you step on the hoe and the handle flies up and hits you in the face and it hurts and gives a bruise. All because I was thinking about why I was mad at my husband and not paying attention to where I put the darn hoe. And the thing I was mad about was not worth the emotion anyway.

    For the past 5 years I have felt punished for being an American due to Dear Leader #45. I did not vote for the guy so I did not feel remorse, I felt outrage. And helplessness.

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    2. That’s such an obvious point, which I’d forgotten in this context, Jacque. There’s nothing makes me madder than when it’s my own fault, and there’s no one to blame except myself. (Apart from a few isolated incidents outside the scoe of today’s post). Maybe that helpless rage isits own punishment.

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      1. Professionally, I am a behaviorist. In that context “Punishment” is anything that reduces the frequency of a behavior, a definition which is very different than the shame-laden idea of punishment used in common practice. Research demonstrates quite clearly that any punisher that occurs as a logical consequence of a behavior is the most “punishing” or most likely to reduce or eliminate a behavior. Which is why learning from your own consequences is such a big deal.

        End of lecture. 😉

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  5. As you all know, I was an abused child. There was never a relationship between what infraction I had committed and what punishment was doled out, it simply depended on the mood mom was in at the time. Getting myself dirty or my shoes and socks wet could result in a severe beating with a wooden spoon, a broom handle or a leather belt, as could not hearing my mother call me to come home. I was in constant fear of not hearing my mother call; it wasn’t until my year in Switzerland that that fear lost it’s grip on me. I can distinctly remember the morning when I woke up in Basel and realized that I didn’t need to worry about that.

    While the physical abuse caused some damage that is now manifesting as arthritis in several places in my spine, the emotional scars were a lot more troublesome to deal with. It wasn’t really till I got divorced that I realized how much pain from my childhood I was still carrying around.

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    2. PJ, I’m sorry; I kinda wondered if the question might be troublesome for people.
      I hear the college kids talk about things they deal with at home or even the parents we overhear in the store, and it makes the woman with the 5 kids I saw the other day, and the one clearly unhappy child having a meltdown, and how much emotional energy it takes to handle all that and still keep your own cool. Kudo’s to her.

      A time I wasn’t proud of my own behavior was a nephew helping me put up hay. I was mad he hadn’t come out when I wanted him. Then I was mad he took the initiative and brought a tractor and wagon out in the field. (I hadn’t told him to do that; I wasn’t sure he knew how to drive the tractor yet). So now I’m mad because I’m mad.
      Or the cows. Dad would get SO MAD and abusive at the cows and consequently, I learned how to be mad and I hit them too. I know I would handle it differently now.
      Course some days, energy and patience is low, and that one cow slaps you in the face with her dirty tail…and that’s the last straw.
      I always wondered if the neighbors could hear me. Depends which way the wind was blowing I think. I can hear them some days… they must have known when I was having a bad day.

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      1. Not to worry, Ben, I’m pretty much over the emotional pain and can talk about it rationally now. It helped a lot that I was able to confront my mother on my first visit to Denmark after being gone ten years. We were both able to discuss it honestly and in some depth. It was not a confrontation that I had planned, but a situation arose, and I realized I could no longer pretend, and let her pretend, it never happened. It was not hard to forgive her and let go of my anger once she admitted that she had abused me. I haven’t forgotten the abuse, but it no longer causes me the emotional pain it once did. As Maya Angelou said “When you know better, you do better.” To me this such a powerful quote, and it applies to so much in life.

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        2. I’ve just read your comment about your mother’s abuse yet again. Broom handles and leather straps. That’s a lot of serious pain you suffered.

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      2. Ben, did you ever get those days when maybe some little thing would set the cows off, and they’d just go mad, run everywhere and be as difficult as possible? Times like that, I’d remember what I was always aware of- they owe us nothing. It’s for us to make their lives pleasant. Not vice versa.
        I loved having cows around (even Friesans and Holsteins), but felt guilt the whole of my adult life, for the slavery they endure on some farms.

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        5. One of our towns out here has as their school team mascot a Holstein. The girl athletes there are referred to as The Lady Holsteins. The town is home to the world’s largest Holstein cow, a huge statue called Salem Sue.

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        7. PJ, now this is cows I’m talking about, people are something I’ve never known anything about. Friesians and Holsteins are very good cows, gthe best pretty much, and that’s why you don’t see much else now. They’re just not as pretty as some breeds, and I’ve never liked them.
          And we have our own Red Rubies in Devon, the nickname of the North Devon breed. Mostly known as Devons. South Devons are a different, bigger breed, probably still with a few diehard enthusiasts who consider it could give the Friesans a run for their money. But I love the Rubies, though they’ve been left way behind now.
          As far as behavior goes though, treat any cow well and quietly, and she’ll treat you well. Bulls are a different matter, and I’ve seen mean Friesans, placid Herefords.

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        9. When I adopted a pair of black and white kittens, a friend of mine called them the Holsteins. They were not typical tuxedos, but had white splotches interspersed with the black areas of their fur. My friend also referred to them as “cow cats”.

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        10. I stop the car get out and walk up to salem sue every time we drive by
          i told the kids to rule you have to do that I have never driven past without stopping

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        11. Tim, you live in Minnesota, and you regularly drive past an unknown town in North Dakota? Do you have a list of the things you DON’T do? It doesn’t sound as if it would take long to write.

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        13. I miss the cows and their personalities, I don’t miss the chores and the work involved.
          Yeah, there were days that all the cows just seemed dumb. Full Moon? New grass?
          I certainly didn’t take your utopian view! 🙂

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  6. One of the more successful parenting strategies we are teaching is Cookies, Choices, and Kids, by Gary Landreth. It is very simple. “If you choose to come in 1 hour late for curfew, you choose to come home an hour earlier the next time you go out. If you choose to come home on time , you choose to go out for the full amount of time”, with the intent of putting the responsibility for the consequence with the child, not as something imposed by the parent. It works surprisingly well.

    Another is the Nurtured Heart Approach, useful with extremely negativistic and oppositional kids who suck all the positivity out of the home. You find something positive in everything the child does, even when they are being stinkers. “Well, it was inappropriate for you to throw that in anger, but at least you didn’t hit anyone with it. That showed self control”. “Thankyou for not saying the F word at the breakfast table today. That showed how you can be considerate.”. There are, of course, consequences for misbehavior, but the intent is to draw out the positive qualities that each child has within them that are obscured by their negative behavior.

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    1. The first strategy sounds a lot easier to me than the second.

      From my time at the alternative school, it became clear to me how much parental neglect or abuse impacts children. It also became obvious that if the abuse cycle isn’t interrupted somehow, it continues on. So many of our students were second or third generation from families in constant crisis because of poverty, homelessness, mental health and/or addiction, anger management issues/violence, and ever shifting boundaries. Fourteen years in the trenches there was all I could manage.

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    2. I remember doing some research in an English class about the phrasing of things and how important that can be. It was based on a book and I can’t remember what book it was. But Telling a child “You made a good choice there!” gives them more than just saying “Good Job”. I really try to focus on that sort of thing.

      At the college when working with students, I really try not to yell and I try not to make it personal. I know most of them are really trying their best. Usually the trouble comes because I’m pushing them to do something they didn’t want to do in the first place. (Because we want them to try new things- but clearly not to extremes if they’re uncomfortable). So the problem becomes mine for not finding a job that fit them better.
      Or they said they can paint and they really can’t! That happens more often. I have to laugh at it. “Define ‘Painting’ “

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    1. Do you deal with families that are referred to you by the courts and/or social service agencies of various kinds? I can’t imagine that too many of them come on their own initiative.

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  8. Punishment given by me.
    I rarely gave my kids spankings.
    The ex- wife doled them out constantly
    That was a source of conflict between us as parents. Too many times I was supposed to deliver additional physical punishment. She saw it as a validation of her as judge, jury and executioner. Many times I appealed to the kids to be extra good so that I wouldn’t be put in a bad spot. In retrospect, I was the weak one. I should have insisted on zero spankings until I had absolute evidence and consideration of alternatives. Daughter and Son have turned out very well. Maybe there was a nice combination of discipline obtained after all.

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      1. Unfortunately I think most couples don’t talk about their ideas about parenting before they become parents, and afterwards it’s too late if they don’t agree. I think we all know couples who use their kids as pawns in their marriage, this is especially true if they end up divorcing. A married couple who support and love each other give an incredible gift to their offspring. Luckily most of us are pretty adaptable and can recover from less than perfect childhoods.

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        1. My work set things up for conflict. Gone all week and now I’m supposed to lay down Mom’s Law on weekends?! Good guy/bad gal is tough. Things got much better when I got a job with a residentially focused flooring company.

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        2. That work schedule is notorious for parenting conflicts. Out here, oil workers can be gone days at a time, then at home for a week or so. Really hard to parent under those circumstances.

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  9. My sister and I got spanked while growing up, , but rarely. Once when she (4 years younger) and I’d been fighting, my mom made us sit on the couch and hug each other. One of the most effective punishments I’ve ever seen – she must have read about it somewhere…

    I remember spanking Joel, but again, rarely. I told before about when I even spanked a kindergartener during my last spring teaching, it was one of the worst days of my life.

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    1. I consider myself extremely fortunate that I’ve never been in a position where spanking or other corporal punishment seemed like a viable option to me. Of course, I’m not a parent, but I have taken care of several children for extended periods of time. That said, I do understand there are times when fear, anger, pain, and just plain old frustration cause you to loose control, and that’s when it’s helpful to have a partner who can intercede. I so admire parents who make good parenting a priority.

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      1. Jane would slap Isaac occasionally, though I didn’t approve. We really needed Renee full time, not much worked on him. I slapped him once, I think I’d already decided I was going to, in retrospect. It scared the daylights out of him that I’d really do it, and I believe he did whatever we wanted him to do. But I’m not proud, I’m not sure if I’m ashamed. I won’t do it again.

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        1. He’s going to to be bigger and tougher than me soon, anyway.
          As an aside: he doesn’t appear to be physically afraid of anyone. But he’s afraid of the trouble he thinks he’d get in, and the injustice he sees the whole time, EVERYWHERE. “I wasn’t doing anything, and I got the blame.” We’d love to be there and see what really happened, many times.

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  10. Late night update, soybeans got harvested today!
    It was 3:00 before they started, and I was afraid the dew would set in and they’d have to quit at sundown. But the breeze kept up, the dew didn’t, and they finished.
    Don’t know yields, or other relevant information yet. And I didn’t get to ride along. And I didn’t get any photos either.

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    2. What a relief for you, Ben.
      I never used to worry about the harvest. Whst happened, happened. Though it would be heartbreaking occasionally.
      But when I took charge of a field of hay for John and Sue, because of their inexperience, and the weather was bad, suddenly I was worried, and possibly weighed down by it. Similarly, next year, the only time I had my own field of hay, once again it was wet, and the baler had to stop halfway through. I had to finish another day. I needed that hay, and all the work and expense I’d put in was getting to me.
      I finally got the whole lot in without too much damage, and had enough that I got through the winter easily, and sold a load at auction. The guy was pleased with his deal and so was I, specially when he had another load at the same price, and cleared up my short term storage problem.
      I think people were amused to see me worried for once.

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    3. Glad that your soybeans are in, Ben, There are so many worries or concerns that I don’t have, and I’m grateful. At this stage of my life, my coping skills are wearing thin. Thankfully I don’t have that much to worry about. It’s helpful to me to know there are good people out there, slogging along as best they can, and making a go of it. You are one of them.

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    4. Congrats on putting the harvest to bed. I put my garden to bed yesterday. It is bare today. Kinda sad, kinda gratifying for another year. How many more will I have this privilege?

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      1. Our garden will finally be done Wednesdsy, when we have a killing frost and the tomatoes that are too green to ripen indoors will be tossed. Beautiful weather until then.

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  11. I got (lightly) spanked in first grade – someone had brought birthday cupcakes, and I sat last in the row, right by the cabinet where the leftovers were placed. I apparently ate the frosting off these cupcakes, though I don’t remember doing that!

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      1. You may know that in England people in towns and villages used to have milk delivered in pint bottles and left on their doorstep every morning. It’s claimed that Jane (wife, not sister) would sneak round taking the tops off them, drinking the cream, and putting the tops back on.

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  12. As much as I know about behavior change, I admit that I, too gave the occasional swat on the tusch to my kids. Not proud of it. I understand parental frustration.

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    1. I tried spanking once in my parenting career. My son was 4 years old and had a very difficult behavior day, and I was at the end of my rope. So I tried spanking him (not very hard), and he turned around and Said To Me, “Mommy, that really hurt and I didn’t like it. And what does spanking me have to do with me being naughty.”

      At which point I though he had more sense than I did in the moment. I never spanked him again because it was so ineffective. But sitting quietly on a chair for 1 minute of each year of age was so effective. Sitting quietly, was for him, hard. I think that day he threw the chair at me instead of sitting quietly which might have been the precedent to the attempted spanking.

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      1. Getting Isaac to stay on that chair, or out in the hall, was one of the most difficult jobs I’ve ever had. If I’d nailed him down he’d have got the nails out some way.

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  13. I was spanked now and then. I remember the corporal punishment but not the lesson, whatever that might have been. I was paddled at least once in school by a gym teacher, unjustly as I recall, which did nothing for my regard of gym teachers as a class.

    I never spanked my girls and never had the impulse to spank them. As with my own experience the brutality obscures the lesson.

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  14. It’s so interesting how a parent can change between the first kid and the last. There’s 15 years between the oldest and me, the youngest. To hear mom tell it she was always crabby and yelled at the kids too much. They don’t think so and I hardly ever saw her mad.
    And at the same time, they have so many fond memories of dad and I remember him yelling at me. That sounds terrible and I don’t mean it that way. But we worked together on the farm in a way the others didn’t, so that in itself provided times to yell. It sure is true the harsh words stick longer than a kind word.

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  15. Our daughter’s tuxedo cat stood on his hind legs behind her TV this morning and deliberately pushed it over with his front paws, cracking it as it hit the floor. She is getting anchors that secure the new TV to the cabinet. Nothing can be done with that naughty boy, I am afraid.

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  16. My mother was raised in a family with five girls and her father on the road most of the time and her mother was her only receptacle for how to raise children and was told that spanking was how you basically did behavior control.
    I was a child that called out for behavior control – she tried behavior modification with spatulas and belts and whatever she had at her disposal but she did it in a loving way and always let me know that this was to help me figure out how to change the behavior
    I got it and so I let her do her parenting job and I continue to do my job as a child and learn to make suggestions on what implements she used and how hard she hit seeing as it wasn’t going to change the behavior it was just something that she felt that she had to do
    I think she finally stopped using the belt one day when she got very frustrated with my leading my siblings in a organized dissension from proper table behavior and she went upstairs and found one of my father’s belt came back down and smacked across the back of the highchair to get her attention let us know what was coming if we didn’t change your behavior in the back of the height chairs vinyl covering shattered into 1 million pieces
    It never dawned on earth that there was that kind of impact because she’s never been hit with a belt so that was the end of that

    I heard ones that spanking with love is different than spanking with the intent to hurt and I never felt that there was any intent to hurt I knew she was doing it because that was her job and she knew that I knew that so we had an agreement somehow my brother and sisters I don’t think it ever called out for getting spanked they saw me getting whooped and that was enough so maybe it worked for her just not with me

    I have a couple of fun discipline stories the first was when Spencer was probably two or three jumping up and down on the couch naked and driving me nuts while I was trying to relax eating peanut butter and crackers and I told him if he didn’t stop bouncing that I was gonna fill his butt crack with peanut butter and he laughed and thought that was pretty funny and kept bouncing I warned him again he laughed and kept bouncing and I filled his crack with peanut butter
    The response and affect couldn’t have been better he asked me what I was doing and I said I was getting his attention and letting him know that my request for behavior modification was very sincere and that there were ramifications for not listening to my request but he didn’t get it all he saw was peanut butter and his butt crack that he had to go clean up
    I don’t think his mom backed me up very well and somehow the story got to the in-laws that I was a butt crack filling father you thought that was appropriate and I had to live with the fact that I am a butt crack filling father who feels like that’s appropriate at family gatherings
    story number two was when Devon and Spencer were together driving me nuts kind of to the point where I was about ready to be the cartoon character was smoke coming out of my ears telling them to stop whatever it was that they were doing and they were laughing and refusing so I reached over and grabbed a VCR tape of Billy Madison the Adam Sandler idiot movie and snapped it over my knee it totally got the effect I was looking for and they said that it was broken and destroyed and I said yes and your behavior now has stopped and hopeFully will continue to stop without my having to snap the rest of Adam Sandler movies over my knees in the days to come

    The children really remember those two incidences because those were the two memorable ones I’m sure that there were others and I am accused of passive aggressive snide comments and backhanded ways of expressing my displeasure and kind of making my disappointment known without voicing it
    I piss him off and so may be my discipline or my lack of approval is not the best parenting form that there is but like I always tell them pay attention to what I’m doing wrong if you missed the lessons you learn from that you’re missing some of my best stuff

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