2021, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized

Busy Week

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The Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

It was a busy week for the Hain farm. After getting the crops out and the soil testing done, I got all the corn ground chisel plow on Saturday. Bailey rode with me all day.

Sunday morning it was warm enough I could use a hose and jet nozzle and clean off the chisel plow and tractor. (Pressure washer is already put away for winter.) I also finally got the garden fence taken down. The garden had been done for a month of course and I left the gate open so the chickens have been in there scratching around, I just hadn’t time to get the fence down. And it was bugging me so I’m glad that’s done.

I ran out of diesel fuel in the barrel when filling the tractor on Saturday. Off road diesel fuel is dyed red and can only be used in off-road equipment like tractors, combines, or construction machinery. The point of dying it is because I don’t have to pay quite so many taxes on off-road fuel.  As I understand it, a DOT inspector might check the fuel tank of an over the road truck and if there are traces of red dye in it you get a hefty fine. Gasoline I pay taxes, but I also get them refund on my tax returns for the gallons used on the farm. Hence we don’t fill the cars with gas from the barrel. When I was a kid we did, then the tax laws changed. My cost for a gallon of diesel is $2.50, it’s about $3.54 in the stores around here. My big tractor holds 140 gallons of diesel. I know the big 4 wheel drive tractors might hold 350! Crazy. I had the delivery truck fill the tractor, too. There is a long story about summer diesel and winter diesel I’ll skip. I use an additive to make it winter diesel and prevent gelling.

I got 200 gallons of gasoline (a couple of the older tractors, the swather, the lawnmower, the four wheeler, the gator, chainsaws and Weedwhackers’ use gasoline) and 500 gallons of diesel for the two main tractors.   

Also Monday, the quarry and the co-op arrived to spread lime. I was at work but Kelly got some photos for us. A semi would deliver and fill the spreader using an elevator. Then the spreader had the computerized mapping software integrated with the soil tests so they could applied as needed.

I took Wednesday off from “Work” work.  I was able to get my brush mower fixed. Got the blades fixed, and I also realize the timing of the two sets of blades was off. They need to be at 90° to each other. And that was simply a matter of removing one chain, getting them aligned, and reinstalling the chain. Much easier than I had expected. Got the roadsides mowed down, mowed two little parcels that are going to be planted to native grasses next spring, cleaned everything off, and got the mower put away. Hooked on the snowblower and move that into the machine shed.

I hope I don’t need it for several months, but at least it’s in. Got the grain drill all put back together

and tucked that back into place. What a good day. 

The theater renovation is finally wrapping up. I was waiting on one final approval from the fire department about a sprinkler head, which would then let the city inspector sign off on the final permit. I started this the first part of November, some minor corrections to the work done and some bureaucratic red tape means it’s Wednesday before Thanksgiving and we have an audience that night and I’m still making phone calls and poking people to approve this! I did not sleep good Tuesday night. It’s so nice that everything is online these days, finally about 1 o’clock Wednesday I see online that it has all been approved. I did a happy dance in the tractor.

Man, maybe I can sleep again.

I know some of you get so excited about the seed catalogs coming. Hoovers Hatchery has announced their 2022 catalog and a couple new breeds of chickens they’ll be carrying. Maybe I should get some of the Buff  Chantecler or Black Minorca! The ducks and chickens are still good. I notice Rooster #3 has got some size on him and he’s not shadowing Boss Rooster anymore. I haven’t heard him picking fights, but I think he’s strategizing.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat* and had a nice relaxing day. A few minor odds and ends to do at the theater for opening on Friday. Saturday daughter and I will get driveway markers put in. Kelly and I would prefer a nice day with no wind to get snowfence up. Maybe middle of next week.  

Twisted any arms? Talk about when that’s gone poorly. Or well.

How do you feel about Alice’s Restaurant?

*Anyone catch that reference? I listened to it Thursday morning.

44 thoughts on “Busy Week”

    1. Krista had posted I posted this on FB last week,and when I re-posted, I got two opposing comments:
      – “Come eat with us at Alice’s, 10 minutes up the road. The song is actually very boringly l-o-n-g”
      – “It’s only 18.5 minutes, and chock full of good stuff!!”

      Liked by 3 people

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    1. Thanks Fenton!

      Most of the college kids don’t know anything about it. So I have to play it for them. They really don’t “get” it, and I guess that’s OK, but I do tell them it’s a cultural reference and they should ask their parents or grandparents about it. And they need to understand the phrase “27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows on the back of each one” is important.

      Or what’s your favorite line?

      Liked by 3 people

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      5. YA Doesn’t think it’s funny either. I think to really understand it and appreciate it you have to have been growing up in that era of rebellion and questioning authority.

        Liked by 2 people

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        1. I’m not surprised that YA finds the song uninspiring. The song was amusing and topical over fifty years ago. I don’t think I’ve listened to it since. It really is a novelty song and one specific to Arlo Guthrie. Without the story that goes along with it and without the context, which is mostly lost, it doesn’t have all that much to recommend it. It’s not as if any other singers could perform it authentically.

          Liked by 3 people

        2. I think people are still rebelling and questioning, possibly more than ever now.

          But for people who grew up post-9/11 and the Patriot Act, in the “information age”, the idea that you can just roll your eyes at the government and wryly laugh is just sort of quaint.

          Liked by 1 person

  4. Well you see-soon as I look at the blog, I start shooting my mouth off. That’s pretty much why I stopped.
    So here goes with a frozen diesel story!
    Life really was happy go lucky at one time. Then one year, suddenly, the news seemed to be all about diesel vehicles freezing up. Everyone was still on summer diesel. What? I’ve ordered in diesel myself on occasion. Nobody ever said, “Would sir like summer, or our new winter line, just in time for the season, sir.” This was nonsense. Nobody I knew had ever had diesel freeze up. It wasn’t going to happen to me.
    I set out to do some job for myself, don’t remember what. On my 1951 David Brown Cropmaster Diesel. Got to the top of Bragg’s Hill, and we seemed to have a problem. I managed to get it just off the road, by which time the engjne was no longer running, it seemed. And to cut a very long story short, it was because the diesel had frozen up, and I don’t suppose I had any tools with me. Like a portable heated shed to put it in for a while. I needed to be getting on, so I walked oved to Graham’s, which was within sight, and he said take that one. Pete Snell’s International 434,it was a horrible thing. He said, you can drop it back to him afterwards. Yes, good idea, so I drove it down Graham’s lane and froze it up. I walked back and got Graham’s Ford. Drove it down the lane and froze it up. Three in less than an hour. Never seen one freeze up before. I don’t remember what we all did about it. Maybe Lynn knocked me unconscious and I woke up when it was summer. Or maybe she laughed. You never knew what she’d do.
    I don’t suppose Pete was too happy either. Don’t remember.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Well, Fenton, when you go on too long and I am not interested then I just don’t read a post. It is that simple. Everybody here takes a break now and then, but there is no need to quit.

      Liked by 4 people

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  5. Alice’s Restaurant : when I first heard that, I was at the height of my “I don’t listen to anything except Rock’nRoll” fever, and of course was viewed with amusement by my brother Neil’s extended bunch of partying, generally misbehaving friends. He’d sometimes bring about a thousand of them back in the middle of the night to sleep all over the front room or play their horrible music. I had a habit of frying bacon extremely slowly at the time, not realising that was why it was always hard as bullets. I did get a complaint once. At least the guy must have been semi conscious, to notice. Mum had trouble getting me to realise that feeding the whole late adolescence /early twenties population of North Devon was more expensive than just feeding ourselves. It seemed mean not to.
    I don’t know that that last bit is really relevant. But the upshot is that one time they played Alice’s Restaurant, and I thought, and still do, it was brilliant and hilarious. If I was to bump into the right person, I still might well say, “Shrink – I wanna kill – I mean kill” etc.
    The B-side of the LP was useless and stupid. “I just wanna ride my motor cyc-cull.” Pathetic.

    Liked by 2 people

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    2. My former ‘Deutz’ tractor had the fuel tank on top of the engine so I always figured it would get enough heat to help prevent gelling. But now the tanks are back by the rear wheels on the John Deere’s.
      Knock on wood, I’ve never gelled one up.
      The summer diesel provides more horsepower so I don’t like to order winter diesel when I’ll still be using it in the summer. That’s why I just use the additive. Even my diesel pick up, I just use regular diesel from the gas station and pour a bottle of treatment in.
      Don’t you jinx me this winter!

      Liked by 2 people

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I have no opinion at all about Alice’s Restaurant because I missed all of that in my little sheltered and conservative corner of Iowa in 1967.

    However, I am about to twist an arm. I doubt that I will get what I want from doing this, but it is regarding a family issue that must be addressed and for which a limit must be set. If the party in question honors the limit I set, that would be a minor victory of arm twisting. This family member was going to attend the family Thanksgiving celebration without informing everyone that he was not only unvaccinated but still recovering from COVID several weeks before. I set a limit with him about that and “outed” his vaccination status, which did prevent his attending. Man-oh-man, this guy is something else. Now on to address some of his other hair-brained schemes that affect the larger family. You will all know him because he will be the Wisconsin farmer with a twisted, perhaps broken, arm when I am done with him.😤🤯

    Liked by 5 people

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    3. I skipped out of Thanksgiving family dinner too. My brother and s-i-l had 30 people and weren’t asking about vaccine status. I decided that an organic roasted chicken, buttercup squash and roasted Brussels sprouts sounded really good. Home sweet home.

      Liked by 6 people

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      1. Our crew was 100%vaccinated and boosted, with only the 3 yo unvaccinated, so we hope we are ok. We did our best. It was a fun day and my mom’s last trip outside her nursing home.

        Liked by 4 people

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  8. I love Alice’s Restaurant, and had parts of it memorized at one time. My other favorite A. Guthrie song is City of New Orleans, written actually by Steve Goodman, if memory serves…

    Every day I try twisting Husband’s arm about something – I love to have things done MY way – and it’s not often very effective.

    Liked by 4 people

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      1. Yes I’ve seen the movie. Just once but I liked it. It really is just film that goes along with the narration. There’s very little in the movie that’s not on the record.Arlo did a really good deadpan job throughout. I think my favorite scene was when he was jumping up and down at the recruiting station And they all moved away from him on the bench.

        Liked by 2 people

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  11. OK, here’s my favorite part:
    (“Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?”)

    I went over to the Sargent, said, “Sargent, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I’m sittin’ here on the bench, I mean I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench, ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.” He looked at me and said, “Kid, we don’t like your kind, and we’re gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington.”

    Liked by 2 people

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    2. “Gettin more Injections, inspections, Detections, neglections”

      “they was Inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no Part untouched”

      Liked by 2 people

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  15. I Don’t Want a Pickle was the theme song on a yearbook staff I had. We sang it every Monday evening when we were done for the night.
    I once saw Guthrie hold an audience in his hand singing it. What he could do with the word motorcycle shaping, forming it, in such comedic ways, the joy of silliness. How did Woodie father a son with all that play in him?
    I used to show students the play of language as a part of poetry. The sounds, the texture, the flow. We read a few poems, Shel Silverstein and some others and I played I Don’t Want a Pickle, which is the song’s name. But I am sure I was wrong to do such a thing.

    Liked by 4 people

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