animals, Farming Update, Food, Nature, Uncategorized

Oats Done

109 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben

Weather warmed up this week, then to cooled off one day, then the humidity spiked again. Cooler next week. Jeepers, roller coaster of weather. They say if you don’t like the weather, to just wait a minute.

I did get the oats cut on Monday. I had to run into a local parts store and buy a new battery for it. The old one was just 2 years old, but it didn’t have any “oomph” for starting. Tried jumping it a couple different way and times and when that didn’t work, I gave up and got a new battery. I figured I don’t need the best battery in here; it only runs a couple days in the summer. Well, all the batteries were $179 plus the core deposit and refund, plus tax and I paid $195. Dang. But it started and I cut the oats. Had no issues, It seemed to cut pretty well, even the downed stuff. Whew! That old machine always makes me anxious. It’s almost as old as me and makes more noises than I do.

Got the oats harvested on Thursday. One neighbor, who usually takes a wagon load, wants it all this year. Which is fine, except having not worked all summer, that oat check is what gets me through the last hump before I start back at the college. And we probably won’t exchange cash here, we’ll just keep track of the total and figure the difference this fall after they harvest my beans and corn. The oats didn’t yield as well as I had hoped and test weight was lower than my usual too. It was planted a little later than usual, the weather was maybe too hot at the wrong times for it. Plus we had mix up with the fertilizer this spring so it’s hard to say why it didn’t do so well this year. There isn’t much oats grown anymore so it’s hard to find out how the neighbors oats did. (I don’t have any neighbors growing oats.)

Next up then is baling the straw. I’m only expecting about 2 loads. One load for the strawberry farm up the road, and one for my customers.

I added a camera to the baler so I can keep an eye on the knotters and strings as the one string gives me more trouble. Seems like something that should be fixable, but I haven’t been able to figure out what’s out of adjustment the last several years… so I added a camera so at least I can see a missing string sooner. Caught soon enough, I can add a piece of twine and tie the string back together. Otherwise I can’t see it until it’s coming out of the baler and then it’s too late to fix. So either I pull it out by hand, or if I miss it there, the thrower knocks it apart and that makes a mess. Expect photos of this next week. 

The corn is looking good. It’s way taller than Kelly now.

Interesting how many plants have 2 ears this year.

When there are plenty of resources and the plant can spare them, resources go into creating a second ear. Usually that also jeopardizes the main ear and you end up with two mediocre ears, rather than one really nice ear.  Notice the kernels are all in there, and the size of the ear was determined way back when the corn was only knee high! And then each leaf node starts to create an ear, then when it reaches tasseling, just the top ones emerge and take priority. So now it’s just getting those silks fertilized by the pollen from the tassel and getting all the kernels to fully develop. Man it’s so cool!

Kelly went out to feed the chickens the other day and they all followed her down there. They sure know the routine.

Baby ducklings are doing well too. Two escaped the other day; they found a little hole in the pen and got out, but I distracted them and Kelly captured them and reunited them with momma. All is well.

WHAT CEREAL DID YOU EAT AS A KID? WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST TODAY?

109 thoughts on “Oats Done”

  2. Sugar Smacks until they changed the name to Honey Smacks then it was Honey Smacks for breakfast. The sugar content remained the same.
    Today it was low fat cottage cheese with diced strawberries.

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  3. A little bit of OT blog maintenance comments this morning. Based on PJs discussions yesterday I went into spam this morning. I did find a handful of comments some from PJ some from Wes, some from Bill, some from Jacque that had gone into spam. I’ve un-spammed all of them. I didn’t try to decide which was first which was last. I’m gonna contact WordPress today to see if there’s anything I can do from my end. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why the various posts went into spam although I’m fairly sure WordPress has tons of rules that the computer can apply that I can’t see. Somewhere short, somewhere long, some had links. Again nothing that to my eye group them together or made them similar. I do want to speak up a little bit in WordPress’ defense because seeing all the kind of stuff that goes into spam that WordPress is regularly filtering out of the thousands and thousands and thousands of things that go on on WordPress every day, we should be extremely happy that stuff is not showing up in our feed. Because it is nasty.

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    2. Thanks vs, for looking into this. I hope you realize that ‘m not blaming you or Renee for any of my WP problems, but I do appreciate you looking into it. I suppose most of us think of the “trail” as being our own little safe corner of the internet, and don’t really realize that not everyone who has access to it is a friend or benign. Knowing that WP is trying to protect legitimate users makes it easier to tolerate. Now if I could only figure out what I have said or done here that made me suspect, perhaps I could mend my ways. Or maybe not!

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    4. Oh and I forgot to say. If you ever write some thing that gets lost, before rewriting it, try emailing me or even mentioning it on the blog. If I see it I can go look for it in spam right away and maybe restore it. And actually Renee can do that too, Not just me.

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    5. It seems like it shouldn’t be all that difficult to tag regular contributors to the trail so that their comments don’t go into spam, but what do I know?

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      1. I’ve been back-and-forth with WordPress this morning and it seems like it has more to do with the comment than with the commentor but I’m still in their face a bit so we’ll see.

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        1. What????? That’s ridiculous. I can’t believe that anything Bill, Jacque, or Wes might have written would offend anyone. And I know for a fact that this censorship of me started long after I might have stepped on Steve or Fenton’s toes.

          Is there somewhere we can look up what might be deemed “offensive” or whatever the criteria is for shuttling a comment into spam? I don’t mean for you to do it, vs, I’m willing to do that for myself if there are some guidelines posted somewhere.

          This whole conundrum reminds me of the line from My Fair Lady where professor Higgins says: “the French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.” WP doesn’t really care what we say, actually, as long as we use the right words.

          I think my morning coffee this morning was too high octane. I’m feeling feisty.

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        2. I’m guessing it’s not so much a theme that’s offensive but perhaps combinations of words that don’t mean anything to us but maybe mean something to the computer? Who knows. I’m not sure will ever know.

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        4. Or allow spellchecker to edit what you write I was laughing at hernandez that started out being hand grenade and tape was derived from tape but it just made me think that if they are editing the words that you’re trying to post maybe that helps

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  4. I loved the pics! I grew up on a small farm in North West PA. I remember when hay was down how anxious we always were if the equipment would run right and if the weather would hold. Our baler always had knotter problems. Dad ended up rebuilding them one winter. I was amazed at all the parts there were. It was an old New Holland baler. It made 80 pound square bales and dumped them on the ground. We then went around with the hay wagon picked them up and stacked them in the barn. Thanks for stirring up some good memories! I had instant grits, ham and red eye gravy flavored. And lots of coffee.

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    1. Hey Matt- The reasons you describe are why I always liked doing small bales of straw better than hay. 🙂 Much lighter! And they’re kicked right into the wagon.
      The knotters seem like magic, but it’s really just an ingenious design. They do have some quirks to keep working. Dad would only adjust one spring, so that’s what I learned. But really, there’s a handful of things to check and adjust. Just that some need a hammer to gently adjust!

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  5. As a kid, mostly oatmeal. During the summer, just the uncooked cereal with milk and a little sugar; during the winter, cooked with a nub of butter, a sprinkle of sugar, and milk. Once in a blue moon, mom would buy a box of cornflakes, and that was considered a real treat.

    This morning I fixed myself huevos rancheros – using my “home made” tortillas, and a sauce made from fresh tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers, onion and garlic – all from farmer’s market – plus eggs from Ben’s chickens. Husband is “up north,” so I’m footloose and fancy free for a couple of weeks. Livin’ it up!

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      1. YA is going to a wedding in Wisconsin today and staying overnight so she doesn’t have to drive back late. So I’ll be footloose and fancy free for 24 hours as well. Woot woot.

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  6. Yesterday it was poached eggs. I usually have a small container of skyr and a small container of Cozyshack rice pudding for breakfast, along with a couple string cheese sticks. Grapenuts are more of a snack than a breakfast

    Son loves pancakes and waffles, and makes them pretty regularly. If he doesn’t make them from scratch he uses Kodiac Cake mix. Bacon is a must for his family. He is like his father, who loves big breakfasts. I prefer lighter fare.

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  7. OT-We are off to the Twin Buttes pow wow this afternoon to see dear friends. I am up early making French bread to take as a gift for them. I am bringing two loaves, as the last time I brought one loaf, their granddaughters absconded with it and ate the whole loaf before our friends got any!

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  8. The winter wheat harvest is gearing up out here. Sunflowers are turning yellow, as is the canola. It was 102° here on Thursday, and I bet it was miserable driving that machinery in the wheat fields.

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  10. As a kid, plain old Cheerios was my favorite (still is) and Grape Nuts was a close second. I gave up on Grape Nuts because they only tasted good with a bunch of sugar and these days I severely limit my intake of granulated sugar. I take my plain old Cheerios with a bit of milk and berries – no added sugar. I like oatmeal the same way. Occasionally I have a fried egg instead of cereal – still include fresh berries. And whatever my “main” dish is, I’ll usually include a homemade zucchini muffin or a mini scone from Target. It all gets washed down with plain old water. If I go out for breakfast (rarely), my favorite is scrambled eggs, hash browns, crisp bacon, and toast. A close second is French Toast with fresh berries and a bit of whipped cream.

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    1. I learned to love grape nuts at my mother’s knee. I’m not sure where she learned it, maybe from her mother but I always have Grape Nuts on hand. And Wheat Chex.

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  11. Breakfast as a kid: Cheerios, Wheaties, Cap’n Crunch, Life, Cocoa Krispies, Frosted Flakes, Sugar Smacks, Rice Krispies, Total (as a last resort–it was just inferior Wheaties), Special K, Grape Nuts (rarely), Raisin Bran (rarely), Corn Flakes (rarely), Wheat, Rice, and Corn Chex; Lucky Charms, and probably a few others I only ate a few times and forgot about.

    Three heaping bowls every morning (in my prime eating years as a teenager)–one for each section of the Mpls Tribune. On rare occasions, Mom would make oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, pancakes, or waffles. 99% of the time, it was cold cereal.

    This morning I had oatmeal with almonds, dried cherries, ground flax, ground Chia, wheat germ, cinnamon, and cocoa powder, along with two large cups of coffee. I alternate oatmeal with cold cereal. Usually Cheerios and Wheat Chex together with frozen blueberries. Sometimes Life instead of Wheat Chex; Wheaties on occasion. A rare treat is Apple/Cinnamon Cheerios. I always dust my cereal with cinnamon, and frozen blueberries are always included. I’m down to eggs/toast/some sort of protein/shredded cheese on Sundays only. Used to eat that 2x/week but I’m trying to cut down on animal protein.

    Have I bored you all to death so far? Okay, I’ll stop. Tomorrow: what was for lunch?!? 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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  12. Growing up it was mostly cold cereal. Occasionally hot cereal which was always Ralston whole wheat cereal. If we ever had waffles or pancakes it’s because my father was present. It sounds terrible to say it this way but my mother put in more effort for my dad‘s meals that she did for any just kid meals. And also my dad was the official pancake flipper.

    This morning I had super fat English muffins from Breadsmith with my raspberry jam, vegetarian sausages and some milk.

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  14. OT – I made a quick run to our tiny local farmer’s market to pick up a bouquet of fresh flowers this morning just after they opened at 8:30 AM. Just saw a notice on Facebook that they’re closing down right now due to the thunderstorm. I feel really bad for those vendors who hauled all of their wares there for just one hour’s worth of skimpy business.

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      1. Ironically, the thunder”storm” that was deemed ominous enough to close the market, lasted all of ten to fifteen minutes. The rain, which was reasonably light, lasted somewhat longer, but I’m guessing that they regret shutting down the market.

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  15. As a youngster, my cereals of choice were Jets, a round Kix-like frosted cereal made from wheat and Sugar Corn Pops (Sugar Pops are tops!) that was a consensus favorite among my compatriots. As I recall, Sugar Pops were promoted on the Wild Bill Hickok show (starring Guy Madison) on Saturday mornings.
    These days, I don’t really eat breakfast, other than a cup of tea and sometimes a nibble at some savory leftover from the previous night. I just ate a rewarmed piece of pizza.
    I don’t think I’ve had a bowl of cereal in well over a year. That used to be slightly awkward when I was doing a lot of work for General Mill in product development sessions. Sometimes we worked on new cereal concepts and were asked about our cereal preferences. One thing I took as normal but apparently wasn’t is that I would never consider eating a bowl of cereal unless I had some sort of fresh fruit to add.

    It’s probably an age thing but I’m never hungry enough for a big breakfast until late morning, if at all.

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    2. And apropos of some of today’s comments, they all went into spam. I marked them as not spam and I thought they would all show up and we’d have four or five of the same comments from you but I don’t know where they went. I’m not a huge WordPress expert obviously

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        1. Nothing that would make any sense to me as being spam worthy. But I know algorithms that search websites are a little more robust than my brain

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        4. I agree, Bill. It’s seems too random and arbitrary; there doesn’t appear to be a way of protecting yourself from having a comment shuffled off to spam. It’s a glitch that WP’s Happiness Engineers haven’t bee able to figure out, and seem content to be blaming the user for.

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  17. Knotters were weak point on old-fashioned binder we used on our oats in my childhood. I rode the binder to watch if it failed. I was amazed it had been invented way back in the day.
    I had been sketching many things, including thing from my farm childhood which were utile objects that were made to look elegant as well, such as simple rope pulleys. I thought then and think now they were beautiful things. But looking down puts a strain on my neck so my PT asked me to stop, as well as stop typing which I am doing now.
    Childhood breakfasts: Monday Malt-o-Meal (yuck). Tuesday side pork or bacon and eggs and toast from home made bread made on stove top. Wednesday boiled oatmeal and cream and canned fruit. Thursday Pancakes and sausages, Friday pancakes as we wanted them, me with a runny egg or in cream. Today I do oatmeal with greek yogurt.

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    2. Clyde, did the binder use wire? I would expect so. Any idea when sisal twine became commonly used? I’d guess after WWII.
      I do remember cleaning out our grainery and finding some bales way in the back corner that still had wire on them. That was back in the day they had to be tied by hand.
      Some balers use three sisal or plastic strings on small square bales. And the large square bales use about 6 or 8. But all use the same knotting mechanism.
      I think there are some people who still use wire tie, but I’m not sure for what application.

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      2. I cannot hold my arm out to do that. Don’t bother offering solutions. My wrists, shoulders , and neck have so much nerve damage and my upper back, as well as my lower back, is falling apart.

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  18. My nephews still talk about how it was a good day on the farm if Uncle Ben let them eat Quisp for breakfast! I don’t recall that, but evidently I was kinda possessive of Quisp. I think mom didn’t like buying it because it was all sugar, the box was small, and it was expensive. Like Cap’n Crunch was any better? A lot of Trix, I used to like Honeycombs, but when they became ‘New and Improved’ the taste changed.
    These days, weekends I have toast. I used to do more Corn Chex or Apple Cinnamon cheerios. Often, we’re rushing out the door so it’s something to eat in the car.
    A lot of times I take a slice of cold pizza. I quit tea over the summer, but since I start back at the college next week, maybe I’ll start that again.

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    3. Pop Tarts were a huge disappointment to me when I tried them. I was used to Toastettes, a now-defunct Nabisco product. Toastettes had a nice light pastry texture. Pop Tarts have a sort of cardboard consistency that makes them hard to choke down.

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    1. Waffles and French Toast are favorites. I used to make a lot of french toast when it was dad and I home and he’d send me to the house to make lunch.

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  21. Most mornings I have a slice of husband’s home-baked pumpernickel and a slice of his whole grain bread, each with a different kind of cheese, a couple of slices of cucumber and/or radish and homegrown sprouts of some kind. That, and a good strong cup of coffee and I’m good until dinner. We usually don’t eat lunch.

    Husband is our breakfast cook, and occasionally he’ll poach, scramble or fry an egg or two, sometimes with hash browns and a piece of toast. Once in a great while he’ll make Danish pancakes (crepes) served with a compote of berries of some sort. On really special occasions, we’ll make huevos rancheros together. Can’t wait to introduce him to the tortillas I just discovered at the farmer’s market.

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  22. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    At this point in life I cycle through a coconut protein shake, oatmeal and poached eggs for breakfast. As a kid we had a wide variety of cereals and eggs for breakfast, but mom refused to buy any sugary cereal. When Iwent away to college, the dorm at ISU had Captain Crunch which I LOVED. Thus I discovered the hypoglycemic episode at 10:30 am which all that sugar induced. That experienced prompted me to cool it a bit, or at least eat some protein with the sugar. My favorite breakfast is oatmeal pancakes with bacon or sausage, or bacon and fried eggs. Those are real treats, though, made infrequently.

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  23. Wow, chatty day, baboons – of course, it’s about food! : )

    I had all the usual cold cereals you’ve all mentioned, though a bit sparingly on the super sweet ones. You remind me I like Grape Nuts and will try that again. I also like many granolas, esp. Trader Joe’s.
    And does anyone else remember having graham crackers and milk when you’d run out of cereal?

    After Husband’s post-stroke episode with not eating (he’d had esophageal thrush) last summer, I started making more hot breakfasts. We now have Malt-o-Meal and/or oatmeal during the week, and wish I could find this multi-grain one I used to get at the co-op decades ago…Then there’s egg-and-toast, once or twice, and cold cereal maybe once a week. On weekends I often do an egg (and cheese, etc.) bake that will last us two days, and once in a while pancakes.

    There’s a simple recipe called Overnight Oats for mornings when we have to be up and out early –
    1/2 C. milk,
    1/2 C. quick oats (would probably work with slow oats),
    1/4 C. yogurt,
    cinnamon and honey – sweeten to taste –
    raisins, nuts
    Let soak overnight, add a little water while heating in the morning, and fresh fruit if you like.

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  24. Tomoorw is our 57th anniversary, a fact which has held little interest for her until today when we had a bit of a party for our s-i-l’s birhtday and our anniversary. Then she perked up about it. I hav a corsage I will bring over tomorrow at breakfast for her to wear all day. Our daughter brought a card. Only one we received this year.

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  25. This morning I had a breakfast sandwich from Panera, egg and cheese on ciabatta. With extra cheese. And a cup of tea. Had coffee at home before going out for breakfast.

    The cereals I usually had as a kid were Cocoa Puffs. Grape Nuts, Rice Krispies, and Post Toasties. Probably had Cheerios on occasion too. This would have been before there were multiple Cheerios options. Back in the day Cheerios were just pain Cheerios.

    I remember sometimes getting those multipacks of single serving cereals. It seems like a lot of those were the sweet cereals like Sugar Smacks and frosted flakes.

    In the 70’s there was Quaker 100% Natural Cereal. They still make it, but they changed the name. I think it’s just Quaker granola now.

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    1. My Nana always had those variety packs of little cereals. This was a massively huge treat for my sister and I when we stayed overnight at the grandparents’ house.

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      1. I remember the having a perforation on the front, so you were supposed to spilt the box open, lay it down flat, and pour milk into the wax paper-lined box. No bowl! My mother had us just put the cereal into a bowl, though – I imagine she thought the milk in the box was a bit of a spill risk.

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  26. OT – Tonight I saw the following posted on FB. More specifically, on Old Minneapolis’ page: “Today, we honored Kent Hensley who passed away in July. Kent was an original Dayton’s window designer and true creative who came back to support The Dayton’s Projects in our holiday window displays. Kent will be greatly missed.” Can’t help bu wonder if this was someone you knew, Bill? If I remember correctly you were at one time involved in decorating Dayton’s windows.

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  28. as a kid I ate all those great cereals tricks Cheerios sugar frosted flakes Wheaties rice crispies Cap’n Crunch I never got into sugar pops or Lucky charms every now and again I do shredded wheat I liked molto meal to appoint with milk brown sugar and raisins and when the granola crawl craze took over I switched from grape nuts to granola that was all pre-1980 somewhere in the 70s I quit eating granola and started doing an English muffin with peanut butter on it for my ritual breakfast today I do potato things variations on a potato with onions mushrooms tomatoes garlic beans and whatever else is around the kitchen I generally make a pot that will last for five days and kind of just eat on it over the course of the week

    belton have you ever looked into doing something with your oats yourself oats are super popular today but the steel cut oatmeal variety and squeezing them to make oat milk oat milk is a hot commodity and actually my choice of lactose free liquids I’ll bet there’s somebody down in your area that knows how to take those Olson tournaments are old milk and I bet we could sell them to the co-op or figure out how to put together a deal where are you sell milk like your shell eggs and you’ve got 500 gallons or whatever it is an oat milk has a shelflife of close to a year I’ll bet so that you could divvy it up and make it available to your egg customers and or put together an oatmeal customer list that could turn into an egg customer list
    I got started reading peoples entries from yesterday about word press and the censorship and I had to abort I never get to write anything if I enter the block too late and read the 80 comments in front of me so I’ll hopefully get back to it I’m fortunate in that most of what I have to say isn’t important enough that it matters whether it goes into spam or onto the posted site but it will be interesting when whoever among us figures out watch the magic switch that throws you into spam

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      1. I remember a car turning over 100,000 miles as we drove to a cousins house. (A 15 mile trip arranged so we could SEE the odometer roll over.)
        And Dad stopped and poured milk over the hood of the car. Said it was milk that had paid for the car in the first place. Consider it anointed.

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