2022, animals, Farming Update, Nature, work

A Lack Of Busyness

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Today’s post comes from Ben

Pretty quiet around the farm this week. With me back at work, I need to schedule farm work around ‘work’ work. Oh, there’s a whole list of things I haven’t gotten done yet this summer, but if I got them all done it would mean I hadn’t scheduled enough, wouldn’t it.

Cooler temps and I like that, but the crops need those GDU’s to reach maturity. We are still 117 GDU above normal for our area. And crops are looking real good so far. Except the dang deer eating the tops off my soybeans.

Nice juicy tender leaves on the top. Man. I am not fond of deer. They like this field back in a corner. No one to bother them… and they must spend hours out there grazing.

Padawan was out one day and we burned a brush pile

we cleaned up and put away some machinery, he cut grass, and I mowed the newly planted CRP to keep the weeds down

(I cut it about 6” high) Plus he learned how to replace a toilet flapper. That may have been the highlight of his day. One thing I think he has learned is that a lot of things take more muscle than he thinks. My answer to most of his issues is “Yank/hit/pull/push it harder”. I had never thought of that before; some things just take a lot of effort. Life Lesson there.

The chickens were waiting not so patiently for Kelly to feed them the other day.

HOW DO YOU OPEN STUCK JAR LIDS?

TALK ABOUT USING FORCE.

57 thoughts on “A Lack Of Busyness”

  3. Gotta remember this bit of wisdom, Ben – ” if I got them all done it would mean I hadn’t scheduled enough”. Explains why I can never get completely finished…

    If Husband or that rubber thingy doesn’t work, I go to soaking jar upside down in very hot water, and then using this:
    https://poshmark.com/listing/Vintage-Edmund-TopOff-Jar-Bottle-Screw-Top-Opener-623f4d0860fdedaaaf0a12d2?gclid=c44a0a586f9b1f8b59266958b447c3a8&gclsrc=3p.ds&utm_source=bdm&campaign_id=412848048&utm_campaign=412848048&ad_partner=bing&msclkid=c44a0a586f9b1f8b59266958b447c3a8sban

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    1. I have been buying more channel locks. It wasn’t a tool we used often. Forty years ago my brother brought home a large 16” one that his boss was going to throw out. He should have. It hung on the shop wall and everytime we used it, the lock would slip and we’d curse it and hang it back on the wall.
      Just this past spring I ordered a quality 16” actual ‘Channel lock’ brand wrench. And ceremoniously threw the old one away.

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        3. I think that’s what we call gas pliers. I lent a pair to Lucas next door, and never got them back. Nor the regular pliers he borrowed a while later. I get tired of retrieving tools from him and Raoul, his son, and they slipped through the net.

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        4. Three times since I’ve been here (St Louis), Nonny has mentioned that she can’t imagine where her pliers have gone. Not sure why she wants them but yesterday when I was out and about, I stoped at the hardware store and bought her another pair. I expect she’ll find her original pair right after I head home.

          Bill, if you’re on today, why do we say “a pair of pliers”? When it’s clearly just one tool??

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        5. Sherrilee, it has one ply on one side, and one ply on the other. Handy for getting hold of phlogiston.

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  5. I typed a whole message and WP ate it.

    I use my rubber grippy thing to open most jars. It usually works. The easiest way is to use hot water. From time to time, if I’m feeling hasty and exasperated, I grab a table knife and hit the side of the jar a few times. Sometimes that works.

    It seems that force isn’t really very effective with humans and animals. I slow way down for people at work, even though there is a lot to do. A quieter and gentler approach works better for them. But then they’re not farm machinery.

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  6. I’m a hold the jar sideways and hit the bottom of the jar with the palm of my hand. I think it’s physics in that it pushes all of the air up toward the lid with some force. Almost always works for me.

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  7. I wack the edge of the lid in a couple of places with the handle of a table knife. That breaks the seal.

    Husband calls beer bottle openers church keys

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      1. I wasn’t familiar with the expression church key. I believe they also call them punch top can openers. Usually they had an opener on each end, a rounded one for bottlecaps and the pointy one for punching a hole in a can lid.

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  9. OT: it was the Entrada this evening, the Moros y Cristianis parade. Jane marched as a Moor for the fifth time, looking utterly cute. I’ve realised that the girls like costumes with feathers. They’re not compulsory, but every year they hire a different costume, and somehow there are always feathers. I advise everyone on earth to see an Entrada, if it’s only once. Sandra, Jane’s mother, originally told me that the soldiers march down the street, and a leader marches in front, waving a sword and playing to the gallery. I didn’t think much of that, but didn’t say so. You just have to see it,to get it.

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      1. Barbara, I’ll send you a plane ticket next year-um, I’m afraid you have to send me the money first, I’m a bit broke.
        It’s the main part of the celebration of the Moors and Christians fiesta. Celebrating when the Spanish threw the Moors out of the country. Only took eight hundred years. Well, it’s faster than I get things done.
        The Entrada(Entrance) is the actual act of dressing up in whatever fanciful notion of a military uniform your town or village favours, getting in a line of whatever length will fit down the street you’re going to march down, with people either side of it, and, then, well then, you march down it. The street. Our bunch starts at the old school and marches down a street which will take a line of about seven soldiers, linked arm in arm. Not many people are in the way there, because the main body of spectators is seated either side of the little town hall square at the other end of the street. Nevertheless, the line will make frequent stops for the benefit of anyone, anyone at all, that may be watching from a doorstep. This is to raise the excitement in the square, where everyone knows they’re coming, with a superb marching band behind them, playing VERY evocative, emotional, dramatic, “marching into battle” music. This is NOT what you tend to hear from an English brass band. The soldiers have a special Spanish style of marching, which they continue to do on the spot. A very big part of the whole experience, and something which can spontaneously happen at any social gathering where there happens to be a brass band. Even I will join in, the diehard Rock’n’rRoller. Er, anyway, here we are in the street. It’s the leader that makes it exciting. Some are brilliant. They carry a plastic sword or axe, this would be for lightness, safety isn’t an issue over here. And wave it as appropriate, exhorting the crowd to applaud. Also they’ll raise both arms to the audience especially people on balconies, smiling, sweeping the sword or axe low to the ground, think of a gimmick and they’ll do it. And we love it, what? You’d be sick if you didn’t love this, no doubt it stands for something bad, I don’t know or care. Everyone has to see this if it’s once in your life, swim here, whatever it takes. That’s why I asked Liz and Ed to come over, so they can check out their own village, and make sure they never miss it again.
        We had the best show yet, a secret bunch of women appeared, to make a third “Comparsa”, the association whose members pay their own expenses for the privilege of marching. Four years ago, Jane’s was the only Comparsa, now we have three, and along with two drum troupes, and a couple of dancing troupes drafted in from other towns and villages, we have a parade lasting nearly an hour and a half. It’s stretched out you see, because the bands (of which we have two of our own), can’t clash, and anticipation has to be built. Jane is still the only English person who’s “exited” in our village, and I’m intensely proud of her when she marches past like a native. Her fifth exit now. The team see her as a mascot, I think, and they love her willingness and ability to party.
        The act of marching in the entrance is referred to as “exiting”, it seems. Jane hasn’t explained it to me, but then, I’ve never asked.
        The bigger towns put on massive parades which last for hours, with every band and sideshow for miles around helping out, and more spectacle, for instance the occasional fiery horse wheeling about, nearly stepping on toddlers etc. Even a camel maybe. But I’m happy with our little village.

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        3. Isn’t there a recipe for Moros and Christianos? I forget what it involves, but my remembrances are that it is yummy!

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        4. Barbara, it’s the Valencia region only, as far as I know. Each town or village holds its fiesta on the date on which they were invaded, and it’s weird the way neighbouring places can have been invaded several weeks apart, while places further away can have closer dates. I should really check on that before posting, but will take a chance. Alcoy, about twenty miles south of here, was invaded first. Exactly when their fiesta is, I don’t remember.

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  10. I take an old style can opener, the pointy kind that you used to use on a can of Hershey’s syrup. Hook it under the lip of the lid and pry just enough to let a little air in. When you hear the thhhksound and see the lid pop up a tiny bit in the middle, then you can easily twist it off.

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  11. My father knew how to use leverage. He had various pipes in the shop to slip over handles of wrenches to give leverage. We changed the big tires on the tractor from rubber to steel back to rubber in the spring and then in the fall. The lug nuts would be hard to break loose. A dose of penetrating oil and patience and a breaker arm and a pipe did it. He had a six foot long track bar that could lever loose many things. And a set of house lifting jacks, which amazed me at how much they could lift. We had two strong block and tackle sets and a big portable tripod set for lifting things like engines or for pulling wire tight. The best was a huge and heavy metal hook for pulling out stumps. It was an inch thick and about 15 inches by 20 inches.

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  13. Ooh, just saw this cadillac of jar openers, if you want to spend $20.31:
    https://www.wayfair.com/AsSeenOnTv–AsSeenOnTv-RoboTwist-Handsfree-Jar-opener-1014-L833-K~GTST1045.html?refid=MX79371046375366-GTST1045&device=c&ptid=4582970624873070&targetid=pla-4582970624873070&channel=BingPLA&network=a&msclkid=d1b84105bb62174f61962207dd0d87b5&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=WF.P.US.G.Small%20Electrics%20(SCA)&utm_term=4582970624873070&utm_content=49_833_1~%5BGLOBAL%5D%20Small%20Electrics%20-%20%5BCooking%20Tools%5D%20Can%20Openers

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