2022, Business, Farming Update, Nature, Uncategorized

Cranes And Stones

93 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben.

We are thrilled the Sandhill cranes are back. We’ve spotted a pair and heard them flying over a few times and of course I can’t help but think of Steve. His book on sandhill cranes sits on the table and I reference it often. “The Cry of the Sandhill Crane”

I dug up the two oat fields just to keep the weeds down.

Some farmers use oats as a cover crop while another crop is being established; around here generally that’s alfalfa. Since I don’t need alfalfa, (because I don’t have cattle) I just grow straight oats. So I dig the field up a few times after harvest to keep the weeds down. It also adds organic matter to the soil, and I will leave something established before winter to help prevent erosion. Sometimes, after say, sweetcorn or canning crops, something that’s harvested fairly early so there’s plenty of time to grow something else, farmers will plant something to be a cover crop and then when plowed up you get the nitrogen boost from it. I’m sort of doing the same thing with the oat fields. Some of the oats will regrow and I’ll have a nice cover crop before winter.

There was one spot at the edge of a waterway where the giant ragweed was taller than the tractor! Yikes!

Wednesday I was back in the clinic and had a procedure to get that kidney stone removed that I’ve had since May. We called it Petra, Greek for stone. Had a Ureteroscopy. I heard a lot of pretty scary stories, and I’ve got a stent between the bladder and the kidney just to keep everything open. I go back in September to get that removed as an office visit. But really, I’m having no discomfort, I’m glad the stone is gone; one more thing to check off my list.

Soybean are really looking good.

They’re tall and have a lot of pods on them. Notice how low to the ground though the pods are.

At harvest, you have to run the head right down on the ground, not 6 inches up or you miss beans. And that’s why so many guys go over the field with the big rollers after planting, smoothing out and packing down rocks and everything and make a smooth surface so that at harvest, they can cut right down on the ground to get as many pods as possible. I don’t have the roller thingy, but I used a drag to smooth out the lumps.

FAVORITE GREEK FOOD? FAVORITE GREEK GOD?

93 thoughts on “Cranes And Stones”

  1. My favorite greek food is “faux greek”, it’s the greek salad I had in a faux English pub in Taiwan 20 years ago.

    My favorite greek god is Πρίαπος, for reasons that will be obvious when you look him up (and find his Roman counterpoint). After all, I’m 70 years old.

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  2. Hi Ben, several things : I’m sorry, I came back unexpectedly and saw you had health problems, but didn’t mention it. Hope things will improve now.
    I just read an old blog on Sensory…. er, things. And discovered why you cut the sleeves off everything. I have one or two sensory things of my own, but not about sleeves.
    Glad to see you talking about what in England we would call “green manure”. I’m keen on stuff like that.
    You don’t have a roller? They were compulsory round our way in my day. People would use them at the drop of a hat, necessary or not. My dad pointed out to me, the evils of using them to help break down ground for sowing, but everyone was hell bent, so I just kept my mouth shut and took their money for helping to spoil their seed beds.
    And since you mention 9 year old crushes…. at sixteen, sitting in the exam room, not bothering to actually do the exam….. I was in direct line of sight of the invigilator’s desk, the two pupils in front of me being bent earnestly over their exam papers. I sat most of the time with my head in the palms of my hand, as I sat with my elbows on the desk, staring at Miss Simpson’s thighs.

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  3. Greek food, tried it but didn’t like it. A bit unfair after one experience.
    An experience I never did expect was to leave a Greek restaurant, clutching a gardening book I’d won it a raffle. But it happened.

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  6. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    WP just ate my comment before I hit post.

    Greek Cuisine is so delicious, how do you choose a favorite. The flavors and textures I love are lemon, garlic, olives, olive oil, pita bread, and the movie Captain Corelli’s Violin. I also love the movie, MY Big Fat Greek Wedding. Several men who joined my family say they felt like the groom in this scene:

    My uncle Jim remembers that he was greeted by waves of children and women when he was first brought to the family farm to be introduced.

    I will enter another post so if WP eat is this one I do not have to reproduce it all AGAIN.

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        2. I’ve tried to fix this reply so it lands in the right place.
          Thanks Jacque, I tell myself I wasn’t hinting, because I don’t do that. I first saw that particular clip at the Country Hall of Fame in Nashville, on honeymoon, 2002. We walked in and Wanda was onscreen saying the bit about “world’s most beautiful love song”, and I saw the look on her face. I said “She’s gonna tear it up”.

          I always thought that Wanda, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, and the Ronettes, were things I’d only dreamed about, even though I had records by all of them. It’s only since I discovered YouTube that I finally believe they really happened. Astonishing.

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        3. I posted it yesterday! Today it showed up. AND I am getting notice of replies in my email account, which I don’t want. Man, what a mess.

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        4. Starting as of yesterday, when I hit “post” my screen goes blank, and no matter how long I wait, nothing happens. I then have to close the tab, open a new one and re-enter the trail’s URL. I have no idea what’s going on with WP, but something is obviously amiss. Seems like they may be trying to fix some issues, and in doing so are creating others.

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        1. What bugs me is that the problems all seem so random. There doesn’t seem to be a discernible red thread to help us avoid WP’s arbitrary shuffling of comments into oblivion.

          Liked by 3 people

        4. Barbara, and everybody- I switch away from today’s post, after sending. Then switch back. Sometimes that’s long enough for it to appear. I always do the same thing when catching up with the comments. It seems to unfreeze it.
          Another tip from the technical expert.

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  9. We love Greek food. I planted cold hardy spinach two weeks ago, and I can hardly wait until early October, when I will make spanokopita with it. My recipe calls for 2 lbs of fresh spinach, and I only make it once a year with our garden spinach. I first ate Greek food in Winnipeg. There is a large Greek community there, and some really nice Greek restaurants and grocery stores. I also have a good baklava recipe.

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  11. OT-the crate of peaches I bought Thursday have all ripened simultaneously, the savoy cabbage needs to be harvested, and I found some wonderful San Marzano tomatoes in the grocery store that I am processing today into canned puree. (We lost all our San Marzano plants in the June hail storm. ) This is a cooking weekend, making frozen peach pie filling, peach butter, peach pasta salad, gruyere and cabbage soup, and Hungarian paprikash soup with cabbage. At least the crate of pears aren’t ripe yet.

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  12. Tarpon Springs FL, where we will be spending our winters, has the highest percentage of residents with Greek heritage in the US (over 11%). It was settled by Greek sponge divers in the early 1900s The Greek restaurants and bakeries are famous and Greek culture is abundant.

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  13. I Love – with a capital L – Greek food. What’s not to like? Avgolemono soup, spanakopita, dolmades, tsatziki, souvlaki, the list goes on and on. I actually like most Mediterranean foods. Now that I think about it, I like most foods, period.

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  14. Mmmmm, what PJ and the rest of you have said…
    We used to eat at Athens Cafe in Robbinsdale – more of a deli, really. Just their own hummus with pita was to die for. Falafel, their Athenian Chicken Salad, Kofta Kabob…

    And I used to make Moussaka with eggplant, and Pastitsio containing pasts – both with ground beef or lamb… may have to revive that this winter! Called for Kefalotyri (I just love to say it) or Casseri cheeses…

    A friend of ours who had lived in Greece had us over once for Greek Orthodox Easter, and we had some of the above with a Greek salad – one of the best meals I’ve had.

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  16. Hey All. Just wanna let you know I checked spam this morning and I checked it this afternoon when I got home from the fair and nobody stuff has gone into spam. That doesn’t mean the word press hasn’t eaten it it just means it didn’t go into spam.

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  17. I’m always like to Hecate. Wisdom and magic seem like a nice combination. And I like a lot of Greek food as well but oh my gosh Saganaki. How in heavens name can you go wrong with fried cheese.

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      1. There’s a local theater company called ‘Calliope’.

        Many years ago I worked with a dance group, who only did one show that I’m aware of. They were called “Terpsichore”. Greek, one of the nine Muses, patron of lyric poetry and dancing.

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        1. OMG – RE: WordPress – I have inadvertently clicked on something, yesterday, that has caused me to receive any comments to MY comments via email. Decided to click on this one from Ben a while ago, and it allows me to “Like” it! Certainly won’t work for most of them, but…

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  20. There seem to be a lot of good A ones, here are three of my favorites:
    Aphrodite – Goddess of love and beauty, born from sea foam.

    Artemis – goddess of the moon and of hunting. Twin of Apollo.

    Athena – goddess of wisdom and warfare and the patron goddess of the city of Athens in Greece.

    And then there’s Gaia…

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    1. I also like Athena/Diana as a goddess.

      Demeter is the goddess of agriculture. I looked up the god of gardens and discovered this (apparently fertility is represented by the large male member):

      PRIAPOS
      PRIAPOS (Priapus) was the god of vegetable gardens. He was also a protector of beehives, flocks and vineyards. Priapos was depicted as a dwarfish man with a huge member, symbolising garden fertility, a peaked Phrygian cap, indicating his origin as a Mysian god, and a basket weighed down with fruit.

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  22. Regarding Greek food; There are two local places: ‘Nupa’ and ‘Opa Opa’ are both really good.
    But I don’t like olives. At all. Green, black, theirs, or not. No olives for me. The gyro pitas and all the florettas are wonderful.

    There’s a Greek Fest in Rochester every summer put on by the local Greek Church. When I was a kid they had a booth at the fair where they served pork kabob’s with a slice of bread. Oh my, they were so good… I can still taste them. I ate a LOT of them.

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      1. There’s one on Summit Ave in St. Paul as well. They have an annual festival where they sell all kinds of Greek food and baked goods made their members; it was held about a month or so ago. Good stuff.

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        2. St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church in NE Mpls. Not quite Greek, but in the right neck of the woods.

          So is the St. George’s in West St. Paul which is Syrian. The latter also has an annual food and baked goods sale of regional goodies made by their members. Prior to the pandemic, it included a weekend long festival with music and camel rides, as well.

          There are several Orthodox churches in South St. Paul, too, each with a slightly different flavor Eastern Orthodoxy, which I know next to nothing about.

          Liked by 1 person

  23. Hestia is gracing our kitchen this weekend. She and Demeter. Husband made rye bread last night. Now we will cook our cabbage dishes, and later in the afternoon I will make peach pie filling to freeze for winter pies, a few jars of slow cooker peach butter, as well as plum tart. It rained last night, so we don’t have to water the garden. The cabbages required significant washing to rid them of flea beetles. They are tiny bugs drawn to the brassica family, and are a real nuisance this year.

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  24. I’m re-posting this comment for better visibility…
    OMG – RE: WordPress – I have inadvertently clicked on something, yesterday, that has caused me to receive any comments to MY comments via email. Decided to click on this one from Ben a while ago, and it allows me to “Like” it! Certainly won’t work for most of them, but…

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  25. Grand Avenue used to have an annual soup tasting in December. There was a Greek restaurant that would make Avgolemono soup, That was my favorite. The restaurant closed, though, and the pandemic has quashed the soup tasting altogether.

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    1. The Acropol Inn. I loved it, and used to go there regularly. You could buy a bottle of Retsina, and if you didn’t finish it, they’d put a cork in it and write your name on it, for next time you stopped in. Unfortunately, it closed years ago. And yes, their avgolemono soup was the best.

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      1. I was sorry to see it go, and a couple of years later the Christos in Union Depot closed too. Used to go there for the buffet from time to time.

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    1. I will name my next dog Bastet. In the Elizabeth Peters mystery series about early 1900s excavations in Egypt, the main character/sleuth, Amelia Peabody, names her cat Bastet.

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  29. Pingback: Cranes And Stones – Judul Situs

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