2022, animals, Farming Update, Music, Theatre, Uncategorized

Snow?

128 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben

Today it’s snowing. I’ve learned from meteorology class this happens because the air is cold from the cloud all the way to the ground. I think I kinda figured that.

Glad my soybeans got harvested last week. They started late Friday afternoon and finished on Saturday. They ran better than they have in the past ending up with about 52 bushels / acre. I heard one guy complaining about his crop and the drought and how they were only running about 45 bushels / acre and not 80. Must be nice. I’m happy with 45 so to get 52 is very satisfying!

Could have been the fungicide applied this year, could have been the good growing weather. If it wasn’t for all the trees shading out the edge rows, and if it wasn’t for all the deer eating off the tops, maybe I could get 80 bushel beans too. It is what it is. Price is good and we got $12.81 / bushel. It made a real good check. And it will almost cover all my expenses this year for fertilizer and chemicals. Once corn is harvested, (and that looks to be a good crop too, and price is good on them yet at around $6/ bushel), I’ll be able to pay off the seed bill and make some loan payments and have some left over. I spent a night this week figuring out next year’s crops and I’ve already ordered some fertilizer before a price increase. Urea (nitrogen) fertilizer price is down a little this year, other things are up even more than they were for this year. Man that hurts. And I need to order 500 gallons of diesel fuel one of these days. That’s over $5/ gallon.

Sigh.

Oh well!

The ducks, Rosie and Guildy, and the poofy and the two black ones, and the other mallard looking ones are all good. R&G still spend most of the day inside. That’s a good place to be today. Kelly had to rescue another upside down chicken.

I’m busy at the college building a set for our fall show, “One Snowy Night” by Charles Way. Based on a Norwegian Folk tale, I’m building an ice block and a fire ball that they drag across the stage.

I heard a song on the radio by the band Traffic. The song was ‘Am I What I Was or Am I What I Am’. That’s a fun question so we’ll let them set the tone. Last week we had The Turtles, this week it’s Traffic.

FAVORITE MUSIC FROM THE 1970’S? ARE YOU WHAT YOU ARE OR ARE YOU WHAT YOU WERE?

128 thoughts on “Snow?”

  4. The seventies – the decade that style and everything else forgot. I just stayed on the farm.
    I’m sure I’m what I was. The bad penny that keeps turning up somewhere else. Not really deliberately.

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  5. Many years ago, I saw some author being interviewed, I don’t even remember the author, and when asked to name his favorite book, he thought for a while, and he said to the interviewer “that’s kind of like asking me to name my favorite french fry.” And that’s how I feel about the 70s playlist. Give me Fleetwood Mac, give me Blondie, give me Queen. Lay them all on me.

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  6. Congratulations on your harvest, Ben. Do you see the harvest the way I do? I wrote an essay for my Spanish class a while ago, saying, what is the thing that Fenton holds most important? Is it Rock’n’Roll? British motorcycles? No. It’s the harvest. Most important thing to the world. And the most important thing to me, still, after thirty years away from the farm. So I suppose I am what I was.

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        1. not as busy with that as i’d like
          ari is 4 and is such a social creature that he needs to be amongst other kids
          with me he gets into his devices and digs for puzzles music stories
          the stuff available to kids is incredible
          he started finding youtube on everyone’s phone he touched at age 2 and going to his websites to watch stuff
          so he is now enrolled in school and loves playing with the other children 9-5 everyday
          do i watch denver who is very introspective and a little winnie the pooh ish
          luca is what a month old now and still pretty much exclusively moms watch but he’ll be letting me granddad before long
          fun stuff
          i put in a kid request for today ands gould have them popping by later today so i can grandad

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        2. I’m glad you love it so much, Tim, but you know what – rather you than me. I love my son, but looking after him was very hard work, and I used to think about being out in the fields. Specially taking him to play places back in Southampton, thinking, at your age I was on the farm, having real fun.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    At least I am posting this in the morning—yesterday it got away from me. I can hardly remember ‘70s era music. At the beginning of the 70s it was all the Carpenters, the tail end of the Beatles,and the beginning of Moody Blues. By the end of the 70s I had found early NPR stations and folk music on MPR with GK Prairie Home Morning Show. It was Jean Redpath,Bill STaines, and Peter Ostrousko. Those folks have all died in the last decade, which is sad. I am so glad their music remains. Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers are still out there performing, I think.

    Re: Am I then or now? That question is just too much for me this morning.

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  9. You msy well have talked about this before, Ben, but is the diesel you buy the same as road going diesel? In the UK, the tax on diesel for off road use is much lower, and a red dye is put in it, to differentiate it from “white” diesel. It’s an offence to use red diesel on the road, and the enforcing authority can dip your tank, or even scrape carbon out of your exhaust system for analysis, in case you used red last month but not right now. It’s something I’ve never done, and never intend to, though I don’t know if red diesel’s available here anyway. I know that some shady transport outfits in the UK are prone to it, in fact the father of a well known girl group from Ireland runs an outfit like that, allegedly.

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      1. I’ve seen the mobile units, I forget what agency they go under. I’ve heard it claimed that the white diesel is nowadays more refined and modern than the red, but I doubt that. Pretty much the same engines, but, do USA trucks use Adblu now? European emission requirements for trucks get tighter and tighter, and most big trucks now have a separate, smaller tank for this stuff, which is metered into the fuel system and makes the diesel burn cleaner. I don’t know if any tractors have it.

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        1. They do; we call it DEF; Diesel Exhaust Fluid. My 2012 Diesel Truck has it and tractors / large machinery (maybe all diesel engines) have had it the last few years. Some guys call it ‘Government Juice’.

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        2. And I accidentally put some in the main diesel tank at the start of a trip from Chichester to Yorkshire, one morning. Had to be towed back to Southampton, and the company didn’t ever want to see me again, so I don’t know how expensive the damage to the engine was. One of the very, very worst days of my life.

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  11. I think I am what I was but like a caricature. Some parts are embellished and some parts have faded away. I was a nervous and timid child, now I have a mild case of social anxiety. Although I lacked confidence when I was younger, I think I’m usually fairly confident now. I feared and detested math when I was a child but it intrigues me now. I’ve been a bookworm since the first grade and I’ve always been a singer. When I was younger I never ate anything. That is not the case anymore (*sigh*). Another difference is that I am less tolerant of foolishness and impulsivity now.

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  12. I mentioned last week that I am ignorant of rock music from 64-69 but heard 70s rock when yearbook staff played it. I liked much of it, but they sort of tailored it that way. But I cannot really name songs and performers. I play 70s playlists as background music on Amazon music. I recognize many songs and they bring back wonderful memories. My dear dear friend Sully was in that group and loved music of all decades. I do often want to chat online with him. So sad his sudden death. I wrote him and his unique car with its long flat trunk lid into my second novel in two paragraphs. Those kids are now approaching 70.
    Clyde

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  13. I must have been marching to a different drummer as well. The Turtles and Traffic barely registered on my radar. A lot of the music I listened to during the mid to late 60s was still on my turntable by the time the 70s rolled around. Bob Dylan, Leo Kottke, Joni Mitchell, and Cat Stevens were all in regular rotation.

    The one thing I distinctly remember from the 70s that makes me cringe is disco music. Not necessarily that the music was bad, but it’s music that associate with a very unhappy time in my adult life. Saturday Night Fever, please give me a break.

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  14. Just two tracks from the seventies stand out for me.
    Yvonne Fair, “It should have been me”. No personal associations, and I never have listened to it much, for some reason. I just listened to it, to check that it really did exist, and it still raises the hairs on my neck. Colossal. I won’t neglect it so badly in future.

    And Dorothy Moore, “Misty Blue”. I think I told you this. The way I remember it, I spent the summer of 1984 sitting in my caravan looking at the wall (which calls the story into doubt straight away, there was hardly a square inch of wall visible, with all the stuff I had crammed in there), and playing “Misty Blue” and Sam Cooke’s “Cupid” over and over again. And thinking about a girl called Jean Marie Shwartz from Washington DC. I don’t like Sam’s lightweight music, but Jean played his hits LP all the time, and that track in particular. But I always loved “Misty Blue”. I’ll try listening now, but not too sure about it.

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    1. Yeah, I just played it.
      I left my main job, and my other jobs, Christmas 1983,and went to help my brother with a disastrous building job. First thing happened was I met Jean. She came and helped us for nothing, as all the money was gone already. I came home in early April, sick at heart, with Jean back in DC. Everyone thought I’d gone for ever, and I’d more or less told Stanley, my main employer, to take on Johnny Stevens, and he had. (Stan’s tractors didn’t know what hit them, ha ha.)
      That was a tough summer. And Jean never came back. I was still sick 3 years later, when joining the Sams saved my life. (Not literally, let’s not get carried away)

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  15. Th 70s seems like it was such a LONG decade! The first half of the 70s for me was all about Joni Mitchell, some James Taylor, The Band… My sister introduced me to the Moody Blues..

    Then I moved around so much the second half, I kind of lost track of the music, and I lump disco in with the 80s rather than 70s for some reason…

    Like someone else alluded to above, I’m a real mix of what I was and what I am, and will be. Sometimes it’s very confusing.

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  16. I am better than I was and, considering my age, probably better than I will be.
    The first half of the 70s coincided with my college years. 3 songs in particular stand out. “If You Could Read My Mind” by Gordon Lightfoot and “Fire and Rain” by James Taylor during my freshman year and “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart during my sophomore year. It seemed that were played constantly. Lots of faves during the 70s – Eagles, Doobie Brothers, Guess Who, Moody Blues, Bob Seger, etc. I loved early BeeGees but not so fond of their disco years. Actually, not so fond of any disco.

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  17. Oh, Judy Collins, CSN and Y, Joni Mitchell were my favorites.

    After pruning spent canes out of the raspberries, diggng up the Hamburg parsely root, and picking and cleaning 7 lbs of spinach this morningI needed a nap. I am not the workhorse I used to be. We will use 4 lbs of the spinach for spanakopita. The rest goes to the Amen Food Pantry along with the butternut squash we harvested last week.

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      1. Came home from work, husband and I picked all the raspberries, made jam, jelly and weird sounding stuff to put away in the freezer in case we get hungry. Then we started into digging the potatoes and pulling the onions……

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  18. OT – As we “speak,” our roofers are putting the finishing touches on this project. In addition to a new roof on the house and the detached garage, they’ve installed a few additional vents. All of the debris has been gathered up and hauled away, and the roofers have been pleasant and cooperative throughout. I’d hire this crew again in a heartbeat. Well done, guys, and gracias.

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    1. That’s really nice to hear, PJ.
      A gang like that came to our parish in Devon one time, from Portsmouth, 150 miles away. The boss was friendly with one of the customers, and said he’d bring his gang if he had three decent sized roofs. They reroofed three farmhouses in no time flat, and we were all impressed and amazed.
      Afterwards I spotted the boss in the pub openly cavorting with his friend’s wife, only problem I had with that was that I was a bit jealous.

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    1. I tend to lump all music that appeared (or that I was introduced to) before graduating from SIU in 1972, in the 60s music. I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s how it stacks up in my mind.

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      2. I remember feeling that I needed to have the words for American Pie written down. So this was back when I had it on an LP and I played it over and over and over again — took me about an hour I think to get all the words down. I’m not sure what I ever did with those words, pretty sure I probably never alluded to them again because by that time I knew the whole song by heart.

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    3. Oddly, I the one who does not know who you are talking about, except for Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins, very much remember Melanie.Joni Mitchell is too large to be contained by a single decade or even two. I have three Judy Collins CDs which make my daughter with her perfect ear cringe.

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        1. I did, and I think it’s the first time I’ve seen or heard Traffic since “No name, no face, no number,” was that the late sixties? This band featuring Steve Winwood suddenly popped up on TV. Huh? Steve Winwood?

          And ironically, saying this prompted me into thinking, who was it I remember saying, “Flower Power turned a lot of good guys, who everybody rated, into creeps”? Ironic because I instantly thought, “It was Spencer Davis!” (who many of you know, was the leader of Steve’s old group, the Spencer Davis Group). But I’m not sure it was him. He did say “Flower Power came….. and it went!”

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        2. A lot of Traffic music tended to be rather melancholic. Sometimes now I wonder why I loved it so much. I guess I was melancholic at the time.

          Although I remember Spencer Davis Group, I don’t remember anything, really, about Spencer Davis. He seemed to be overshadowed by his young vocalist.

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  24. Who I was then informs who I am now. How could it be otherwise?

    With the possible exceptions of Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell, with whom I am marginally familiar though I never owned any music by either, most of the other performers and tunes you all have mentioned evoke nothing in me. I have undoubtedly heard all those songs but couldn’t attach them to a specific performer. In the late ‘60s and beyond I basically tuned out of rock music and into other forms. I could list my music, some of which I still listen to regularly, and you would recognize some of them but they probably would not evoke anything in you.

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        2. That probably isn’t a bad thing.
          No idea how it applies to me.
          I’ve learned what “No” means, probably too well. Other than that, I’m what I was, in attitude and opinion. In world weariness (or something), I’m what I am.

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        3. I”m wondering, though, is there something in who you are now that shakes his head at some of the things your twenty-year old self said, did, or believed. That would certainly be true for me. T

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        6. Compared to when I was twenty, I am far less likely to think I know the right way, and someone else is wrong. A focus on diversity has led me to believe that there are different approaches that can be right, or at least mostly right, and they don’t necessarily align with what I think.

          Of course, there are some patterns of thought that ARE completely wrong, and the news dismays me when I am continually confronted with white nationalists and election deniers and climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers. I am sort of disappointed that when I’ve attained more tolerance and flexibility, the world has just gone off the deep end.

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  25. ….add CSN&Y to my list of favorite bands. One of my all time favorite albums is “Tapestry” by Carole King (1971). And one of my all time favorite album titles is “You Can Tune a Piano But You Can’t Tuna Fish” by REO Speedwagon (1978).

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  26. I think of Judy Collins more in the 60s when she sang more traditional folk music. Either WGN (World’s Greatest Newspaper) or WLS (World’s Largest Store) broadcast folk music on Sunday night, the real stuff, which is how I came to like folk music. I could get it on my little AM radio. What do you call that when some stations were allowed to ramp up their power after sunset? WCCO was one. And the I ended up in Chicago.

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  27. Some of my early music influence comes from my older brother. Had had Jethro Tull (which he says he didn’t like, but only had the album because a friend of his said he should listen too it), he had a lot of Chicago, and lots of Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

    Took me a lot of years to get into Joni Mitchel or CSN&Y. Queen and The Who I found on my own. Yes, Genesis, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Styx (saw them in concert 4 times). The list goes on…

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  29. OT: Cats. Politics, red tape, the heighbour’s shooting rights…….

    Meanwhile Chelo’s builder has brought six old baths and jacuzzis. Wednesday I will cut doorways into them, and we’ll turn them upside down and scatter them about the place. Chelo and I, and whoever turns up. We need to become more of a cohesive unit, instead of three people showing up one day, and no one the next. But once the cats start trickling in, we’ll get there.
    The cats actually are happy on the street, but they don’t get healthcare, and there’s a high turnover. There’s also a poisoner on the loose, quiet at the moment, but who knows when. Thais (TyEES, emphasis on the last syllable), pretty much knows who it is, but has no proof, and Jordi probably doesn’t care about what he doesn’t know. We just want these cats moved by the winter, each one will be caught and sterilised, a long process. Chelo has negotiated a best price of 55 euros, and it’s a nuisance, because I do a lot of the transport and it’s in Ontinyent, 15/ 20 minutes away. Our beloved Laura had to stick to the rules of her franchise and quote 90 euros. I and no doubt Shere, her buddy, are gnashing our teeth over this. Laura deserves the business and is only five minutes away. I’m not dead sure she charges Jane and me at all if we show up in a hurry with a street cat.
    That’s enough for now, I’ll stick knives into Dani next time, maybe.

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  30. Nobody has asked me, who is the well known girl group from Ireland?
    So I’ll give you a hint.
    The transport company which is alleged to be slightly less than honest, has or had many trucks running about the roads in England, and their name is Nolan Transport. The guy IS related to the unnamed group, I’m pretty sure he’s their dad.

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  37. I mostly dodged all the disco and that sort of thing in the early 70’s. Tom Waits, Jackson Browne, John Prine, Steve Goodman, Jerry Riopelle, Murray McLauchlan, Neil Young all had albums that were dear to me. Later Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen. Here;s a Jackson Browne song I loved…

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  42. thank you ben I always joy the farm report and it’s amazing to me that if you own the land by the time you’re done doing what it is that you’re doing you have paid for the shed and fertilizer for next year and maybe made a little profit that certainly is not a great formula for our farmers of America going forward or am I missing something?
    Music is of course the favorite topic that brought us all together in the first place here on the trail in the 70s were my special time I had discovered Dylan in the 60s and began experimenting with the Columbia record club, and when I got my first 12 albums among them were Nashville skyline rag the beggars banquet the association of greatest hits, Joan Baez, and some other stuff like that I never liked the association. Joan Baez has too much tremolo on her voice for me. It drives me crazy beggars banquet was an amazing album Nashville skyline rag had me confused for a while that Dylan was singing in a new voice that he changed from his 60s villain wife, but I soon fell in love with that and followed up with new morning self-portrait and then left him for a while during his Jesus movement and a lot of stuff that followed in the 80s which I enjoy today but I didn’t have the pallet for at the time in the 70s I was living with roommates who were hard-core rockers. We rotated songs on the stereo and I could barely wait through their three albums to get to my one. They played stuff like Emerson Lake and Palmer. Yes Wishbone, Ash and some of the old classics like Fleetwood Mac, the Eagles etc. the band I was in would go through and cherry pick the cool pieces out of the repertoire from cream specialized in Jethro Tull but we had an acoustic side. They played James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, and some of the stuff like a little wing and hey Joe that could be done acoustically from the Jimi Hendrix songbook, I was kind of a anti-rocker and couldn’t stand the Steve Miller Band Creedence Clearwater, revival The Doobie Brothers, and a lot of the crap that was on the radio. At that time I grew to love Queen it was never quite heavy enough to get into Frank Zappa. I enjoyed the complexity of his music, but didn’t buy into it. I was more a Richie Havens kind of shit back and enjoy the rhythm other thing, Paul Simon switched over from Simon and Garfunkel to that album on his own. That was so wonderful that had a white cover. I’m drawing a blank on the name of it. Maybe I’ll come back to it by the end of the blog. No this is the end of the blog, thanks very much for everybody being there and Fenton you bring a new flavor and a new voice that’s really fun thanks for coming back to us and between you and PJ reminding us of music that wasn’t from here it makes the experience of music from a perception other than a mid western perception appreciate it all the more good luck with the corn then I look forward to the report on how that goes down the road and I will have to figure out a time when I can come back down and get a full load of eggs although I know that it will be 3000 instead of 8000 because your production is down

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