2023, animals, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, Weather

Cooler Weather

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The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

The header photo are some of the wildflowers on the CRP ground. It’s looking good. 

I’m really liking this week of cooler weather. Especially as I plan to spend the next week installing a ceiling in the shop and working 15 feet in the air of a tin building.

We’re at 1375 growing degree units, about 265 GDU above normal. On Monday night, July 3, we got 3/4 of an inch of rain. It was a nice gentle rain. It soaked in fast and Tuesday afternoon, when Kelly and I took our gator date drive around the fields, the surface was already dry. It hasn’t really improved anything yet; grass is still pretty brown, the corn is uneven, (although the leaves have opened up, simply because it’s not so hot), but the beans haven’t filled in yet nor grown much. And we’re gonna need more rain than that to keep it going. But it sure was helpful and by Friday there was some more seeds almost sprouting.

The dang deer eating what is there doesn’t help . 

Cutting some grass Wednesday night, it sure did stir up a lot of dust.

Work on the machine shed continues. Every week another trip to Menards where I save big money while spending more. More screws, caulk, foam sealant, metal cutting blades, more screws, on and on it goes.  I rented a 20-foot scissor lift and picked that up on Friday. I’ve got it until next Friday. I’ve got two of the three windows installed.

 I’ve begun removing some of the old Electrical stuff. Keeping a few outlets but taking down a lot of them and will be replacing a lot of lights.

An order of lumber and pole barn steel was delivered, steel for the ceiling, but not the walls yet, and some steel to close off one of the rafters to keep the birds out of the newly remodeled shop end. The lumber is to frame the ceiling and line the walls after insulation. 

I moved our five guineas to a bigger pen. One of them is certainly going to be a troublemaker. At least once a day, if not twice a day, he flies up over their 5-foot fence. They’re a month old, I didn’t expect them to be flying quite so well, yet. The other day he went over two 5-foot fences and was perched on top of a 7-foot screen door on the baby chicken side. If he decides to hop down and venture out into the real world, I can’t protect him anymore. He’s only pigeon sized. Not big enough to defend himself yet. 

I finally took down the 5’ fence. Four of the five guineas were on the other side anyway. You may as well take the whole side, why don’t you. Pretty soon I may as well let the little chickens and little guineas run together. 

I spent a few hours on Monday hiding in the AC of the tractor and using the grapple to pick up the tree trimmings and some other stuff. It was pretty fun.

My tractor snack lately has been life savers. Individually wrapped, so at least they don’t all melt and stick together in one big glob.

WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? WHO DO YOU KNOW WITH ‘BEDROOM EYES’?

54 thoughts on “Cooler Weather”

  1. Brown. When I was little I wished for blue eyes like my mom but it was not an overwhelming desire. Brown is fine.

    Bedroom eyes. Hmmm. Well… not mentioning any names here to protect the innocent but there is a young man on YA’s team at work who is as cute as a bug. I worked with him a few times before I retired and he’s a really nice young man in addition to the cuteness/nice eyes factor. Of course he’s young enough that he could be my grandson and also not of my persuasion.

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  2. Menards… a bane of my existence since we bought a 95 year old house in which to retire. I go in there knowing exactly what I want to get and do NOT browse. The jingle on the audio system repeated every 5 or 6 minutes, assures me that I’m saving big money. So, unless it’s lumber (this past week it was some plywood), I avoid the place.
    I am, however, a habitue of the local ACE franchise, where my joke with the staff is that I can’t get out the door without dropping at least $40.
    The cure for both places is to stop fixing stuff, but I’m addicted.

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    1. My local hardward store is also an Ace. I sometimes think I should just set up a standard deposit from my bank account to them. I keep dog treats in my car for when I stop there.

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      2. You are right, it is. Sometimes I’ tempted, if “saving big money” is my true aim, I price things out online and then go where that leads, even to Menards. But the constant blast of “you save big money at Menards” extracts a different cost from me.

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  3. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    Blue eyes here, from two parents with green eyes. Bedroom eyes? I must have stopped noticing sometime in the last 30 years.

    While we were in AZ I developed a new retirement design. Most apartment/condo complexes had a swimming pool in the center. Wrong design. You need an Ace Hardware store. Dispense with the swimming pool (but not the hot tub). There was an Ace in Fountain Hills that attracted every old guy in town. You could go there to purchase 2 screws and 1 nut, have a chat, eat some popcorn from the popping machine, and hangout. Lou practically lived there.

    Ben, when this “shed” is done, you must have a shed warming party!

    I have to go to Iowa on more time overnight. I really hope this is the last trip for a while. My body needs a break from the driving. Tomorrow is the 4H reception for Iowa 4H Foundation Scholarship winners where we have a scholarship honoring my father. Now we will add an education scholarship for my mother. Tonight the siblings and I will open sympathy cards and tally the memorial money that will go towards two scholarship funds. My sibs want to add a new one at our High School for future teachers.

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    2. that two screws and one nut cost as much as a bag of them at menards

      i love the hardware store vs menards but the markup at the local hardware is high

      the neumann marcus of diy

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  5. Husband let Kryill pursue rabbits on the butte near our home last night , and puppy came home with tiny green burrs stick all over his feathery furnishings, tail, beard, and ears. He has not been a happy boy as we comb them out. They are the size of peppercorns.

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  7. That’s quite a load you picked up with the grapple, Ben!

    You save big money at Menards because they often have the cheapest, flimsiest version of any given item. I go to Fleet Farm and Ace whenever possible. Robbinsdale had a wonderful old hardware store with the original wood floors… I think it eventually been bought up by Coast-to-Coast.

    Blue eyes here, being a good Scandinavian – have sometimes wished for the more “exotic” deep brown like my step-son Mario’s.

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  8. My eyes are kind of a mud color. Sort of like the color of a swamp at this time of year. If I had to call them a color, I guess I would say “brownish-green.” My driver’s license says they are brown. I got them from my dad. My mom’s eyes were blue.

    I don’t notice bedroom eyes much either, I guess. There were a couple of people in the past to whom I was attracted because of their eyes. One was the meanest man I ever met. The other was the kindest. So my non-scientific survey shows that eye color has nothing to do with character.

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  9. Dogs have the nicest eyes. I love the deep chocolatey brown color some dogs have. It just squishes my heart when they turn those eyes on you as if you are the best human they have ever seen before in their life and they love love love you!

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  10. Despite being nearly 100% Scandinavian, I have dark brown eyes thanks to my maternal grandfather and mom. He was considered a “black Swede” because of his eye color and dark brown hair.

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  11. Last I checked, my eyes were a grayish blue. Dad had blue eyes, mom’s were gray. When he had hair, it was very light blonde; mom’s was dark brown. Mine was strawberry blonde, except for a short period at SIU when I colored it “County Corker Red.” That was a mistake. It looked good on the box; on me it was closer to orange and pretty hideous. Now it’s a pretty nondescript whitish gray. Maybe now is the time to go for purple?

    I have always favored brown eyes. I can still give you the name of the two people with the most beautiful, soulful, deep brown eyes I have ever seen: K.E. Kramp and Rod MacDonald.

    I’m not sure that my idea of what constitutes “bedroom eyes” is the same as yours, but over the years I’ve known several people, both male and female, with eyes that looked like it was a lot of work keeping them open. At the moment I can think of only one, and I won’t reveal here who it is, since most of you will know her. Let me just say, she is one of the most kind, generous, fierce, and thoughtful people I’ve ever met; and so is her husband.

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  12. People often ask my where I get my hair colored. I tell them I have the cheapest frost job in town, as I don’t color my hair at all. It is a streaky light grey/blonde/ light brown. My mother’s hair did the same thing as she aged.

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  13. A few of the women of my mother’s family had intense dark drown eyes, the kind that would make you confess to sins you had not committed. I have brown eyes, not so dark. I guess out of my many cousins on that side was only one other one who had brown eyes. My father had sort of muddy blue eyes. My sister has the average sort of blue eyes true of my brother and most of my Wetter relatives she says. She has always wanted my brown eyes. Most Wetters were dishwater blondes, a few are redheads. I had a tinge of red hair and lots of red in my beard.
    We have lots of common prominent other DNA traits.
    Clyde

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  14. At a recent memorial service for a friend, I reconnected with several casual friends who I hadn’t seen in years. Most of them are musicians or dancers of Irish or Scottish heritage, and many of them are – or more accurately – were, redheads. It was striking how different they all looked now that their beards and/or hair have turned different shades of gray or silver. One of them, an American of Scottish descent, used to have a full red beard and a gorgeous head of red curly locks.

    At the gathering after the service, a man that looked vaguely familiar, but who I couldn’t quite place in the context of where I knew him from, came up a talked to me. We chatted for a while, but it wasn’t till his wife joined us that the light bulb went off and I new who he was. He looked so different with his now closely cropped gray hair and beard. This is a couple I have known and associated with regularly over at least thirty years, and I doubt that I would have recognized either of them if I had bumped into them on the street.

    I recently had lunch with another a friend who I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. She told me that she didn’t think she would have recognized me if she had met me on the street, mostly because of my change in hair color. She, on the other hand, has had every hair color under the sun, and then some, in the years that I have known her, so I had no trouble with her even though she has quit coloring it.

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  15. We have never announced ourselves to the family of our father’s recently discovered Scots father. We don’t plan to. They do stay connected. Would be interesting to see how red headed they are.
    I see pictures of former students to whom I was close and would not recognize some of them. Some are just the same.

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  16. Hazel.
    At the risk of TMI: I no longer have acquaintance with anyone who would glance seductively at me, an old, bald, semi-fat, divorced white guy. Years back, it was surprising to me that that happened with an ex-cop. The bar I enjoyed visiting was what might be called “ghetto”. I was very welcomed as my jukebox selections were old school R&B. This white boy even began playing chess with fellow patrons! One of the guys who had just defeated me said, “She wants to play you.” When you’re playing at a table, the winner stays and challengers come. Protocol was set aside. The “bedroom eyes” thing was unexpected.
    She turned out to be a retired undercover cop out of Cincinnati. And a terrific dancer. She had Bette Davis eyes.

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  17. A final thought about “bedroom eyes.”
    I wish I’d been focused on the eyes of her I sworn to love forever, the former Mrs. Wes.

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    1. Our eyes are blue, Kelly and I. Daughters eyes are blue, but one of the traits of Down Syndrome are extra “sparkles” around the iris’. Little specks of white.

      I’m not sure I know anyone with bedroom eyes, although it seems like it was discussed a few times about someone.
      And I know a few people who just have very intense, almost frost colored eyes.
      And our Bailey, she has the penetrating brown eyes.

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  18. my blue eyes produced 40% blue eves
    1 green 2 hazel
    my first wife had betty davis eyes
    i don’t see them anymore

    used to have lots of bedroom eyes in my aquaintence but these days when i see them they remind me of years gone bye

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  27. Judy Collins is singing in Bismarck at the end of Ocober. I am not sure I want to go. I would hate to see her struggling with age.

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    1. My work is loving the world.
      Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
      equal seekers of sweetness.
      Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
      Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

      Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
      Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me
      keep my mind on what matters,
      which is my work,

      which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
      The phoebe, the delphinium.
      The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
      Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

      which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
      and these body-clothes,
      a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
      to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
      telling them all, over and over, how it is
      that we live forever.

      ~Mary Oliver

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  28. If I had to pick a personal theme song, it would be Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” (or maybe “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel).

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