2023, animals, Farming Update, Music, pets, Uncategorized, Weather

Lost And Found

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

It was hot. How hot was it? It was so hot Wednesday, I stayed at the college until 8:30 PM. The air conditioning units for the Theatre were recently repaired, so except for the fact there is no thermostat, (it’s either on or off), at least there’s air conditioning here as opposed to home where there’s only fans. Well, there’s not AC in the shop at the college, but I open the doors to the stage and turn on some fans and it’s very comfortable.

The chickens hang out under some bushes or somewhere in the shade from mid-morning until mid-afternoon. You can tell they’re hot when they lift their wings a bit. I’ve had their fan running all summer and the back door open for more ventilation the past week.

The cattle hang out in the shade too. By evening, everyone is moving again and having a drink.

Humphrey is really in a conundrum; he wants to be with us, but it’s cooler outside than inside. Decisions, decisions.

Back this spring as I was getting machinery ready for planting, I used my favorite wrench in one of the tractors, and I kind of remember setting it above the steering wheel and telling myself, “Don’t put that there“ and then, of course I couldn’t find it again all summer. I was delighted to find it in the toolbox of that same tractor recently. Putting a wrench in the toolbox? That was pretty good thinking at some point.



Has anyone else noticed all the dragonflies around lately? They were swarming all around the yard earlier this week and out in the fields. And my brother commented on seeing them at his place. I did some reading and they peak in July and August, they sure are fun to watch. And all the barn swallows are sweeping around; there’s a couple nests here that are working on the third batch of babies. That’s really impressive and these poor kids are hardly gonna learn to fly before they head south.

Was up to John Deere last week getting some parts and there is a new parts lady behind the counter. It was interesting that while she was still learning the system, and she didn’t know some common parts like a cotter pin, she seemed to know a lot of the customers and they would call her by name, and someone made a comment about her staying in the industry. Later, as we were trying to find some of my parts, (they were right here, and then they were put somewhere by somebody who wasn’t there now, and nobody else knew where they were) she and I had some time to talk. She ran the auto parts store in Plainview with her dad for 20 years.  So, she kind of knew the business, just not this particular system, and some of these parts. I don’t recall, in all the years I’ve farmed, I’ve ever seen a woman behind any of the parts counters that I frequent. There was a female in a welding place several years ago, and she knew what she was doing. And I know this lady will figure it out too. Even the guys, when they start, they don’t know much. It takes a long time to get into the swing of things.

I’ve been listening to a jazz station a lot lately. I have a membership to Jazz Radio and primarily I listen to modern big band, but lately I’ve done Latin jazz too. It’s a fun change. I’ve learned that I don’t like hearing the same music over and over. And while that rarely happens on Radio Heartland, it happens even less frequently on Latin jazz. I get some Maynard Ferguson on the modern big band station and I like that.

Last week at faculty duty day at the college, I saw this shirt and it made me laugh. I hope you get the joke.

That momma hen still has 13 chicks. She’s a good momma and she’s smart. There’s been a hawk trying to grab the chicks. Bailey actually chased it away a few times. We made a straw bale shelter for them to hide under, but she figured it out on her own and moved them down to the trees and taller grass during the day, and at night takes them back into the pen. I take corn down to them. Keep your fingers crossed.

One night Kelly and I burned up a bunch of brush we had accumulated. A bonfire on the second hottest day of the year? Why not.

GOT A LUCKY NUMBER?

EVER WON A LOTTERY?

44 thoughts on “Lost And Found”

  1. 7 &23
    666 and 13 unlucky

    i won a football lottery for the super bowl at a bar in wisconsin years ago when i was there with a buddy drinking and didn’t get back for a couple months
    boy were they pissed i wasn’t there to buy everyone a drink
    i’m a jazz guy too
    i bought a big band jazz radio django collection and got some great stuff but i love miles and monk charlie parker coltrane and mingus
    duke and count billy holiday ella satchmo and many many more
    cooler weather sure is welcome
    good post ben thanks

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  2. Donny! Donny! Who can I turn to? I got your number on the wall. I got it! I got it! For a good time call: zero, one, one, three, five, eight, O, nine.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    This morning feels so good. It is 62 degrees on my porch. Therefore 62 is my lucky number this morning. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh. I can move and think again.

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    1. Glad you’ve still got the 13 chicks, Ben.

      Never have won a lottery, but then I have rarely bought a ticket. I’ve probably won a drawing somewhere back in the mists of time, but can’t recall what the prize was.

      If a lucky number surfaces, I’ll be back… : )

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  5. 13, and yes, when the lottery first opened in MN, I won $500. That was a big deal at the time! I haven’t won anything since but I don’t buy lottery tickets very often anymore.

    We have a Northfield “Buy Nothing” facebook group here. You post something you want to give away. People express their interest in the comment section. You give it a day or so in order for people to notice it and express interest. Then you choose who you want to give it to. It’s supposed to build community while re-purposing items to reduce waste. I have given lots of things away. Until this past week, I was never chosen for a “gift”. I expressed interest in a dog kennel which is made to look like an end table and is a bit larger than the one Pippin uses now. He really loves going in his kennel for naps. So today I’m going to pick up my prize! I think reducing and re-using are good things, so is the barter system.

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    3. I had an old radial arm saw I removed from my shop (because I have sliding miter saws now) and I listed it for free on FB Marketplace. A ‘Jill of all Trades’ picked it up. She was quite a character.

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  7. We rarely get dragonflies because it is so low humidity here. I love to see the rare ones in the fall. There has been a gross infestation of grasshoppers this year. They bite. I remember being so afraid of the grasshoppers jumping around my legs as I walked with my farm cousins to check their gopher traps.

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  8. Had friends whose fathers gambled away much or all of their paychecks. As did my father’s very abusive stepfather. I just don’t gamble. Now you can tell me off too like others have about this. So no lucky number.
    Clyde

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  10. It is the most beautiful day today, with temps in the 60’s, and light winds. We weeded, and spread mulch in the front yard under the spruce trees.

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  11. I put bunny proof fencing around our young neighbor’s bush beans in our garden. The bunnies were nibbling off the flowers. I told him he would have green beans for his family in 4 weeks. He helped us pick tomatoes.

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  13. It honestly never occurred to me to pick a lucky number. I can’t think of a time when I had one. I’ve also never bought a lottery ticket.

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  14. We’ve bought a few lottery tickets. Haven’t won more than a few bucks.
    But at college staff day last week, I did win a semester of free parking. That’s about a $78 win.

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  15. I once picked up an oversize scratchoff lottery ticket in a parking lot. It turned out to be a $100 winner. Maybe the person who paid for it didn’t realize it was a winner, or maybe they accidentally dropped it and it blew away from them.

    They say “You can’t win if you don’t play'” but in this case that wasn’t true.

    I pick up scratchoffs when I see them, because some of them have a 2nd chance drawing you can enter. Never won anything from those, but the ticket is recyclable anyway, better to recycle than to litter roads and parking lots with them.

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  16. My maternal grandmother never allowed gambling in her home. Her father lost all his money gambling and had to sneak out of Hamburg and take a ship to New York in January, 1914 to avoid his creditors. My grandmother and sister and mom traveled to New York in May of 1914. Gambling saved them from being in the middle of a war, so in some respects they hit the lottery.

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    3. There are many kinds of good fortune. Not sure it would have seemed so at the time, though – those recently arrived from Germany suffered a fair amout of harassment and hostility once America became involved in the war.

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  18. No lucky numbers. No lottery wins either but that is completely caused by never buying a ticket. And I never win drawings either.

    But I do consider that I won the best jackpot of all when I traveled to China 28 years ago to bring YA home!

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  19. I’ve won quite a few contests I’ve entered, no really huge wins, but things of value. Once I won a Wii Fit from my medical insurance company. A grocery chain sent me a $100 gift card for entering their drawing by submitting a survey. I won a drawing at the Women’s Expo may years ago. The prize was to have been a TV, but I didn’t really need one and it wasn’t a very fancy TV either, so I took cash instead – $75. Also won a gift card from a winery, the highest value prize I’ve won so far: $500 Visa gift card. Plus a number of raffles and that sort of thing. I’m generally pretty lucky.

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  21. There was also a drawing I won back in the days of video rental stores. It was a free video rental once a week for a year. I enjoyed that – I made a long list of somewhat obscue indie films and foreign films that were recommended by critics, and every week I’d go to the store with my list and pick something out. I think I saw Big Night that year, and Kolya, Cinema Paradiso, Mostly Martha, and quite a few MST3K episodes.

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