2023, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Nature, Seasons

There’s Always Hope?

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Maybe the crops won’t be as bad as I feared. I was looking at the soybeans this past week and there are a fair number of pods higher up the plant. The plants are about knee high, and it looks like the weather will hold for a few weeks yet. We’re at 2845 growing degree units. 368 above normal for Rochester. Mind you, I’m not saying great crops, but not as bad as I thought. Ha, probably just be good enough not to trigger a payment from crop insurance, which is based on 70% of expected (average) yields. I did get a $700 credit on the premium for hail damage. So, I only owe $600 rather than $1300. Which is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp cornstalk.

I did plant some rye on Monday and more on Thursday evening. The rain predicted for Friday morning isn’t going to a mounted to much. We wait and see. I spotted a couple sandhill cranes while out planting on both days. They must like this field. It was interesting: On Monday I had gone around the field once, turned around at the end of the field and was coming back when I saw them in the middle of the field. Were they there on the first round? I was maybe 150’ from them and they didn’t pay me too much attention. But then as I came around the corner and got closer, they flew off. Sorry kids, you didn’t get much of a rest here. Thursday was the same thing; didn’t see them on the first pass and then there they were. I adjusted how I planted that field so they could hang out longer. When the time came and I had to go their way, they had flown off.

I was working at the college one day and I dropped a cable down a ventilation shaft. Course it wasn’t a plain old power cord, it was a special 4 pin data cable. I can see it down there and maybe with a long stick and a hook on the end, I’m thinking I can retrieve it. Stay tuned.

I’ve been scraping gravel from the machine shed approach.

Over the years I’ve added a lot of gravel to the road. Now with the cement pad being the same level as the shed interior, the driveway is 8” too high. I’ve mentioned before the water running in the shed door. So, I’ve been scraping. Man, it’s packed hard. Some rain would help that too. I’m not real good at being an excavator operator. And using the tractor loader isn’t ideal either, but it works. I can’t quite tell yet if there’s just dirt under there or still gravel. Dad must have had rock there when he built this shed in 1981. I may have to go an extra 4” deep and put gravel back on top. I’m using this rock to fill in some holes and the extra will go on the other end of the cement where it is more dirt.

Daughter likes to do her chores: whether it’s hauling out garbage, doing her laundry (I know, right??) collecting eggs, and last night she even threw out corn for the chickens and chicks. Mother-Clucker is down to 12, lost one. The kids are getting pretty independent, and mom is giving them their freedom too. It’s not unusual to see them running 20’ away from mom. They’re between robin and pigeon sized.

Ever had a cement pond at your house? How was that?

(Are you aware Irene Ryan ((Granny)) was a Tony nominated actress and has an acting scholarship in her name?)

29 thoughts on “There’s Always Hope?”

  1. Closest I’ve come to any kind of pond in my yard would be an improvised birdbath.

    Wow, Irene Ryan was in Pippin in 1972 on Broadway! (Says she died in 1973). I know there are many other TV actors who started on stage, and you wouldn’t think that from their TV roles. Thinking…
    (What made you think of Irene Ryan, Ben?)

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      1. Every time I reference the farm cement, In my head I hear “CEE-ment”. Maybe because daughter has been watching the Beverly Hillbilly’s lately. But I knew about the Irene Ryan acting award. Watching her on YouTube clips of old ‘Password’ game shows, it’s still granny’s voice that comes out of this elegant looking lady with the pearls and it just doesn’t quite fit.

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  2. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    No Ceeee-ment Pond in my yards either. We had a cement pool in the Arizona condo complex. That was fun when it was hot.I did have a lake, too,when I lived in Northern Minnesota. That was a wonder to me. There were eagles fishing during the come back of eagles after years of scarce population. It was the late 1970s. Loons nested on that lake. Wildlife was abundant.

    Re: Irene Ryan. I know/knew little of her career apart from the Beverly Hillbillies. That was the strangest show and even as a kid I had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it introduced me to the banjo, Flatt and Scruggs, and bluegrass music which I loved. The plots of the episodes were thin and the characters were cartoonish, given the resumes of some of the actors who played them.

    OT: Yesterday was a difficult day at my house. We said good-bye to our dog Bootsy who became ill and weak in her old age. This morning Phoebe was looking for her and was kind of disoriented without her. But then Lou and I feel that way, too. Our Baboon, tim, says if you have dogs they predictably break your heart every 10 years. That is so true. RIP Bootsy.

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      1. Thank you so much. People have been so kind to us about this, bringing flowers, sending Corgi Memes. Neighbors came to say good-bye. It has been the sweetest experience of being surrounded by the love of community.

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  3. Ben, the corn crop by me is looking decently robust. But he is going to have to contend with all the trash that has blown into it from the gas station.
    There is such a bug difference in the names Bootsy and Boots. Sorry for your sorrow.
    Clyde

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  4. i get so passed when i write a post and it disappears

    this morning i was up early in chicago and went to look for the rock sucking vacuume you can rent to add
    christianson co out of minnesota makes the one i like
    i hate rocks for landscaping and i hate even more trying to remove them check it out
    rock vacuume on google

    i had an unground pool in my folks house from 72 until i sold it in 04 open 4/15 til 10/15 yearly
    i absolutely loved it

    replaced it with a hot tub
    really loved that
    year round

    my wife is from southern illinois which is as much like kentucky as chicago
    they say CEEment and INSurance
    hicks…

    i’m driving back today
    i love that from chicago to my driveway is 2 stoplights once you hit the freeway
    6 hours
    used to bec8

    i can do six in a heartbeat
    like meditation

    i’ll check back

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  5. 1300 crop insurance is an interesting number
    how much is seed? how much would you realize for cashing in the harvest in a bad, ok and exceptional year ?

    i love sandhill cranes there’s something cool about all cranes and herons but sandhills are special. after planting rye is there any reason for them to hang out or doctouvturnover the soil and make it non desirable?

    CEEment pond stuff… after years of doing chemistry class trying to figure out how to get the pH correct and what the right balance of chlorine and acid is in the water and playing all the funny balancing games that you do in the pool I read an article when I had the hot tub that said if you want to simplify your life and figure out how to stop making your skin itch when getting out of the pool, simply swap out all the chemicals and use hydrogen peroxide when I called in to order the 5 gallon jug of hydrogen peroxide, which would have been about a year‘s supply the person who took the order sounded very alarmed and wanted to know what I wanted to 5 gallons of hydrogen peroxide for and when I told them that it was for acting as a sterilization and purification
    thing for a hot tub, the breeze to psi of relief, and told me that I couldn’t proclaim it to be a sanitation thing it had to be proclaimed as a simple purifier it works great

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    1. crop Insurance has different coverage levels; each costing more of course. Hail insurance is optional and is a separate billing. This is only the second claim I’ve had to make for hail (only available on corn and soybeans, not the oats). The insurance kicks in if the price is lower than their ‘average’ or the yield is less.
      I don’t fully understand crop insurance, but some of the government programs I’m enrolled in require it. Some bank loans do as well. See costs for corn are higher than soybeans. Corn seed might cost me $7K to $9K. Soybean seed is about $4K. But corn yields 150 -200 bu / acre and soybeans yield 50 – 80. (or 30 this year)

      The rye is only being used as a cover crop, to keep something growing all fall and to have something there in the spring with snow melt and runoff. Rye has a good deep root system, so its beneficial to the soil. It will grow to 3′ tall and because the fields that were oats this year, that I planted to rye, will be corn next year, it will have to be killed off in the spring. (I get some volunteer oats coming this summer and fall, but it doesn’t over-winter. The rye needs to make 12′ tall to qualify for the ‘cover crop’ program I’m trying this year. Whether that’s this fall or next spring).
      However the last couple years, it’s been so wet in the spring it’s been hard to kill off the rye in a timely manner and if it gets too tall, then the residue left is hard to manage and it makes planting extra difficult so say the magazines. But I figured I’d give it a try and hope the good outweigh the bad.

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  6. When I was a about four we moved to a house with a big yard, and my father put in a water feature. It was a pond about the size of a bathtub, but a little shallower. He also bought an aquarium for the house. The idea was to put fish in the pond and move them indoors for the winter. We had two goldfish who lived in the aquarium while the pond was under construction. They started out little, but after spending a summer in the pond they got big.

    I recall that when my father took them out of the pond, one of them flipped out of the net and fell in between the rocks that surrounded the pond. The fish was successfully retrieved before dying, but it turned completely white, apparently from the shock. I don’t remember if it ever returned to its original color.

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    1. I was four in 1962, so, not surprisingly, I don’t remember most of these. The Jetsons and Beverly Hillbillies must have endured for enough years that they made an impression on me. I did recognize a lot of names of actors and personalities who appeared later in the 60’s in other ventures.

      The ads are fun to see – the boxes on the Chex cereals are so plain and undesigned, they don’t look like anything you’d ever see on a store shelf now. The S & H green stamps ad was actually pretty inventive for that time period.

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