2023, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, gardening, Nature

The Path Less Traveled

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Going home the other day and I was thinking about the grassy strip down the middle of our driveway. I don’t remember that happening when I was a kid. And maybe it’s because back then several tractors had narrow front tires. Meaning the front wheels were right under the hood and ran down the middle of the road, so maybe that kept the grass down.

Dad bought a ‘wide’ front end for the 730 tractor at some point. It had to do with mowing hay and how you didn’t want to run over what you had just cut. It also gives the tractor more stability, but that wasn’t such a big deal back then. There were even some tractors that had single front tires. (Dad used to talk about getting new rear tires on the 630 tractor, then mowing in the calf pen where there is a pretty good hill and the tractor slid sideways down the hill because the lugs on the new tires were too straight.) After he arrived at the bottom, unscathed, after he got off and kissed the ground and thanked the Lord, he ordered different tires to be put on the tractor. Not that wide front tires would have helped that. All tractors have wide front ends now. And we have a grassy strip down the middle of the road.

Along the lines of ‘remember when’, I miss grocery stores loading your groceries. I know there are a few that will still. Was that a convenience or not? Seems like it would have been. The store employees wouldn’t have to go get carts and there wouldn’t be cart corrals taking up parking spaces. Let alone checking ourselves out in the store. Barlows, which was the ‘fancy’ grocery store when I was growing up, had an underground grocery delivery system. They had two lines of cars picking up groceries; the groceries were put in totes, which came up in an island between two lanes. Faster service, I guess. We never went there. It just sounds like a cool idea. Only once in my life do I remember going to a full-service gas station. It was prom night, and I was in a tux. I got full service that night. No inuendo intended.

I talked about all the acorns a couple weeks ago. Mixed in with the acorns is goose poop. Rochester is known for the Giant Canadian Goose. There are mixed opinions about those gooses. They used to be bragged about and families would travel from all over to see and feed the 5000+ geese at Silver Lake. The power plant discharged warm water into the lake, so it never froze over, which is why the geese liked it so well. As you can imagine, that is a lot of goose poop. I remember the city buying a ‘Mean Green Poop Machine’. The local Post Bulletin had a snipped about it.

“The Green Machine’s days were less bright. Ballyhooed on its arrival as the same equipment put to work around Buckingham Palace (a certain park department leader was heard to exclaim that if it was good enough for the queen of England, it was good enough for the city of Rochester), in the end all the machine delivered was a big, filthy smear to rival that of any political mudfight.”

The machine arrived in May of 1999. It sat in storage for a long time and was ultimately traded in on something else in roughly 2015. They tried hard to market them; there was goose poop art, and the goose is on the Rochester city flag.

There was talk of an updated city flag. I don’t know what became of that since the new design finalists in 2018.

Mother Clucker was down to 9 chicks last time we saw them. They’ve pretty much decided they don’t have to listen to Mom anymore and they spread out all over on their own. She seems to have abandoned them; or at least given up shepherding them. The last few days we just haven’t been down there or around enough to see them. Last night when they were all in the pen, I only found 5 MC Chicks. Four were on one side, one was all alone in mama’s old nesting spot, and all the spring chicks were jammed in behind the screen door. It’s possible there’s more chicks in there somewhere.

My soybeans have begun to turn yellow. You can see from the header photo, they’re not even Humphrey tall. Once they start turning yellow, within a few days the entire field will be yellow, then the leaves all off. Harvest could be a month out yet for me. Some guys will be going any day now.

Had my young friend Josh out last week to climb on the roof and do all those things I *shouldn’t* do anymore.

He made it look so easy! He made it look like I should be able to do that. And I’d climb to the top of the ladder…but that last step from ladder to roof, I just don’t feel comfortable, nor trust myself, doing it. And I didn’t. And he got it all taken care of. Over the new shop area, he replaced the old poly skylights with steel, and replaced a missing skylight down in the pole barn. I checked a couple more things off the list.

If you can’t beat them, join them. Discussion?

44 thoughts on “The Path Less Traveled”

  1. In my youth I worked as a grocery carry-out. That was our job, packing and carrying out groceries for customers. We didn’t expect a tip for doing our job. I was required to give a small portion of my meager wages to the butcher’s union. These days I avoid grocery stores that expect you to let a carry-out accompany you to your car. They’re about as welcome to me as a washroom attendant.

    I also worked for a while at a full-service gas station. A 24 hour full-service station. I worked nights because I was a student during the day. It was the middle of winter. The manager skimmed money from his employees. Worst job ever.

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  3. (I am not the anonymous above.)
    I remember tractor tires with ballast in them (water with some form of salt). You never wanted to let them fall to the ground. They weighed a lot, which was the point, of course. My father would fill tires for valley folks.
    Corn in front of me turned yellow and orange with a tinge of green in one day. My daughter is up north of Two Harbors sending us lots of pictures of bright red maples. A few trees showing some color over by Sandy.
    Clyde

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    1. I have calcium chloride in the loader tractor tires. It’s kind of a hassle changing the tire or anything. And it’s corrosive to metal, so if the valve stem leaks, it’s a problem. And if changing the tire, they have to pump all that out first. But it adds a lot of weight – which is especially important for the loader. It used to be a lot more common, but now it’s become wheel weights. Some inside the tire; meaning on the axle, but inside by the cab. Some outside on the tire. They tried beet juice, which has a low freezing point, and some other liquid that wouldn’t freeze. When I bought my first tractor, the Deutz in 1986, it came up from the south somewhere. It was winter and after sitting for a few days, the tires rode terrible; WUMP wump WUMP wump wump WUMP – water in the tires had frozen so the balance was WAY off. Had to get it in a warm shop and thaw and add calcium.

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      1. Yes, calcium chloride. Could not remember. Awful stuff. Last summer I was home I had to switch from steel wheels to rubber tires by myself. But they were leaning right in place right beside where the tractor was parked. But it as still dicey rocking them back and forth and adjusting the lug bolts.

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  4. We had one grocery store in Luverne when I was growing up. It was a Supervalu store. Many high school kids worked there. The owner was a really tall, big guy named Kenny who the carryout boys nicknamed Dancing Silo, after Dancing Bear from Captain Kangaroo.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Regarding ladders, I am with all of by staying off of anything too high. They used to be fun, but that has passed. In 2009 during a family trip to Italy, my sister-in-law’s mother was there in Venice. She missed a rung on a ladder between a dock and the taxi-boat and fell badly, resulting in a bruised face and torso. I took that as a warning to myself.

    Ben, most farmstead driveways I have known have the strip of green weeds in the middle. I always took it as a given. In the winter it is replaced with a rise of ice and snow that is not as packed down as the stuff under the wheels.

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  6. I will negotiate about almost anything, and I try to see both sides to an issue. I sometimes waver about food and health care choices, because I mostly just read what catches my eye, which mostly supports what I already think.

    There are times when I say “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
    In the current political arena, this is not one of those times.

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  7. Your talking about tractors, old and new, reminded me of when I was eleven and my uncle who was seven years older than than me and he invited me to drive his tractor to pick up hay bales from the hay field. I think I had driven it before. It had those front wheels close to each other, when I let the clutch out too fast the front came off the ground. My uncle took over and didn’t let me drive it again. It was scary with the heavy wagon full of hay behind it. I don’t think he let me drive it again, but let me drive the pickup which didn’t pop up if I let the clutch out too fast. If I was eleven it would have been 1953. Memory still strong.  Cynthia “Life is a shifting carpet…learn to dance.”

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  8. We are getting a nice rain here. Had over an inch last night and we must have at least half an inch today again.
    Too late for the crops, but we always need the rain. Now with harvest approaching, it doesn’t need to rain an inch every week. Fussy fussy fussy.

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    1. We had about an inch of rain today. No wind. No hail. Just lovely. Great for the raspberries for next summer and all the other plants preparing for winter. No frost for at least 10 days. We often have had a killing frost by now.

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    2. Will there be a shed-warming party when this is done? You have worked long and hard! Does it have a metal roof? The rain on a metal roof makes an amplified sound I will not forget.

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      1. I wrote a chapter about standing in a wood roof machine shed after a shared moment between a father and son and the drumming of the heavy rain drowning out conversation but uniting them in the moment.

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      2. I was thinking there should be a party when finished. Remember, heat and the fourth wall will be next year. We’ll see how this fall goes. Last year went so well, that’s what prompted all of this. Haha- jokes on me!

        The rain in the shed; yeah, it is a metal roof and it always sounds like it’s raining so much harder than it is from inside. But with the ceiling insulation in the new part, it’s barely noticeable. Looking forward to that.

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  11. Went out to feed the birds. Even though the air is still not good for me, it is wash fresh and clean by the rain. Made me feel alive.
    We had many tracks through our fields, through neighbors fields, through the woods. All had the central grass line despite the fact our tractor had two center front tires. The tractor was pulling heavy things and had its heavy back tires. But we also drove a truck and pickup through those tracks.
    Clyde

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  13. I’m trying to beat WP lately. It logs me out all the time, won’t let me “like” anything, and tells me everything is a duplicate comment. It also delays any post or comment I try to make. The appearance of the log-in box has changed a lot. I’m not sure what I have done. I can’t beat it but it’s not really letting me join easily either.

    We got 2” rain here since yesterday evening. I wish the rain would have come in June and July for you, Ben. I hope the drought is over.

    I have commented to the check-out clerks that the customers have more to do than the clerk these days. I always try to use a clerk instead of a self check-out. After having your items scanned and totaled and paying for everything, you still have to bag your own. As you’re trying to bag things in a safe and logical manner, they’re rushing the next person’s items through on top of you. I always feel so rushed.

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    1. The only place I have to bag my stuff is Menards. I’m waiting for them to do self check, but I’m not sure they will. And half the time my stuff is charged to the theater, so then I’d have to wait for help anyway…

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  14. I’m feeling beaten by XXXpresident Donny’s Big Lie. How it came to be that millions of people believe that the 2020 election was “stollen” and rigged by Democrats, is beyond logic. Not one Trumpist has put forward an explanation as to how hundreds of down ballot Republicans won their elections on the same ballot as Trump.
    Beaten but I’ll be damned if I join ’em.

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  16. More OT-There is an enormous flock of little sparrows perching on our tomato cages in the front yard, eating something from the space between the garage foundation and the sidewalk. Bugs? Seeds?

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  18. I feel I should comment just because I can. Don’t really have anything to contribute, so I’ll keep it short. After months of WP woes, I have apparently been redeemed.

    Ben I loved today’s blog. Nice job.

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