2023, animals, Family, Farming Update, Health, home, pets, Uncategorized

Appreciate it

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Today’s Farming Update is from Ben

It’s been a rough week.

My mom was diagnosed with Covid Sunday. Nothing serious, (well, for a 97 yr old, anything is serious) but she just had cold symptoms. I visited her Sunday afternoon to help with supper and see how she was doing. I used extra precautions. And by Thursday she was pretty much back to her normal.

Monday morning, we learned of the death of one of Kelly’s coworkers. A woman who was the party planner and team cheerleader at work, and usually Kelly’s confidant and meeting co-giggler and chief conspirator. “DD” had become a good friend of the family and she was the first to bring cookies and lemonade when I had shoulder surgery and back surgery. She’d been fighting cancer for 8 years and nothing was working. She started some last-ditch efforts this fall, while being told all the side effects, and the possibility of having about 6 months left. Her son is in 11th grade, and her plan was to be here through his graduation. And then, well, the plan changed. She’d been in the hospital for a few weeks and breathing had become an issue. Then she was diagnosed with Leukemia. She never could get a break. Kelly and I always said she just needed a ‘do over’. Her son is the young padawan who worked with me over the summers. There’s a lot of support and family around and we all hope he realizes that and overcomes all the forthcoming obstacles. Mom and son had talked about this possibility and things are set up well for him.

Tuesday evening, I tested positive for Covid. Made it through 3 years! Just cold symptoms; stuffy nose, a bit of a cough. Tired, with some body aches Wednesday. Right after I told Kelly I shouldn’t be running heavy machinery, I went out and used the tractor and loader and ripped out some stumps and moved some junk, leveled some gravel, and hauled more in, and scraped up some dirt and filled in a hole in the yard that had been there since July. Sometimes we just need to do it, right?  It didn’t involve physical labor, and I needed a nap afterward. By Friday I’m feeling pretty good, still testing positive, and I can tell I have covid brain.

Wednesday, I got word of another death. A fellow theater technician in Rochester. Janet was a lighting designer and technical director at the civic theater for years. She had told me her cancer was back and she had started treatments. She said it was terminal, but she might last 10 years, and she laughed. Two weeks later, she had died. I don’t know details, but it’s another reminder we need to be grateful for each day.

Do the thing! Say I Love You! Make the call! Get past the bitterness!

DD and Janet were just such great people. And it sucks so much they’ve left us too early.

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Nothing harvested yet. I’ve said the soybeans should be OK. “There will at least be a crop there” is what I said last week. That’s still true, but they need to actually be harvested and sold before I can count them. Mine still have some green in them. While we had 27 degrees last week, that was only in the low spots and many plants and weeds are still green. And with the damp, cool weather we’re having, harvest of soybeans isn’t happening. According to the USDA production report and statistics, as of 10/15, 76% of soybeans had been harvested. About average. Soybeans are very susceptible to moisture, so these cool days makes them hard to get dry enough to combine, and the more we get into November, the more cool days we get. So, we keep our fingers crossed.  The corn won’t be an issue getting harvested. Barring windstorms knock-on-wood. I’d like it before the ground freezes so I can do tillage work.

The puppy. We’ve named her Luna. She’s pretty much decided to stay here.

She’s very food oriented and will do anything we want if there’s a treat offered.

The last few days we haven’t had her on a leash. Humphrey has decided she’s not much of a threat. They don’t interact a lot, and he’s got his pillows, which she doesn’t use, and he just kind of accepts this is what it is now. We give him a lot of extra attention. Bailey and Luna play a lot together. I think Bailey is more annoyed that even Luna gets to go in the house! Luna doesn’t pay much attention to the chickens. She can run 25 MPH! We’re in the gator timing her. She’s crazy fast!

I’ve been working out in the shop the last few days getting the door put on the gator. It’s getting colder out, and we want doors. Our first gator had doors, but it was a lemon. This gator showed up without hard doors; it had the net half doors. I ordered the door kit, which showed up in a box 4’ wide and 6’ long on a pallet just as big. While I worked on them, the dogs either hung out inside with me or outside where Luna chewed up a bunch of sticks.

The gator turned over 100 miles. And at 17.7 hours, that’s only 5.6 MPH, which seems kinda slow. With Luna, I’m sure the average will creep up.

I’ve said before how I take the dogs outside before bed and I spend a few minutes out there watching the stars. My buddy Orion is back if I stay up late enough. Jupiter has been a bright light all year. I am grateful.

HOW ARE YOU DOING ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?

58 thoughts on “Appreciate it”

  1. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Ben, COVID really sucks. I am sorry for all of us who endure the bug. Your mom must have a vigorous constitution to sail through it at age 97 years. It seems to be a period of endings for people who are trying to hang on. But really, to lose two people struggling with cancer and the treatment is too much to ask of you and Kelly. Luna, however, is a lucky girl to land with you. The pictures appear to portray a happy girl. Your farm must hold an endless supply of sticks for a dog who loves sticks.

    Do I have a bucket list? I think I did at one point, but during my Summer of Big Endings, I have forgotten. I have just been trying to get the Next Thing completed then I move on to the thing after that. Maybe as the weekend goes on I will re-assemble my bucket list. Retiring was on the list and Idid get that done this summer.

    I am cleaning up the garden today. Lou is going to a Celebration of Life for his aunt who died last month at age 96 years. Phoebe is yipping at me, wanting her morning walk, so I need to tend to that before she turns herself inside out. Then she can hang out with me in the yard while I clean up some beds. There is also a bath in her future. Yesterday I did some clean up at a Community Garden on a gorgeous autumn day. I dug sweet potatoes for two hours. They were giant beauties that the earth gave up.

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    1. True, but watching the dominoes start to fall is increasing my feelings of schadenfreude. I am savoring the thoughts of consequences–45 may lose a great deal of money to Letitia James in NY.

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    2. 45 in jail would be a welcome outcome, but I would find it even more satisfying if he obtained a pardon in exchange for actually telling the truth, in detail, about all the stuff he’s lied about.

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  3. The NWS is talking about a “major snow event” for us late next week. My bucket list right now is just getting the garden cleaned up today and tomorrow. Husband has to spend Monday-Wednesday in Bismarck, so I hope the snow holds off until he makes it home Wednesday night

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  4. Sorry to hear about the friends who passed away, Ben. But glad you and your mother survived Covid. Jacque summed up my feelings about that pretty well.

    I’ve been consciously working on my bucket list more in recent years. Trying to tick off one or two items per year. This year I got a twofer: Visiting Nova Scotia and playing two of the best golf courses in North America.

    Actually, publishing “Little Mountain, Big Trouble” was a bucket list achievement because I’d set that as a goal for myself back in 2016. Of course, that assumed I’d still be writing books after publishing the first one. (Mission accomplished).

    Most of my bucket list items are golf courses I’d like to play. Although, I suppose each BWCA solo trip is a bucket list item too. The only “goal” I have with them is to keep going solo until age 70 (3 more trips). Then I’ll reevaluate my desire/capability. But I actually evaluate after each trip. If it gets to the point of no fun for the effort + too dangerous/risky (balance is the big thing) + just can’t handle the loads any more, then I’ll be done other than single-lake trips (no portaging).

    We’d like to take another camper trailer trip. Thinking of a longish tour of MN state parks (3 weeks or so). We’d visit parks we’ve never been to, especially those in the far northwest and southwest.

    Another bucket list item is making it to 50 years of marriage so we can return to Toronto for the sixth time (honeymoon visit plus return every 10th anniversary). Corny, sure, but for some reason, we love visiting there, even though it’s grown monstrously big in 45 years.

    Now that you’ve got me thinking of bucket lists, I’ll probably come up with a dozen more items. 😦

    Chris in Owatonna

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  7. I’m not sure I really have a bucket list. I’ve never been an over-achiever. I like to relax and read too much. I would like to travel more and there are some specific places I’d like to go. Going to Ireland next year will be huge for me. I’ve started to learn Spanish and Ojibwe but I’m not making enormous progress at either one.

    I’ve always wanted to earn my degree. I never finished it and settled for two Associate Degrees instead. The easy thing to do would be to take online courses. I think a degree in English Lit would suit me.

    I haven’t had covid. Almost everyone I know has had it but this group seems to be more careful. I’ve gotten my covid vaccine, flu vaccine and an RSV vaccine. I didn’t feel good after the RSV and my arm was sore.

    I have a friend who decided to keep a dog who had wandered down her driveway. She checked around with neighbors and no one claimed him. She named him Augie, and he was one of the nicest dogs anywhere. He was some kind of mixed hunting breed. Sometimes a thing is just meant to be.

    I’m making chicken-vegetable soup for my long-time nursing coworker and friend, Deb. Her b-i-l was injured in a serious fall (over 15 feet). He was just discharged from St. Mary’s to home in Faribault, where her sister is caring for him. He can’t walk yet. Her dad had surgery yesterday, and her mom fell in the parking lot. Both were hospitalized last night, then her mom was discharged. She is also taking care of multiple grandchildren, helping with her sister’s husband, and her parents, and more. She’s at the point where a decision will have to be made regarding her parents living situation. Both she and her sister have multiple foster and adopted children and extended families living at home. She never asks me for help but she did last night, then she backed off and said she’d let me know. So I decided to make some soup.

    I heard that Tuesday through Friday this coming week will be wet and getting colder every day. It’s that time of year.

    I’m very sorry to hear about all the losses to cancer, Ben.

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      1. She’s never been the type. Her other sister is coming on Monday and she’ll get some help. Sometimes just a good meal is enough. I made them some chicken-vegetable soup.

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  8. The loss of loved ones always brings me back to Matthew 10:29-31: “Two sparrows sell for a coin of small value, do they not? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. But even the hairs of you head are all numbered. So have no fear; you are worth more than many sparrows.”
    Being a little preachy, I expect loved ones who have died to get an eventual good life.

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  9. That was quite a week, Ben. I hope everyone involved has good loving support around them. It seems to be when several deaths or tragedies happen in clusters, it really catches our attention. Hope your Covid is over soon..

    Another bucket list item here is my wish to downsize – again, now that we’ve been in this new place 7 years and there has been, shall we say, slippage from our downsize during the move.

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    1. I was just reading, in an essay by E. B. White, this:

      For some weeks now I have been engaged in dispersing the contents of this apartment, trying to persuade hundreds of inanimate objects to scatter and leave me alone. It is not a simple matter. I am impressed by the reluctance of one’s worldly goods to go out again into the world.

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  11. I have never had a bou-quette lyst as such. Sandy and I have shared one for the last four years, with a single item: that I would outlive her. I put a lot of effort into that, as a matter of fact. I worry about cancer and such.

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  12. I am either highly resistent to COVID or have had it without knowing it. Sandy has had it twice in her assisted living place and I visited during that. The building has three times locked down except for close family.

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  13. Today was so beautiful. 58°, sunny, no wind. We took up soaker hoses and tomato cages, pulled up tomato plants and squash vines, and emptied the greenery at the city dumpsters. Tomorrow we trim raspberry canes, Iris, peonies. and day lilies and then we are done!

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  14. glad you can find the message
    don’t take it for granted
    find happiness and stay there

    bucket list is australia mount everest’s peaks may be beyond me maybe just karma do
    killamenjaro
    antarctica
    scandinavia
    one more million dollar business start up running

    dancing at the weddings of a grandchild from each of my children

    lake celestine one more time (jasper provincial park)

    more later i’ll bet

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      1. One of Sandy’s CNAs is from Kathmandu, but has lived much of her life in the US. Both her parents teach here. She is a very friendly little young woman, as the Nepalese are reported to be. A nursing student. Very feisty. Charming agkzent. Also very intelligent.
        Clyde

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  15. A bucket list seems to me too fixed and inflexible. My interests and intentions are open to revision and, hopefully, growth. As Thoreau said in different circumstances, “One world at a time.”

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  16. Sorry it has been such a rough week, Ben. I hope you somehow manage to harvest what’s left in your fields.

    I do love that Luna has joined your family. She looks mighty comfortable with Kelly. I must confess to be envious of Kelly’s glorious mane of red hair.

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  17. I don’t have a bucket list – when my time comes, I don’t want to give myself a chance to regret anything that I didn’t get to. Of course, I’ve been very lucky in my life – I have a very full list. – YA, friends, great job, fabulous travel, loving pets.

    I will admit to occasionally saying “if I had a bucket list, this would be on it”. The latest two would be my trip to Peru/ Macchu Picchu and then walking with llamas at Carlsen’s Llama Farm!

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