2023, animals, education, Family, Farming Update, Gatherings, Uncategorized, work

Heat!

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Today’s Farming Update post comes from Ben.

No snow this year. I’m kinda OK with that. I’m sure it’s coming yet…we got 2 or 3 months of winter to get through, so I’m hooking up the rear blade and I’ll keep watching the forecast and I’ll get the snow blower in the shed if I have too. We will need the moisture somehow, and the cold weather does help kill bugs, but these up and down temps are really hard on cattle. Pneumonia and respiratory issues are common with these temperature fluctuations.

The farm magazines are making predictions and they pretty much always say “stay the course”. Don’t make drastic changes in crop rotations or marketing plans. Yet. I’ve gotten pecuniary plans from the co-op for fertilizer and spraying for 2024 and things are actually down a little bit from 2023. A few thousand dollars here and a few thousand there and pretty soon I’m talking real money. But I’m not planning any more major projects for next year. Yet. I mean beyond getting the fourth wall in the shed. We may not do that next slab of concrete. Yet.

County property tax adjuster was here this week. The permit for my shed remodeling project came in and he was following up. I know the guy from our township business with the county, and we talked for half an hour. Five minutes of that had to do with the shed remodeling.

Yesterday I got a 100 gallon propane tank placed so I can have temporary heat in the shed this winter. The deliver guy joked I was going to use a lot of propane trying to heat the whole shed. Yep. I better get the temp wall up. That’s my plan for these couple warm days. So far I’m not making much progress.

While I’m making plans for shed heat, back on Sunday night it was 8° and the well house thermometer was showing 35° and I am a gambling man and I hate to pay for electricity I don’t really need to use, but it’s also worth hedging your bets and I went out and turned on the well house heater. It was 18° the next morning but I slept soundly knowing I didn’t have to worry about that.
Myself, and I know other people, use that phrase: I may do something that seems extreme, but, “I will be able to sleep at night”.

Got my final dividend check from AMPI, the co-op to whom I sold milk. They are on a 20 year dividend payout and this was my last one. Whopping $2.19 cents. Twenty years since I milked a cow and did all those chores seems like a lifetime ago. Seems like a whole DIFFERENT life. And it really was. I wouldn’t of missed it for anything. I still miss the cows’ personalities, and the situations they gave me and the people I met as a result.

Our kids daycare having a barn and farm tour.


Our bulk tank was a “Zero” brand. Kind of an oddball as the company had a unique design that didn’t work the way most dairy pipelines did. It was the first pipeline we installed in 1983 replacing the Surge brand buckets. Surge buckets were revolutionary when they came out in the 1920’s. (See this website for a lot of interesting information. “Interesting” if you’re into that sort of thing. https://www.surgemilker.com/history.html

The zero pipeline had some really unique features, but it also had a couple pretty serious drawbacks that affected the cows health. Too complicated to get into here. I replaced the pipeline, (keeping the Zero tank) in the mid 1990s with a Delaval system; a much more traditional system that was easier to service and cheaper parts. I sold the bulk tank a few years after we sold the milk cows. I saw a video online the other day of the same brand of tank and it brought back some nostalgic memories.

This photo was the milk house. The bulk tank is on the left. 600 gallons. Note the step stool to reach the lid for cleaning or samples. The four milker units are hanging, for washing, on the right. Wow, looking at this photo myself gives me so many memories. So many things I fixed over the years and so much time spent in there. The milkhouse was remodeled when we did the pipeline in 1983, but before that it was still the milkhouse and I remember washing the old bulk tank and surge milkers in there and my folks would say, “How did you get so wet??”. Well, I was washing stuff. Shrug. My history.


This photo was the ‘receiver jar’. You can see the milk came into that, and when it was about 2/3rds full, it pumped over to the bulk tank. I really loved having that jar. I know I’ve mentioned it before, but that was my favorite part of dairy farming: watching the milk rush into that and pump out. I’d watch that jar for hours.


Everybody travel safe if you are.
Merry Christmas and/or Happy Holidays!

HAVE YOU EVER HAD TO DO SOMETHING SO YOU COULD SLEEP?  WHERE WERE YOU IN 2003?

39 thoughts on “Heat!”

  1. it’s been a long time since i couldn’t get to sleep because i was so unnerved by the way the world was spinning
    im maybe too comfortable with chaos and my mo is to put one foot in front of the other heading in the hopefully correct direction until it’s time to put my head down for a recharge
    i’m having a bit of trouble sleeping at the moment because of the damn broken leg i came home with a week ago. flat on my back , no rolling , right knee elevated, pee jar, water, tea, oat milk on the bedside table and tcm christmas favorites running all night as well as all day

    2003 emma was 2 ( she graduated college and is the high school english teacher )
    olivia was 4 (my theatrical star) spencer was 8 and doing all school events possible
    devin 16 and tara 14 back and forth from their moms house
    i was traveling to china and vacationing at disney and in the midst of my being a homebuilder.
    it’s amazing what a 20 year blip will do

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      1. got a walker and a cane but they had to cut enough muscles to fix the break i’m not gonna have any strength to lift my foot or leg for another week or two
        doing some exercise to get ready but it is couch time

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  2. No, I don’t think I’ve ever had to take anything to sleep, except maybe a decongestant when I had a cold.

    2003, wow – Husband was still working, and I was at Birchbark Books helping manage the office.

    And from the list I keep of vacations:
    Albuquerque and Deming, NM (high school friend) in Feb.;

    Berkeley, CA for Thanksgiving – my sister’s place, then
    Ukiah (2 hours north of Berkeley), where step-son was living
    Joel went with us for the California trip…

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Wow Ben, be sure you invest the $2.19 wisely.

    I have so much disrupted sleep due to genetics, being post-menopausal, and because the medical establishment cannot quite take the time to put together a plan to actually care for a patient. Therefore, I never get down to having an issue that is so challenging that it disrupts my sleep. I struggle with sleep on a good day without a problem to solve.

    2003: planning to leave Chrysalis for private practice. My son was 22yo and at the end of young adult struggles and moving in and out of my house. I just made sure he had health insurance. My dog was Cocoa, the hyperactive and untrainable Rat Terrier. DJT was a weird and incompetent businessman who I ignored. Sometime there we put in our first garden fence to prevent the rabbits from eating my veggies. Lou and I were planning a trip to Italy in 2004.

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  5. I can think of many times I had to do “just one more thing” in order to go to sleep. For example, for Rock Bend, I had to transport a LOT of food in a 1992 Honda Civic. I had to be over in St. Peter by 10 a.m. to set it all up backstage, so I would prep the night before for the chaotic morning that I knew was coming. I would try to put as much food as possible in the car ahead of time but there were a lot of things that needed refrigeration. Most of the containers were too big for any cooler I had, like big crock pots, a roaster, large plastic containers full of veggies and cookies and bars, and more. I had so much to think about that my mind would spin and I’d keep thinking of one more thing. I’d get out of bed to take care of it, then go back to bed and think of another one more thing. I didn’t ever get much sleep during Rock Bend, making me unable to respond socially as I normally would.

    In 2003 I lived in Waterville.

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  6. In 2003 I was pregnant for the 2nd half (Daughter arrived in May of 2004) – working at a small company with fantastic folks. 20 years on I have changed employers, Daughter is in college (she is moving to the U of MN starting in January – it is a good move for her and I will not be sad to only have a 15 minute drive to see her vs the 5 hours to Milwaukee).

    What keeps me awake at night or helps me sleep? Well, snoring Frenchies are a good soporific… but most anything can keep me awake if my brain is in a mood – remembering a thing I haven’t done yet for work, pondering how to convey a message, why does my hip/knee/other thing hurt and how can I move to it hurts less, making plans for upcoming events (where should we go this time for dinner before the show?)… and then, inevitably, oh crap I forgot to call to set up an appointment for… usually about then I try to concentrate on the snoring doggos in hopes that the steady rhythm of snores lulls me to sleep.

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    1. milwaukee is a great town that makes you really appreciate minneapolis
      i think marquette will make u of m look good too

      love the dog snoring rythum
      i’ll have to try that one

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  7. I don’t usually have any trouble sleeping and I don’t worry much about things I can’t affect. But I am sensitive to any noise that seems unfamiliar—something running that I can’t identify and especially if it sounds like running water or the sump pump running abnormally. In those instances I have to check it out before I can relax.

    In 2003 we were living in our favorite house, our dream house really, and I was doing well producing books for several publishers. The economy was receding, however, and those publishers were pulling back on production. By the end of 2004 we had downsized into our current home and I had had to find other sources of income.

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  8. I have taken a few things, stronger things in the past, to help me sleep. Brain would not go into sleep cycle. Not stress or anything. Just messed up body chemistry. I have had a lot of that. Now I take trazadone so pain does not wake me during the night. And I fill my eyes with gel so dry eyes don’t wake me.
    Every so often I hear Sandra’s voice in the night, which wakes me briefly. When she first moved out it happened often and I could not get back to sleep. Now I am used to it.

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  9. This up and down weather is very hard on my migraines and sinuses. Plus the pollution we now have almost every day. Hard on Sandra’s colon problems too.
    Ben, I still get pay offs from coop light and power. They have been about $150 -180. I have two smaller ones to go but not that small.
    I, too, miss the personality of cows. And horses and cats.
    We had heat tapes on a thermostat wrapped around pump and pipes in our well house. But they seldom kicked in.very well insulated building and pump was six feet below ground. Advantage of living on side of rather steep hill. But pipe to barn some years would freeze because it was lower down the hill and gravity fed. But we only needed to water animals. No milk house. My father carried water in the morning. I carried in the afternoon. It took a long time into spring for the pipes to thaw.

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    1. Clyde, you are in good company. Both my daughter-in-law and I had migraines yesterday, the day we celebrate Christmas together. Big weather change.

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    2. Down in the barn, where the water pipe comes into the barn, I have heat tape wrapped around the lower section of that. When it was full of cows, it was never a problem. There’s only about a foot exposed before the valve and the rest is drained. That happen 20 years ago too.

      I rebuilt the well house in 2015 or so and I reinsulated. But when we get to single digits and below I need extra heat.

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  10. My sleep strategy is to silently recite the US States and Canadian provinces in alphabetical order. I am usually asleep by Maine and Manitoba. If I make it to Wyoming I start again, only this time in reverse order.

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    1. My mom talked about counting by 3’s or 7’s. I tried it with daughter a few times and she hated the IDEA of it so it didn’t work.
      For myself, if I focus on my breathing I’ll be out quick.

      There have been several sets that I’ve built, and it might be how many castors underneath or how to support something and I’ll add extras, “So I can sleep at night”. Lighting and DMX cables. I CAN use 3 pin mic cables and they work right until they don’t, or I can use the more expensive 5 pin DMX cable and have a much more reliable plan. And I can sleep better.

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      1. The meditation app I use has many many for sleep, all to some degree focused on breathing. Some only on breathing. Since I don’t have trouble with sleep I have never tried them.

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    2. i go exactly the opposite way
      i try to go blank
      get that tingle sleepiness like hyperventilation and drift into imagined cotton candy clouds in that purple orange sunset

      or a picture of the moment that allows pure drift

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    3. I try to avoid mental activity. No making lists or counting sheep. Instead I close my eyes in the dark and wait to see what I see. Usually it’s patterns of color and they’re fleeting but I am always surprised at what my mind generates. I think of it kind of like a fireworks show—you just wait expectantly.

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    4. If I wake up in the middle of the night and don’t seem to be falling back asleep easily, I recite the opening scenes of the movie Laura to myself. Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb. I can get to about the 10-minute mark by heart. If I realize that my brain has strayed off of this dialogue, then I start over. This works really well for me.

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      1. It all seems to be about getting the brain to focus on one thing, instead of being “all over”, which is my problem some nights, I just can’t get my brain to turn off.

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        1. I try not to focus. I try not to push any line of thought. My mind drifts but doesn’t stick anywhere. I’m always surprised where it drifts undirected.

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  12. I turn on a playlist on my phone, I set the timer for 15 minutes and very seldom do I hear it End. Heck, I’m not sure I even get to the second song. I start the music, I roll to my right side, and I’m out.

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  14. I’m pretty stationary. In 2003 I was still at BIW, I was still in this house, I had the same landline, the same cell phone number. YA was eight and it was her first year back in the new elementary school. They tore her old school completely down and rebuilt it the year she was in the second grade (up in St. Louis Park on Excelsior and 100) so it was brand spanking new in third grade.

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  15. 2003 was four residents ago, if I count moving across the hall in my present building. For Sandra it was five. I was miserable in my job but we were have fun in our little camper. I was putting miles on my bike. I was carving and painting and woodworking. So despite trouble finding a place that suited us and getting away from two nasty workmates, it was good times.

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  16. In 2003 I was in my current house, had three cats, drove a Ford Escort wagon. I was working at the gardening business, and also putting in some part time/seasonal hours at the flower shop.

    Late in 2003 my mom died, so Thanksgiving and Christmas were sort of subdued that year.

    Hope everyone is enjoying their holiday weekend!

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