2024, animals, Farming Update, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Rusty Summer

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben


As I started writing this on Thursday I wrote, “Well, it hasn’t rained yet this week, oh wait, it’s sprinkling now.” And now late Friday afternoon, we’ve gotten another inch. I think it sprinkled Monday, it sprinkled Tuesday, sprinkled Thursday. Never amounted to much but it’s just kinda
damp everywhere. I’ve got springs down by the barn, got springs around back, got a wet spot in front of the duck pen, got a big lake in the neighbor’s field with several ducks in there. Nothing we haven’t had before, it’s just been a few years.

I did notice the rust on the Oats really came out earlier this week. It’s a fungus that overwinters on Buckhorn, (yet another reason to hate Buckhorn), and then it’s moved by wind, and loves high humidity and moisture. Although I’ve never seen it turn a field brown like it has in a couple of spots. The end of one field seems worse than others, and that could be because it’s sheltered by trees, so maybe it doesn’t get much sunshine, plus some different soils. It was a little stressed in the first place. Of my 25 acres of oats, this is just a few acres in that field.


The rest of it is waist high, and there could be a lot of grain out there. Not gonna count the bushels before they’re in the truck or weighed at the elevator, but it’s looking good right now.


Corn is waist tall as well.


The ducklings are growing fast, and as expected, everything’s wet in their pen too. This weekend, I will probably get them out of their starter tank and into a larger pen. More room to spill water and find dry spots.

We made good progress on the fence this week. Last summer‘s Padawan came back to help this summer’s Padawan. I forgot what two teenage boys are like together. (snicker, eye roll, fart noises). As of this writing, the fence is about 80% done. I have to set four or five wood posts yet, and grass, and the whole thing is just a pain. Not to mention I’m a lot older than I was the last time I made a fence. It’s been strangely fun using the old rope wire stretcher (to pull the wire tight before attaching it to the posts). My brother was skeptical that it is still the original rope. And I used the new , longer handles on the post hole digger!


Back to some theater projects for a while. Tuesday, myself and ten volunteers tore out the old stage at THE REP. New stage will be roughly the same size, just a few inches taller, and built so it doesn’t squeak. The biggest change is backstage: tearing down a bunch of shelves, and
platforming the whole thing from end to end and wall to wall. Also insulating some walls, and blocking off some tall windows that are kind of a problem.


After the fence, after the stage, then, THEN I’m gonna start working on my machine shed shop again. Honestly, one of these days. And in a month, I’ll be down in Chatfield working on a show there, “SpongeBob SquarePants, the musical”. Friday afternoon, myself and another guy were out cutting up another township tree blocking a
road. In the rain.



It wasn’t too bad. We cut it up and I called a neighbor who used his skidloader to push it off the road. A tree company will be out Monday to pick it up. I was going to have them take this tree down anyway as it was leaning over the road. Guess I can cross that one off the list. I’ve got at least 4 trees down in the fields. At this point, I’d knock down more crop trying to clear up the tree than if we just harvest around it. So probably leave them until this fall.


Here’s some chickens:


Here’s a butterfly on a flower:


WHICH NEIGHBOR, LIVING OR DEAD, ARE YOU CALLING FOR HELP?

36 thoughts on “Rusty Summer”

  1. That depends on what kind of help we needed. The young woman next door is a doctor. If we had a medical emergency we might call her first. When they go out of town we feed their cats for them. In the winter, if we get a significant snow, I snow blow out their driveway (and the public sidewalk along our side of the block).

    I can’t think of an instance where I’ve needed help from a neighbor, but several where I am the neighbor who helps. There’s an old guy across the street (five years older than me!) who enlists my help from time to time. I helped him move a large television, helped him figure out his new thermostat, helped him hook up his tv to cable by way of his vcr player. He has never had a computer and is flummoxed by digital devices.

    A neighbor across the alley once recruited me to care for his chickens and ducks when he went on an extended trip.

    Another neighbor solicited my help in laying a Pergo floor.

    If I were to be honest, I am hesitant to ask anyone for help. I prefer to work at my own pace and on my own schedule. There have been instances where that entailed devising ways to accomplish alone things that would have been simpler with a helper.

    Our dead neighbors are unreliable.

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  3. In Robbinsdale, our next-door neighbor Ken enlisted Husband’s help in his house remodeling, and Husband learned some useful electrical skills. Then Ken helped us build the Screen Porch.

    Our next-door neighbors here are good – we help each other out with all kinds of small things – we watched their dogs during the day when they’ve been away, gave him our old motorcycle, and then he gave us a battery lawnmower… We could call on them in a pinch and vice versa. They are also where we get our farm fresh eggs.

    I think occasionally of a nice Norwegian couple who lived next to us when we were in Storm Lake. I remember sitting on their screen porch once… RIP.

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  4. Rise and Shine,Baboons, from JacAnon,

    Throughout my life I have been blessed with some wonderful neighbors. The one whose memory I call on most is Harry. He lived two houses down from my parents’ home in LeMars, having retired there from the Methodist ministry. Harry was the minister at the “College Church” in LeMars when my parents attended Westmar College; therefore, he knew them as Young Adults.

    Harry had gift of magically showing up in our kitchen when we most needed him. He taught our family how to play cribbage and he would visit my father (at home with MS) daily. We kids would arrive home from school to find Harry and Dad and sometimes Uncle Jim in front of the Cribbage Board. He would stay until Mom arrived home from her day. That was the biggest gift. Harry seemed to be aware of our mother’s instability and stress intolerance. If he was there when she arrived home she stayed calm and sometimes would play cribbage with them.

    Harry was also our Handy Man. He fixed things and built a bedroom for me in the basement so my sister and I would have our own rooms. That reduced fighting between us remarkably.

    So when I need to find my own emotional equanimity, Harry still appears with his cribbage board. And Voila.

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  6. I was awakened by the dog this morning at 5:00 my time (we are in the Mountain time zone) and I checked the blog and saw.I had neglected to insert the header photo. I noticed that someone else was editing the blog, too. VS was up at the same time I was due to her dog, but I had the photo and she didn’t, so I won the editing contest!

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    1. You two sure are good at this stuff.

      I had trouble getting a complete copy of the blog to Reneeinnd. I don’t know why it kept only copying partial pages. Somehow it left out a sentence as well.

      Where I’m talking about the fence, and setting some posts yet, it’s supposed to say ” I have to set four or five wood posts yet, because of all the rain, the dirt I took out of the holes is packed down, and hard, and mixed in the grass, and the whole thing is just a pain”

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      1. A little found poem:

        I have to set four or five wood posts yet,

        because of all the rain,

        the dirt I took out of the holes is packed and hard,

        and mixed in the grass,

        and the whole thing is just a pain.

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    1. I wouldn’t mind getting up so early to feed him if he would just eat and then go back to sleep. After he eats he jumps back in bed with a ball to chew on, and then the ball rolls off the bed and rolls under the dresser, and then he can’t get it out, and he whines, and one of us has to retrieve the ball, and by that time I can’t get back to sleep anyway, so I just get up.

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        1. my damn cat who has no voice for the last 18 years decided to start meowing really loudly at sunup now that I’m not getting up early for amazon deliveries any more

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  8. We ended up with just over 2″ again from Thursday through Friday night. Jeepers.

    As I was growing up, we had one set of neighbors to our North that I know Dad didn’t get along with. We never had much to do with them, except when Dad was yelling at them about their cattle being out. Our neighbors could be a few miles away, and Norm cut and combined the oats until he passed. Then it was Richard until he passed. Then it was Kevin until he upgraded equipment to the point it didn’t do oats. I hired Loren to combine one year. And then eventually I bought my own swather for cutting oats, and Parm bought the pick up head for his combine.

    Often, when out picking up township ditch garbage or tree’s, someone will stop and help.

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  11. Great farming update, Ben! Thanks! And thanks for all the behind-the-scenes work on the blog, Renee and VS! Your efforts are appreciated.

    I can think of lots of neighbors, some wonderful, some not so much. Charlie Altermatt was a drunk who once shot at us when we were down in the lake. Dad (also drunk) went over to talk to him. The sheriff was summoned. Charlie kept to himself after that.

    Lori was the most helpful neighbor I think I ever had. She was like a sister to me, and she helped me through some painful teenage stuff.

    My friend Pam was kind of a neighbor. She was my only friend in Waterville. We were about three blocks apart. I took care of her dog for her for about three months per year when she first started going to AZ in the winter. Then when I went back to nursing in Northfield and Faribault, Pam went over to my house and took Pippin to hers where he had a good time playing with Misty, barking at the mail carrier with Misty, spinning in circles with Misty, and being overfed and completely spoiled by Pam. We don’t live close to each other anymore but I know she would help me if I needed it, and I would help her too.

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  12. Justin was my best man and oldest friend. He was a stucco and sheetrock guy a landlord who fixed up and maintained duplexes. He taught me to do most of my handyman stuff and was my go to guy for years like when I was away in china and we’d get a foot of snow down my long driveway or my pipes froze but we all age differently and Justin is a really old 70 who had to stop being sheetrock guy and now helps out in a hardware store.
    today I call my boys having 30-40 year old sons and son in laws that can help is wonderful, neighbors and friends … nope

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  13. Growing up the valley below us still had the grange in place, no longer officially a grange. My father with me in tow would help anyone and ask for help. I bet that included 30 or more people in all, mostly valley neighbors.
    When I moved back to TH, my next door neighbor and I shared coffee many days in the summer as well as helping each other and the cabin owner across the highway. Then a polite almost sweet licensed electrical genius moved in on the other side. He helped out with more than electricity. But how wonderful to have that electrical skill that close. He shared some tricks.

    When we moved to Mankato we had a drunk on one side. Nice when drunk or sober, but often in legal trouble and once dumped his four year old daughter on us in the middle of the night. The man behind us objected to everything I did. On the other side of us was a gentle old man who we often helped out.
    Then we bought a patio home in a community. Everything was wrong with that. The couple who had the other half of our building were as rude as it gets. Complained about us over petty things but refused to stop playing their TV against the common wall at extreme volume in the middle of the night. We moved out and into the apartment. Most of our neighbors just pass through. Mary, however, had been there before us. We have patios next to each other and used to both have lots of flower pots. I stopped. She has a compassionate ear.

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    1. We’ve got a neighbor across the valley who is very definitely ‘redneck’. We don’t see each other very often, but we can hear him shooting fireworks, fixing cars and revving the engines (for the demo derby – and the yard full of cars in various states) at all hours, or shooting guns.

      I wonder what they hear from our place…

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