2024, Farming Update, gardening, Technology, Weather

Survey Says

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Man, it just keeps raining. Thursday afternoon, we were headed to my sister’s house a few miles away, and it rained so hard we could barely see to drive. We had gotten .2″ of rain in the morning, came home to see we gained another 1.6″ which came hard and fast. I could see where it overflowed some culverts, and backed up behind others. We had some washouts on a couple township roads, and I was out Friday putting warning signs up to alert drivers until we can get them graded on Monday. And I said it was wet LAST week. This latest rain came with some wind too and the oats are a little ruffled. Once it starts to turn color and the stalks are dying and turning yellow, it becomes more brittle, and the oats are more likely to shell out. It may rebound a little bit at this point. About a month to go yet before the oats are ready to harvest.

The corn is nearly as high as an elephant’s eye, to quote Oscar Hammerstein.

The soybeans are looking good, but that one low spot has been wet long enough, and a couple acres are turning yellow. There is water standing in a lot of fields now. It’s just plain wet enough, for now.

I finally finished that fence. Glad to have it done.

Building that brought back a lot of memories. One of the things I bought in preparation of making this fence, was 3 pairs of leather gloves. Good cowhide leather gloves. Deer skin is too soft for working with barb wire. As are plain cotton and canvas gloves. I bought extra pairs in smaller sizes for my helpers. (Photo credit to Kelly)

To attach the wire to the steel ‘T’ post, I use wire clips.

They used to be included with each 5-pack of posts. Now they cost extra, of course, and are not nearly so well made. I found it curious, the previous batch wasn’t made as well as the batch before them, either. I can see the companies cutting costs with each manifestation!

The clip should hook on the fence like the previous photo, then I use my pliers to bend the end around the wire.

The new ones are lighter wire, and they don’t snap on like the old ones. Cheap, cheap, cheap.

Course, we didn’t always have the clips. In that case, we would cut a piece of wire about 20″ long, separate the strands of wire, (barb wire is two strands twisted together: one with barbs, and one without) wrap one end on the wire, go twice around the post and over the fence wire, and attach to the wire again on the other side of the post. Doing that on a post this week, I heard my dad’s voice teaching me how to do it. The old fence ends up in a heap and will go to scrap metal.

A new roll of barb wire is 1320′ long. I used two full rolls and was about 150′ short. Good thing I had an old roll left in the shed. I think it was from Kelly’s Dad. I had to use that to make the gate, and to finish one narrow end of the fence.

1320′ is 80 rods. 80 rods is a quarter mile. One rod is 16.5 feet. Dad used the term ‘rods’ when describing the size of fields, but I don’t think anyone uses the term anymore, maybe not even surveyors.

When I was measuring fields for the ASCS office, I had an actual metal wire that was 66′ long- a “chain”. And a rod is a 1/4 of a chain. And I had a belt pack with 10 metal hooks in which to pass the wire through as I walked a field. I only used it a few times because it would snag and slip out of the loops and it was a huge pain in the tuckus. Mostly we used a measuring wheel that counted in chains. The wheel itself was maybe 2 1/2′ feet in diameter, so I don’t know how it figured out the distance, but it was the official tool for measuring fields.

Curiously, most township roads have a 66′ right of way. Thirty Three feet from the center of the road including the ditch. 33′ is two rods. Coincidence??

The ducks are doing well and enjoying their new pen.

Wild black raspberries are turning ripe. Yummy on vanilla ice cream. 

Any unusual units of measurement you use?

109 thoughts on “Survey Says”

  1. In 1978, living in Taiwan, I went to a sign painter’s shop to have something made. I had my measurements in centimeters for something I imagined would be about 2X8 feet. I fumbled around in my limited Chinese and made myself understood, then noticed that the sign painter converted by centimeters back into feet. “That,” I thought, “is odd.” Later I discovered that for certain low-tech skills, Taiwan was using feet. A Taiwan Foot is exactly the same as the one used in certain parts of the “not yet modern” West.
    However, a Taiwan Foot has only 10 inches. SO, one must be careful when purchasing a tape measure. They’re labeled “Tai” and “Eng”. Get the right one!

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  2. Portages in the BWCAW are measured in rods. One rod is also the approximate length of a canoe (Of course canoes come in many lengths. But 16.5 ft. is near average.). Otherwise, I stick to feet, yards, and miles like most Americans, and the metric system when watching track and field, swimming, or other international sports.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  3. I can’t think offhand of any idiosyncratic measurements I personally use, but I spent a few minutes researching archaic measurements and it’s pretty interesting.

    A furlong, for example, is an eighth of a mile, 40 rods, and etymologically derives from “furrow length”. It’s the distance one could expect a team of oxen to pull a wooden plow without stopping to rest. Fields were laid out so that would be the point at which you would turn them around.

    Surveying by 66-foot chain goes back to the 17th century.

    A league is about 3 miles and was reckoned as the distance a person could walk in an hour. The official measurement of a league in feet or meters varies somewhat from country to country.

    There’s a recurring claim that the distance between railroad rails derives by way of a series of connections from the width of Roman chariot wheels. That claim can be demonstrably disproven:
    https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4818
    but it aligns with the sense that many of our measurements have a story to tell.

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    1. One more unit of measurement I never had a sense of- the hectare.
      When the metric system was introduced in 1795, an are was defined as a unit of 100 square meters. A hectare (hecto + are) is 100 ares, or 10,000 square meters, which amounts to about 2.47 acres.

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      1. I’ve often not had a ruler handy, so will grab any firm straight thing (piece of cardboard?) and place it repeatedly to measure what I need, then copy it on the next surface (I’m thinking of fabric at the moment). Wish I could be clearer, but I know what I mean. : ) So I would call that measure ________ cardboards…

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        1. Even 20,000 Fathoms Beneath the Sea would be about 22.7 miles. The deepest point in the ocean is about 7 miles.

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  5. When we lived in Canada, Environment Canada would report the wind chill somehow in kilopascals, which seems to be an air pressure measurement. The warnings always ended with “exposed skin will freeze in less than a minute”

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    1. What’s the name of that Jack London story where the guy trudging through the arctic spits to see how cold it is. Something about how far below zero it is if the spittle freezes before it hits the ground?

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      2. I spit at 56 below, real temp. It was not frozen when it hit the ground. But constant exposure to those temperatures destroys all sorts of materials, even heavy steel cables.

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  6. In the baking. industry 8 inches, 10 inches. and 12 inches are the most used units of measurement because those are the sizes of most cake requests. I learned early on that when I stretch out my right hand, from the tip of my thumb to the end of my pinky finger is 8 inches. No — I wouldn’t do surgery using that measurement but for most life situations knowing that that’s 8 inches has been useful repeatedly through my lifetime.

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    1. I can’t call my measurement a “hand” since I believe that’s only 4 inches so maybe if I had to label it we could call it a “she hand”.

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      1. I know my outstretched arms, slightly loose, are about five feet. So I measure cables and rope that way. Quick and easy for a rough measurement. An ‘arms length’ I guess.
        And my shop rule for scrap lumber is to throw it out if it’s shorter than my arm. ‘an arm’s length’?

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      1. Because that’s the size pans are made. More to the point, why aren’t pans made 10” x 12”? The volume would be about the same.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    Well, there is a titch, a tad, and a bit, not to mention “Wait a sec.” All those are measurements of a sort.

    Now I will tap comment and see what happens. If I can post I will write more.

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    1. We have a sick puppy here. For the last two weeks Phoebe has been getting weak and had joint pain in her rear legs. The vet says it is a tick borne illness (doggie version of lymes). She has been treated with tick and flea treatments but apparently one bit her anyway. After three days of antibiotics she is walking better, but she is very tired. It is hard to see her so lethargic.

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  9. A news story today about the Mandan. Hidatsa, and Arikara nation here in ND building huge greenhouses to grow tomatoes and strawberries lists the size of the green houses in bothe acres and hectares. The first green house is 3.3 acres, or 1.3 hectares.

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      1. I would assume the size Of her derriere compares Exactly to the size of his. He has major his own so he knows how large hers is.😉. JacAnon

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  13. I was watching a Brit quiz show I like where people compete as pairs. A husband and wife had lived for three years in Kenya while he managed a large project. She planted a garden with among other things tomatoes, which baboons kept stealing. She build a catapult to throw stones at them to drive them away. So, of course, the baboons threw the stones back at her.
    Clyde

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  14. I was doing a pulmonary test. The tech doing the test wanted to know my original height. I am now 5’10”. I told her I was six feet and a quarter inch. To verify she measured my arm span and said I was right in that range. Not sure what that had to do with my breathing.
    Clyde

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      1. I bet they wouldn’t if we walked on our hands more. Then we’d probably also need more elbow and shoulder replacements than knee and hip replacements.

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    1. I was hoping to hear some of your stories Clyde. My mom keeps asking me if I’m cutting fence posts down in the woods. I remember dad doing that. I didn’t. But I pulled one oak post out that is still in pretty good shape – even the part in the dirt is solid, and it’s been buried a lot of years!

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  16. My mother had several peck baskets and would use them to measure garden produce for canning. She herself or my sister would gather one or two pecks of beans or carrots or peas for the canning that day.

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  17. When I stretch my left arm out to the side, the distance between my fingertips on my left hand and my right shoulder is one meter.

    It took me a long time – years actually – to get used to American weights and measures of all kinds. Compared to the metric system, I find them cumbersome.

    Love the photo of you in your corn field, Ben.

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  19. I use thread or yarn a lot. I usually measure off a length of yarn and use it to measure the rest. I’ve used yarn the opposite way too. If I don’t have a measuring device handy, I cut a piece of yarn to match what I needed to measure. I use it later to measure the length I wanted to know.

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  23. Isaiah 40:26, “Lift up your eyes to heaven and see. Who created these things? It is the one who brings out their army; he calls them all by name.”

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  24. 53. 53 was the measurment associated with how much clogging up of my heart high cholesterol has been doing. That’s a great number for me considering the amount of fried food I’ve enjoyed through the years.
    And the 130/78 BP measurements are very acceptable as I was often at 150plus. I shall not speak of that weight measurement thingy.

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  28. My favorite author, Issac Azimov, wrote a book about the measurement of things. He covered from smallest to largest. Some reviews called it boring but it’s an easy read although some measurements have been better defined.

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  33. A moment is 90 seconds
    A score is 20 years
    I loved learning that a rod is 14 ‘
    Thanks got another great on ben
    So do you do duck eggs too?

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