2024, Family, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons

Summer Heat

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The weather is changing. The rain has stopped and the temps and humidity are up. I’ve turned on the chickens fan, and got the ducks in their outside pen.  The ducks are at that awkward stage where a gallon of water last them half a day, everything‘s wet, and they chewed off the string on the bottom of a brand new sack of feed so then I had an open tube that used to have 50 pounds of feed in it. It was time to get them outside.

This was a mixed assortment of ducklings so I don’t really know what I’ve got yet, although six of them are all black, a couple are twice the size of a couple others, and like most teenagers, we just gotta get through this phase. 

It takes a while for the ducks to learn how to get back in again at night, which means for now, Kelly and I have to wrangle them back inside. Everything is still wet down there, and it is stinky mud, and they’re not the smartest animal on the farm, so it’s kind of a whole big thing, but this too shall pass. Eventually. 

I went out with the tractor and loader and moved the downed trees off the edge of the fields. The soybeans were sprayed with fungicide and broadleaf preventer on Thursday. I wanted the tree in the bean field out of the way for that. I’ll be mowing weeds in a week or two, and oats will be ready in 3 weeks or so. I moved two trees out of the oats field.  I saw the neighbors cornfield just starting to tassel Friday afternoon 

I’ve been spending a lot of time rebuilding the stage at the Rochester Repertory Theater. The old stage had been there since we moved there in 2007, and it was built of used lumber then, so it was squeaky and kinda wonky and wore out. Last year’s ‘Give to the Max’ campaign raised money for this new stage. I had a good group of volunteers come in to cut up and haul out the old one. We loaded it on a trailer and I hauled it to the recycling center. I didn’t expect it to cost $450 for disposal. Ouch. There went my budget. 

 Of course, what’s a project without a few extra items thrown into the mix? We are creating a tool room out of the former elevator room, we are insulating some windows, and we are making the control booth window larger too. All good stuff! 

Except that I’m not getting much done on my machine shed shop project. I get a little done, it’s just slow going.  I got steel wrap and the window trim done on one window, so I can get back to the steel siding. I did change the windshield washer pump on my truck and I need to replace one nozzle. And I cut off a tree root and reset some rocks interferring with the wellhouse door. And I got to use a pickax and a grub hoe. 

I’m just not getting the shop work done. 

Thursday, Kelly and I took a road trip to Golden Valley to ‘Monkey Wrench Productions’ and picked up some lighting stuff.

A new lighting console for the Rep theater (thanks to a very nice grant from the Carl and Verna Schmidt Foundation) and with all the construction on Hwy 52 that we ran into, we decided to take a different way home. Came back through Hastings, and had lunch at the ‘Lock and Dam Eatery’. Walked down to the river, and had a nice talk with a photographer. 

A few days ago we took the four wheeler down through the woods. There’s a trail that a neighbor keeps mowed and I had been on part of it, but not all of it before. Although there were places I remembered checking fence 35 years ago when I still had beef cows down there. Like this gate; people would open it in the winter and if not closed again, cows ended up in their yards and they didn’t like that. Guess they never learned the rule to leave the gate like you found it. But that only works for the first person. 

You gotta take your adventures where you can get them. 

What’s the most money you’ve paid to get rid of something?

53 thoughts on “Summer Heat”

  2. Rise and shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    I probably paid the most, both financially and emotionally, to dissolve my first marriage. Since the wasband was chronically unemployed and broke, I willingly paid for the entire procedure. Best thing I ever did and I never regretted it.

    OT: Phoebe update. The dog did not get back home with us until about 8pm last night. There was an intensive discussion among specialists (emergency, internal medicine, neurology) at Blue Pearl about her diagnosis. They think it is the doggy form of Rheumatoid Arthritis, as opposed to Spinal Meningitis. The official title is Immune Mediated Polyarthritis. The specialists could not decide on the source of her pain–joints or spine. Either way prednasone is the treatment, which starts today. I hope she responds. The poor little girl.

    VS, Phoebe received the doggy get well card. Thank you. Thank you! Beautiful, as ever.

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      1. It is a good mix. And each compliments the other.
        I told a guy the other day, when I get tired of people, I can go get in a tractor by myself.

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    4. Oh, my goodness, Jacque! I’m so sorry to hear all the news about little Phoebe. I hope the prednisone helps. You’ve been through a lot this year.

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      1. I was wondering the same thing about mania. So far we have a long way to go. She is better today, but still sleeping alot. Around 2:30pm she started moving, then wanted food and showed some interest is her toys. I hope this continues.

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  6. I knew I’d see some comments about paying a lot to get rid of an ex. 🙂

    Like Bill, we paid about $2000 to remove two huge trees in our backyard. Seems like a lot, but when you watch the lumberjack (?) (arborist?) work with surgical precision with a high degree of danger, the price seems quite reasonable.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. Agree about the tree removal experience. Those guys are artists. And nothing is as miserable as a marriage that does not work. I would have paid anything to leave that.

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    4. Have had trees removed from my tiny city back yard – around neighbor’s houses and electrical wires. Truly those folks are artists and engineers. Cost a pretty penny though. The guy who came for my dying spruce had as easier time of it the following year.

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  7. Our pastor’s husband worked as an arborist during the years she was in seminary in St. Paul. He is now the Superintendent of Schools here. He says he would much rather still be climbing trees.

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  8. I think I paid around $2000 to have a huge black walnut tree removed in Waterville. It was in a corner of the house made by the wall of the garage joining the wall of the living room. It was really close to both walls, dropped walnuts on the roof starting in August, and was dangerous to be underneath. It dropped large branches, and I was afraid it would crush the house if it fell in a storm. The company was hardworking, professional, and thorough. I thought it was money well spent.

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      1. Yes, I know, but that one was starting to rot and it wouldn’t have made a good log to sell.

        My brothers and I recently sold our 30 acres of woods in southwestern Steele County, after harvesting black walnut and green ash. My dad bought it when we were little kids. He harvested walnut once and it paid for the woods and some other things. We waited decades and had foresters in there a few times. We finally flagged the walnut trees that had value and hired a forestry company to do the harvest in late February. They removed well over a hundred black walnut trees and some green ash. They got all the buyers for us and sold the walnut and ash as two separate lots. This was a situation in which they paid us. After that we sold the woods. I’m a little sad about it but my brother had insisted on it. The black walnut market is international. I think some of our trees might be on their way to Japan.

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  9. My sister brought home a single bedbug from a highly rated San Francisco hotel. It was about $1500 to remove what MIGHT have been there. The peace of mind made it worth it.

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    1. Arizona was famous for bedbugs and the related cost of removal. I heard some nightmare stories about people buying second hand upholstered furniture, then bringing the bugs into the house. It cost thousands to get rid of them. I did buy second hand furniture, but the store I bought from would treat the furniture before bringing it into the store. One of my high school friend’s parents moved to Phoenix in their 90’s. Their apartment got bedbugs. She spent three months with them trying to get rid of the pests. She had been a very competent Army Nurse, Captain rank. I don’t know how the bedbugs had the courage to defy her.

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  10. Working out still how much I will wind up spending for what started as water in my basement from a broken sewer line. Insurance has covered some. But being able to use the modern technologies of indoor plumbing without fear of more water where it ought not to be is a fine thing. Now to get to mitigating the water that occasionally comes in with the rain because I lost part of a garden and grading when I got my new chunk of sewer pipe… and then figuring out where to put the plants I bought before I realized I needed to re-grade part of the yard and… sigh.

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    2. to make the rain infiltration go away more dirt and a sheet of black plastic will do it
      happy to help if needed
      call if you want details

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  11. I hired an excavator and operator to tear down a house and haul it off in 1999. Was a small house, only about 800 ft². It cost $2,500 including the landfill fees. Bet you couldn’t get it done today for three times that.

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  12. I’ve done tree removal, too. That’s definitely the most I’ve ever paid, but I don’t recall how much. Maybe $1200 or $1400 or so.

    I’ve been watching cleanup at Harriet Island since the floodwaters have gone down. I don’t know what the cost is for removing the debris, or which department has to pay for it, but it’s got to be a lot of money. I suppose it’s the Parks department. They’ve been out power washing buildings and sidewalks, removing sandbags, cutting back dead foliage, replacing mulch. I saw some guys going over the grounds with what appeared to be metal detectors. I imagine shrp objects left behind might injure people and create liability.

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    1. My friend from Waterville said that the sandbags are being picked up by excavating equipment and have to be treated as contaminated waste.

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  13. I wouldn’t have thought of the trees until you all mentioned them. I had ash trees growing in the back but I’ve always used the words “cut down”, never thinking about the actual removal part. And I don’t know how much of the bathroom remodel was specifically for teardown/removal, but there was an awful lot of stuff that left the bathroom, came down the steps and ended up in one of those big green haul-away bag things on the front boulevard.

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    1. From JacAnon, the morning Phoebe report:

      Phoebe still seems to be responding to prednisone treatment. This morning she was hungry again, eating two breakfasts. She is also demanding affection and petting with little yips and nudges. This is all great news after the first 24 hours of treatment. What a relief. The position of her ears is the true indication of her mood or well-being. While she was so sick her ears were position in the “back” position usually indicating anxiety, paired with the tail between her legs. Now the ears are 80% up and her tail is wagging. When I see them all the way up I will know she feels good.

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  17. I got nothin’ here except the dissolving of that first marriage.
    We are notoriously cheap, and have managed to have a “monkey-nephew” around when we needed to have a branch lobbed off the box elder, etc. And Husband did a lot with his chain saw.

    We’ve paid to have stuff moved from one place to another… but then it was a U-haul.

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