2024, animals, Farming Update, Kids, Seasons, Uncategorized

Ticonderoga!

37 Comments

The Weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben!

I don’t know what happened to this week, it was one of those weeks that feels like it just kind of disappeared even though last weekend was a long time ago.

I did the usual college stuff, plus homework, went to play rehearsals Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights. Saturday morning I have a theater board meeting and I’ll do some work at the theater Saturday afternoon. Sunday we’re going up to see “Back to The Future” the musical. It got a pretty decent review with special emphasis on the technical stuff so that will give me something to look forward to. 

 tim was in Rochester so he picked up some eggs.

 I did finish planting rye last Sunday afternoon, and on Thursday I returned the seed that I didn’t use.

I took Thursday off from the college so I could work on my machine shed. I snapped a chalk line on the floor from the two existing exterior posts that will be the ends of my new wall, and then I spent quite a while figuring out the bottom plate and where doors will be and how much room there will be in the middle between the doors. I decided I need to get going on this wall because I was getting anxious about it, and I’m avoiding it, and doing a lot of putzy other little things, and walls don’t get done that way. Meaning there’s nothing to do but to do it. 

 A few dairy guys have started chopping corn silage (something I always enjoyed and I kinda miss), and I’ve seen a few bean fields that are losing their leaves. It means Fall and harvest is coming. Daughter was talking about Christmas the other day; she’s got a few items in mind. I had to laugh that I wasn’t thinking about Christmas yet, but she pointed out Halloween is next month, and then it’s just 2 months. Yes, yes it is. The circle is coming around.

 This spring when I ordered all those baby chicks, remember the batch of roosters that I mistakenly ordered? I guess I was too busy most of the summer to really pay much attention, and now at night when I’m throwing out corn and all the chickens are gathered around, I’m starting to count quite a lot of roosters. 

 They are kind of pretty, but I think I’ve counted 13 new roosters, not to mention the four older roosters we already have. And that’s far too many roosters. I had found a place that would butcher them, so maybe I really need to get back in touch with them and get something on the schedule. These are called Blue Lace Wyandotte and they’re really pretty. Although the females are large and kind of ornery. There’s been one sitting in a nest box most of the summer and even with daughter’s milk jug shield, she won’t usually reach under that one for eggs.

I went to Savers for more shirts. I thought I was going to have to use the sleeve I cut off to add the second pocket, (I have one shirt that has very shallow pockets. I can’t even put a pen in the pocket. Eventually I cut a hole in the bottom of that pocket so my pen and pencils will fit.) That’s why I need a second pocket. 

Discuss pencils. Mechanical? Wood? Erasable ink?  

37 thoughts on “Ticonderoga!”

  3. There was a quiet, fair-skinned blonde girl in high school. Her name was Jane. Someone stabbed her in the face with a lead pencil many years prior to high school. I don’t remember who she said did it, maybe her brother. She looked sad about it. Anyway, it left a noticeable blue mark under her left eye in the soft tissue. She said the lead was still there.

    Pencils are better for drawing than pens.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. If it were lead, it probably still wouldn’t be in there. I think she would’ve developed some kind of infection? I’ve always assumed that that’s why pencils are made with graphite these days and not actually lead. But I don’t know that for sure.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. Pencils have been made with graphite for about 400 years, not because graphite was safer—400 years ago people wouldn’t have been wary of that—but because graphite works better.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

      2. She told me it was a lead pencil and it was still in there. (Long time ago, in high school.) of course it was a curiosity. It was a clearly visible blue mark just beneath her left eye.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  4. I am a confirmed number two pencil user. I’m not crazy about mechanicals, although I don’t think I’ve ever tried the screw type. Part of my issue is with mechanicals is the fact that the lead (?) breaks off too easily; also I can never figure out how to put new lead in when the old one runs out. I’m also someone who erases a lot so most of the pencils in my house have those big fat erasers on them. I’m also a sucker for “designer” erasers.

    That being said I’m actually more a pen person than a pencil person and I have loads and loads of pens and I can’t stay away from rainbow assortments. So if you ever need a pen with yellow ink or pink or orange Just let me know.

    Also. I never put pens and pencils in a pocket.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  7. Back when I was in college and producing a lot of pencil drawings my pencils of choice were soft Faber Castell, number 6 and sometimes 4. A little less expensive soft pencil was the Ebony pencil. I had a lot of them so I could sharpen a bunch and draw uninterrupted. They didn’t have their own eraser but that was OK since pencil erasers, even when they’re fresh, are generally inferior.

    For design and advertising preliminary sketches just about any pencil would suffice, since I would follow up with markers.

    When I was doing botanical illustration, I used very hard pencils—4H or so—to lay down very light preliminary outlines. The colored pencils I was using, both Faber Castell and Colorama, were sharpened to a fine point and then lightly sanded to sharpen the point even more. Needless to say, there were many pauses for resharpening.

    When I was sketching at idea-generating sessions at 3M and General Mills I generally used Bic mechanical pencils to sketch out my preliminary outlines, which I then finished with Sharpies. In that circumstance I had to sketch very fast. There were between a dozen and twenty participants all coming up with ideas and only one of me. I couldn’t afford to worry about sharpening pencils.

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  8. I have a dozen or so #2 pencils in various places, here, and I can’t believe how much they vary in darkness. I have finally marked one (with a Sharpee) “DARK” that is dark enough to show up well on the (shiny paper) wall calendar – I should tie the thing down so it doesn’t move.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  9. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I am a mechanical pencil fan, here. I like the cheap-o plastic ones with an eraser. I don’t like wooden pencils at all. I can ot think of another thing to say about pencils.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  10. The Thoreau family had a pencil business. I’ve read that Henry David made some refinements to their process but I’ve never read what those were. I suspect his heart wasn’t really in pencil manufacture.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

        1. I take that as a challenge. I also took it as an opportunity to play around with AI generated images. As it turns out, it’s difficult to get AI to come up with something suitably simple. In trying to get it to combine “shark” with “ear” with “metallic” and some other descriptors, I went through numerous iterations, all of them elaborate and not at all what I had in mind. This isn’t exactly it either but close enough for now.

          shark ear

          Liked by 3 people

  13. Although I have no more to say about pencils, I do think those roosters are handsome dudes! They deserve some admiration.

    The wasband had a place on his hand where another child (maybe his brother?) had stabbed him and left some pencil lead. I think the process of the body storing graphite is like a tattoo and ink. I do not remember much about it. But at the end of ten years of marriage to the guy, I did understand the urge to stab him.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  14. That’s what we’ve said too- they are nice looking roosters.
    Saw another rooster the other day, all black. Not sure where he come from… snuck in with the pullers I guess.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. i love pencils. the yellow ones that are in abundance in grade school.
    in first grade i got in trouble because i was assigned to take whatever the paperwork of the day was down to the principles office for my teacher and one day on the way back i stopped into an empty classroom (the year of my 1st grade was at the height of the baby boom in bloomington and they needed to have morning and afternoon classes because there were too many kids for the school size and would take a while to build the correct number of schools) and looked around and discovered a cigar box full of pencils that were short little stubby ones.big fat black pencils not regular skinny yellow ones. i couldnt resist and grabbed a couple for the stories i was so fond of writing in 1st grade. this went on for a while and one day i was called into the teachers corner where her desk was and i was told i was to report to the principles office where they nailed me. the teacher in the room noticed that the pencil box was losing ground instead of gaining and they figured it out backwards and wanted to know what i wanted with all those pencils. when i told them they were for writing stories they kind of got it but not really.

    later in life i became an art student at the u of m and loved drawing class
    chalk pastel ink markers crayons were all good but i loved pencils. i still have all that stuff in my art supplies stash in the basement along with wonderful paper and look forward to getting back into it.

    i like carpenters pencils and the challange of sharpening with a swiss army knife

    in my business man beginings i had fancy pen and pencil sets with a ballpoint, fountain pen and turn the screw to make the lead come out
    papermate and schaffer much later waterman
    i loved having them but couldnt hold onto them . i lost them regularly and ended up buying boxes of decent pens ( roller balls are my favorite after fountain pens) and the click it .07 20 packs of mechanical pencils
    i feel so sorry for kids today who all write like twits with big box letters that look like they didnt practice during handwriting class. usually a 2nd or 3rd grade skill level. it makes you think that their iq must be in question
    i love beautiful handwriting and try to do my best when it counts. always loved draftsmen printing on blueprints and calligraphers writing on special documents
    i keep hoping i can grow up to be a person who can have nice things and every now and again ill buy a fountain pen or a roller ball but its kind of self deprecating to do something that confirms that you cant be trusted with nice things.
    i still smile when i think of whoevers story it was about the girl who liked to sharpen her pencils just so she could stand up and look over the class and enjoy what everyone was doing. im a people watcher too

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

Leave a reply to Jacque Cancel reply