2024, Business, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized

Hopping

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Hasn’t been much farming happening at our place this week. It’s tech week at the theater. So, all day every day there.


We got almost an inch of rain Wednesday and Thursday so that was really nice. Haven’t got my corn out yet, even though they had thought maybe Sunday and then he said maybe Tuesday but they’ll get to it one of these days. The weather doesn’t really hurt it at this point, I mean as long as we’re not talking blizzards or anything, the corn can take some rain.

The header photo is a view we haven’t had in twenty years. Kelly has done such an impressive job cutting and clearing all the buckthorn on this hillside. Once she got done working from the top down, I cleared some of the bottom of the hill and she started from the bottom up. It’s a good workout for her and it’s so great to be able to see all the way through again!

I did get all the hydraulic hoses replaced on my chisel plow a couple weeks ago.

I opened the big, fancy, new, garage door and backed onto the concrete and replaced or turned over the shovels so they all have good sharp points on the bottom. Two bolts in each, and I was smart enough not to hold it with my thumb as I mentioned a few stories back where I sliced open both thumbs doing this job. You might have to tell me things twice, but you don’t have to tell me three times. A couple of shovels were broken off, so I replaced those. There’s a point on each end that will wear off. Sometimes you can just turn them over and use the other point. They’ve got a slight twist to them so they either throw the dirt to the left or the right.

I was short a couple of bolts so I picked them up one morning, and then while home for an hour one afternoon, I finished all the shovels and now it’s ready to go once the corn is out.

I really like having the concrete in the shed and outside, and what I’m learning about having concrete is that it’s always dirty. I’m beginning to realize why the farmers with these concrete shops all have floor sweepers. Trying to keep it clean is an ongoing battle. In the shop, at this point without the fourth wall and the dirt floor just outside that, I use a leaf blower and just blow all the dust back out on the dirt. Same thing outside, although sometimes I use the lawnmower and drive back-and-forth with that to funnel the dust off one edge. Soon I’ll be buying more tools to keep it clean. Power broom? I’ve got shop brooms, they’re boring and too much work. Industrial vacuum? Drivable floor sweepers?? Industrial vacuum!!

Hopefully once I finish the wall and keep the door shut more it won’t be as dusty in the shop, but you can see from the photo that when I’m working on something I might bring a lot of dirt.

Speaking of buying more tools, the soybean check is in the bank and I’ve been shopping. (Yeah, yeah, I’ll get to the bills too.) I bought a few more deep well, impact rated, metric sockets to finish off the rack. Twenty mm – 26mm

And I ordered the wifi bridge so I can send the wifi signal from the house to the shop, and then put my remote thermometer and camera in there, and get the wifi thermostat hooked up, and the wifi-garage door. 😊

Also, I always get a couple new pairs of work boots with the soybean check. My lousy feet, I wear out a pair of shoes in a year.

The first college show is Saturday at 2 o’clock. “Still Life with Iris”, by Steven Dietz.

Sunday is the final open house at our old Haverhill Township Hall before the Rochester Fire Department uses it for a training burn. More on that later.

Next week we have two shows per day at the college with the final show on Saturday the ninth. I hope to be home working on my shed in the afternoons. This weather isn’t going to hold forever.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO CONTROL THROUGH YOUR PHONE?

23 thoughts on “Hopping”

  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I control a lot of those fictional detectives we discussed earlier in the week with my phone, which is one way to listen to audiobooks. If I get tired of the antics, I hit STOP. Very satisfying. But I forgot one of my top tier favorites: Barbara Havers of the Thomas Lynley/Barbara Havers series by Elizabeth George (horrors! An American writing British fiction). Barbara is perfectly flawed. Our discussion about this during the week gave my mind a project–which detective did I forget? I also found a new author this week. VS, do you read this? Jessica Ellicot. Barbara Rosenblat narrates the audiobooks. Jessica and Barbara will help me through Tuesday and maybe Wednesday. Combined with a jigsaw puzzle, it is very distracting allowing my mind and body relief from “That Upon Which I Must Not Ruminate.”

    Lou’s hearing aids are operated through his phone or ipad. The phone is too small for his big fingers, so the ipad works best. But I can tell you, the hearing aids are high maintenance devices. My son (a digital programmer) tells me the apps that operate hearing aids, and other devices are farmed out to Indian (as in the country of India) programmers to cut their teeth on. So they do not know much and the apps are poorly programmed. So the company unleashes a bad app on the people least likely to understand how to operate it. The entire thing is kind of a nightmare and I am not sure if you could this process “control.” I think it is more like gambling–maybe it works. Maybe it does not.

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  4. I’d really like to be able to control my phone through my phone. As it is, sometimes putting the phone in my pocket launches some app. When I am using the camera feature, the settings often get inadvertently switched by an errant touch. It seems like I have to google instructions about how to accomplish some change on the phone every week.

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    1. I just learned from YA a couple of weeks ago (When we were at the jack-o’-lantern spectacle at the zoo) that a couple of the features on my phone’s camera revert just because they do. It has nothing to do with my clumsy fingers, which is nice to know but still frustrating.

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  5. I want my cell phone to be able to answer anything. Remember Johnny Carson’s Carnac, the Magnificent– “that all-knowing, all-telling, all-omnicient, that famous seer sage soothsayer…” who could divine the answer to any question? I want my cell phone to be able to do that, and I don’t just mean the likes of Wikipedia. “Where did I leave the folder I need tomorrow morning?” and it knows and texts me.

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  8. I’d like to be a little control the heat in the house with my phone. If I’m upstairs and it’s really cold or really hot, I’d like to be able to deal with it from here rather than have to go downstairs to the thermostat. Or if I’ve been away from home for a chunk of day, I could keep the heat low and then turn it up half an hour before I get home. I expect there probably is such a system but I don’t want to think about how much it would cost

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    1. It was a good first show. This is a very pleasant cast, no offstage drama. There was one quirk with the sound computer pulling up a ‘software update’ screen and blocking the sound cue list, and one new fancy moving light didn’t ‘home’ right and started making noise during the show, which required a reboot, and then a weird lighting thing when it ‘caught up’ a minute later, but nothing too serious.
      The paint was even dry!
      Glad to have it open and I can move my brain onto other stuff.

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  10. I don’t know… I was thinking about things similar to Barbara when she mentioned introducing sanity into some folks. If we all aimed our phones at a certain someone, maybe we could beam some humility and consideration for others into him. It seems he is a soul-less, arid desert of concern for other people. Maybe somehow we could send positive vibes to him and his supporters so that they would suddenly think, “Wow, what was that pleasant sensation? I think I’ll go be nice to someone!” Maybe they would change their plans for domination to plans of generosity and acceptance of other views. Maybe they’d even see diversity as a gorgeous tapestry. (Dream on.)

    I doubt it though. And I don’t feel much like sending positive vibes to any of them. Dr. Buckstead, my St. Olaf English professor, said I see the world through rose-colored glasses.

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  11. Buckthorn removal is a huge job, Ben and Kelly! You’ve made a lot of progress! Do you treat the cut stems with anything? Be prepared for new shoots in the spring. When they’re little, you can just pull them out as you walk through, as long as you’re certain it’s buckthorn you’re pulling.

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    1. yes, Kelly is treating with Tordon. At least the stuff she’s cutting low. As the leaves got worse, and it got slipperier, she’s cutting them 4′ high and we’ll cut them off next spring. Just getting the brush out has been huge.
      We’re trying to figure out how to keep it looking good and a way to cut or mow this area, as it’s steep and rocky and basically inaccessible.
      It’s hard for me to walk in there with my bad foot and ankle, so it might be more Kelly and the weedwacker for a while…

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  13. i’d like to control whoever I deem necessaries mind
    kind of like asking Siri a question but instead implanting directions and requests into another person‘s mind

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  14. controlling the temperature in your house when you’re not home it’s pretty easy. Turn it down to 60 when you’re not there and up to 68 when you’re on your way home or something like that I guess the reverse should be true in the summer. Turn it up to 80 when you’re not there and down to 74 when you’re on your way home, it would be good to have a crockpot slow cooker kind of thing that would keep things cool during the day so you could put it on the kitchen counter and then hit the go button at noon so that it could cook for 4 1/2 hours before you got home at five and have the soup goulash, etc., ready for your arrival

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  15. I’d like to have my bath run for me and my tea brewed and sitting in the pot next to the tub when I wake up in the morning with leave it to Beaver on TV and my phone turned to the app. I want to start the day out with.

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