Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben
I got a lot done this past week. Last Saturday I finally got the snowfence up. You know, I can’t figure out why 100’ this year, doesn’t fit the same posts as 100’ did last year? Which didn’t match the posts from the year before that! Sometimes I think I’d like to put wood posts at the ends of the sections, but seriously, it never lines up the same way two years in a row and I just don’t get it. We put in 500’ this year. Plus, another twenty feet in a different location that can drift. I guess I am expecting it to snow this year.
Sunday, I moved a bunch of equipment around; I got the lawnmower cleaned up and put away (I used it to mow a path for the snow fence. It wouldn’t work when I tried a month ago, because the grass was too green and wet. But now it was all brown and dried out and cut much better). Moved the scrap metal tote inside the shed, and stuff like that. And then I finally built a little door for the chickens, so I don’t have to leave the big door open six inches for them. Ready for winter!
On Monday, the contractor showed up and started tearing out trees and reshaping a waterway. It’s not the best timing for dirt work, but by spring either I’m gonna have the gully in the field where it’s been running, or in the waterway where it’s supposed to be. To fix it, they had to tear out a LOT of trees. Tree’s that have come up in the last 60 years. Which meant the area didn’t drain properly. It looks a lot different.
Before :

After:

There is one GINOURMOUS brush pile!

This photo doesn’t give you any perspective. It’s HUGE This whole project came about when I hired the contractor to bury the ash from an area where I’ve been having brush piles for years and years. And then I asked if he could reshape the waterway, which turned into tearing out trees IN ORDER to redo the waterway.


And I finished the steel inside the shop. It turned out really well. I have a few details to finish yet, and the outside steel, and the electrician will have a lot of work to do, but it really is a functional shop area. I don’t often think about if my Dad would like whatever it is I’m doing. But the shop and the waterway, I really think he would approve of those things. Friday night Padawan, still in shorts, was able to put his car into the shop to work on it. I’m kinda glad I can offer him a place like this. I have been spying on them with the shop camera. My goodness, two teenage boys can be so annoying to be around.
I’m beginning to clean up the shop area. I don’t need the scaffolding anymore, and I need the room, so I dragged that outside and disassembled it. PHOTO


Holiday concerts at the college this week too.

Pretty soon I can get the 40’s station back on my car radio. The one they take off in November to play TWO MONTHS of Christmas music. Bah.
PICK A HISTORICAL FIGURE TO BE ANNOYING WITH. WHAT ARE YOU TWO UP TO?
I’m a prison guard for 45. I do a little YMCA shuffle everytime I pass his cell.
LikeLiked by 6 people
I would guess the White House is sort of a prison for him–just one where he can get his way, but he will have little freedom ahead, while it appears his wife wants little to do with it–or him–at all.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I read the suggestion as picking a historical figure to annoy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Works for me!!
LikeLike
Glad you got so much done, Ben! I’ll bet it feels good to take down the scaffolding.
Beautiful lights, too, for the concerts.
Thinking of a historical figure – back later.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I force the real Santa Claus–St. Nicholas–to sing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” for 24 hours straight, then say to him, “See what you started??????? What were you thinking????”
Chris in Owatonna
LikeLiked by 5 people
He must have experienced “99 bottles of Beer” in a German pub that inspired that song. Still better than “Little Drummer Boy.”
LikeLiked by 6 people
I’ve said this before:
The fact that Little Drummer Boy exists is proof that time travel will never be possible.
LikeLiked by 4 people
That’s how I feel about Santa Baby.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Rise and Fantasize, Baboons,
Abe Lincoln and I have many conversations about all kinds of things. I sometimes commune with Thomas Jefferson, as well. There is just something about both of them. Lincoln and I both agree that the GOP has made all kinds of errors that eventually will come home to the party. I always love it when he takes my side. Thomas Jefferson is useful for creative thinking–all of his experiments, gardening, his library call to me. But I believe the assignment here is to be annoying.
Abe: You mean I sacrificed my life for this mess? Mitch M.is.a.travesty! What are you people doing? What is this social media thing?
I will spend the day thinking of more to say as I channel him between loads of laundry, now that I have something installed and operable. I am sure Thomas Jefferson would be amazed by the machines that do our laundry.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Jefferson had slaves to do his laundry, didn’t he?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh my yes. Then one of them bore a second family for whom she probably scrubbed laundry. A conflicted figure isn’t he? What was he thinking!
LikeLiked by 3 people
If you wanted to annoy people you could call her Mrs. Jefferson.
LikeLiked by 4 people
me and bucky fuller cleaning and organizing my storage units
LikeLiked by 7 people
I also listen to the Tim Ferriss Podcast and he has a guy on there this week that would be the guy just to hang with and get into obnoxious trouble
LikeLiked by 3 people
I love this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Galileo and I leaving “And yet it moves!” graffiti around Florence.
LikeLiked by 7 people
Stravinsky and I fine dine in Paris in 1907.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Who would be annoyed?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Toasts would be made and then glasses smashed.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Firebird? Rites? I don’t remember my Stravinsky chronology.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Marcel Duchamp and I, plus a few other “arch conspirators” barricaded in the Washington Square Arch in 1917, declaring the park the free and independent Republic of Washington Square.
LikeLiked by 6 people
Raphael and I hide in the Sistine Chapel and keep hiding Michaelangelo’s brushes.
LikeLiked by 5 people
…or sneak in and paint a mustache and sunglasses on Adam
LikeLiked by 6 people
…or tidy whities.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Snort!
LikeLiked by 1 person
LikeLiked by 3 people
??? tightie whities???
LikeLiked by 2 people
Of course (Impressionist 2-step) – good one!
LikeLike
I manage to find Charlotte Bronte when she is sitting in a teashop in Haworth, England, where I try to learn from her what in the world she was thinking with that ending to her novel Vilette. The discussion becomes quite heated, and we are asked to leave and discuss this elsewhere.
(I’m afraid this is really tame, compared to some of the scenarios above!)
LikeLiked by 4 people
You all have got great ideas! I love them all. I kept thinking Ben Franklin and or Thomas Jefferson just making sarcastic remarks at everybody. And those guys would be so witty the people wouldn’t understand it was sarcasm.
But you guys have outdone me , I need to think harder.
I think Michaelangelo would be really fun.
And what about Dorothy Parker? I don’t think I could keep up with her I’m just gonna encourage her and follow her around.
LikeLiked by 5 people
…or Oscar Wilde.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Ben Franklin had a pen name, Silence DoGood, under which he wrote essays. I think Fox News needs to employ her as a character who criticizes 45. That would really annoy him, especially if she accuses him of sexual impropriety, which heh as surely committed with her when she was young and comely and competing for the Miss Universe title.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, partnering up with Til Eulenspiegel would be exciting. He annoyed everyone.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I can’t keep up with you guys today. My brain is just completely taken over by party prep. Maybe I’ll have a good dream and have something in the morning.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A guy who annoyed just about everyone without my help:
“Lord” Timothy Dexter.
If you are unfamiliar with him, look him up. It’s quite a story.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Sounds like Dexter had the last laugh though
LikeLiked by 3 people
That’s what made him so annoying.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Coals to Newcastle!
LikeLiked by 2 people
Oh, he does sound annoying.
LikeLike
Me and Fyodor Dostoyevsky writing huge novels that become required reading for high school students in Florida.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Fun topic, Ben!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Noah Webster is the person with whom I could be annoying. Changing all the spellings and pronunciations from one edition to the next would be fun… and profitable. Every library in the United States would have to purchase the latest volume.
LikeLiked by 5 people
LikeLiked by 2 people
excellent!
LikeLike