2025, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Seasons

NOVUS INITIUM

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A NEW OR FRESH BEGINNING

The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

Asking Google for a Latin translation for a “new beginning” turned into more questions than answers, so it’s something like the title. Or maybe not. One of you will have a better idea. I just didn’t want to give this a tired or cliched heading. I thought of PT Barnum and “This way to the Egress!” but Ingress wasn’t what I wanted. 

I went around on Wednesday morning and recorded the mileage and hours on the cars, truck, tractors, gator, lawn mower, and the pump on the diesel barrel. 

Everything was pretty average. Kelly drives a lot less miles now that she’s working at home of course. We spent 34 hours cutting grass. 140 hours between the two tractors, slightly less than normal for me. No snow to move last winter, and less weeds mowed last summer. I moved 488 dozen eggs, which is pretty impressive. That’s 5856 eggs! Jeepers! Well done girls. Other than December when I got maybe 5 dozen, they were over 40 dozen / month with May being the highest at 63 dozen. 

We are starting 2025 with the bathroom and laundry room remodeling project. Our contractor, Joe, called on Tuesday afternoon and said he could start Thursday if we wanted. Well, with my family Christmas at our house on Saturday, January 4th, and already having the theme of “A YMCA Construction Christmas! Dress as your favorite Village Person”, we figured ‘why not!’ and also, then we don’t need to clean so much. I’ll put a sign on the front door: “Pardon our mess”. 

We spent New Years Day cleaning out the laundry room and bathroom, taking pictures off the walls, and doing laundry. We delivered several boxes to Goodwill, and created a couple bags of trash, and it felt good to purge.

Everything is in disarray and is going to be a pain in the butt for a couple of weeks. They have been starting in the mornings before daughter is awake. We’ve warned them she’ll probably come out and yell at them and slam her door at least a few times. Sure hope it’s worth it. Kelly has been planning this for about a year and she’s still going through the catalogs and watching home remodeling shows. Pretty soon it will be too late to change her mind. SO MANY DETAILS! Tile, finish, walls, flooring, knobs, door styles, lights, hooks, towel racks, shower door, should this be here or here, oh my goodness. It makes my head spin. She’s enjoying herself.  

My 2024 To do list: It’s fun to put it in Excel just to count it up. I had 212 listed items. And some were pretty mundane, such as ‘haul in garbage’ or ‘cut the grass’, but that’s what I needed to do that week, and it’s always satisfying to cross something off. There were 58 items I carried over to 2025. Like having the septic tank emptied (carried over from 2023) and shingling the feed room. Plus, a few more shop things. My big project for 2025 is to build a lean-too off the back of the shed to make up for what I’ve lost in storage space inside with the shop project. I’d love more concrete inside the shed, but I need to pay down what I’ve spent the last two years. 

 Honestly, I think the best thing we did was add the hot and cold faucets in the garage. That is just so handy. The point was to be able to wash the dogs, which we’ve only done about once, but filling their water buckets just makes that Worth it. And all the buckthorn that Kelly cleaned out the last two summers! That makes me happy every day! The view that it has brought back, both from the road above, and from below looking up. Even the neighbors commented on that. So many of the things on the list was just work that had to be done. Kelly and I were talking one day about so much of the last 30 years we can’t even remember. As the phrase goes, ‘Life is F-ing Relentless’. it’s so hard to remember every-day special moments because you’re so busy just existing. Milk the cows, go to work, do chores, feed the kids, repeat. It’s hard to remember all the little day to day stuff.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LATIN PHRASE?

82 thoughts on “NOVUS INITIUM”

  2. Interesting coincidence that my dictionary word of the day came up with Nolens Volens this morning. It means willy-nilly. Personally I like willy-nilly better.

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    1. Looking like the North Shore might have two winters in a row of drought. We were up last February and are going again at the end of this month. Didn’t even bother to bring XC skis because of lousy or no snow. Considered snowshoeing once but the trail we looked at was all iced-over snow, Not fun.

      Maybe we’ll sign up for a class or two at the North House Folk School instead.

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        1. That sounds fascinating, just the kind of thing that I like to do except for the fact that it’s knitting. I’ve tried to learn to knit a couple of times and it hasn’t gone well, mostly because I’m impatient. So I’m thinking at this stage of my life adding knitting to my repertoire isn’t a great idea. But enjoy the class and I hope we get to see the results.

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  5. There’s a Latin phrase, the second word of which is “interruptus”, which I don’t particularly care for. I suppose the one that I like, especially as I age, is “tempus fugit”.

    The week after I retired in 2018, I could not remember what had happened during the previous 7 days. So I began keeping track. After about 18 months, that had settled into a weekly letter, “the 19th Street Journal”, which I foist on 2 offspring and about 15 other people. I try to keep it interesting, but I doubt that anyone will be wanting to look at it in the future. I’m no Samuel Pepys, nor is my life as full of wonder as his. Even to go back a month and look at what I wrote then almost induces sleep.

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  10. I was going to go with Carpe Diem, but Barb talked me out of it. My fall back is “In vino veritas.” That usually works with me. 🙂

    Although, if you use enough twisted logic, “carpe” could be morphed into “carp” the verb.

    Then you could translate it as “Bitch about the day.” 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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  11. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    While I know Latin phrases are everywhere, I admit to ignoring them mindlessly. A favorite just does not exist for me since I am oblivious to them anyway. But to Kelly, bathroom planner, I would translate this into Latin: Put a heated floor in the bathroom. Warm feet in the bathroom is so comfortable!

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    2. Oh, yeah. Already planned. Then she found out you can get a heated shower floor and heat the bench seat being installed. To me the shower floor warms up as soon as you get the hot water going but it’s not my bathroom. Whatever makes her happy.

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        6. Ever since we were in Kyoto, Robin has been talking about Japanese toilets, which have a built-in bidets (and a heated seat). She wants one.

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        7. We have a bidet seat (from Costco). It’s heated and absolutely wonderful. We’re actually on our second one. The first one lasted three years (if I remember correctly), and we both agreed to replace it immediately, and we did. I cannot overstate how wonderful it is. I’d never be without one again. Well worth the roughly $200 it cost (on sale, of course). Highly, highly recommend.

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        8. Our DiL has the Costco one. We tried it at their house and Kelly got one for Christmas the next year. It’s been 3 or 4 years. She’s ordered a Toto toilet with a bilt in bidet. I don’t feel the need for it. Yet.

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    3. I had an installer that had put a heated floor in the bathroom in the basement that not only heated the floor, but heated the ground beneath it and the heating bill ran into hundreds of dollars a month because the ground in winter is kind of insatiable when it comes to trying to figure out how to get the heat on the floor up to 100°

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  14. hey ben
    look for one of those little concrete mixers where you could pour a bit at a time by adding water sand and stone 30 minutes at a time until you got it done moving stuff around as the floor expanded

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  15. I like “In vino veritas.” It’s good to keep it in mind before having another glass of wine.

    When I was very young, Mass was still in Latin. I remember scraps of it, and always liked the exchange: “Dominus vobiscum,” followed by “Et cum spiritu tuo.” (The Lord be with you–and with your spirit.)

    Another favorite phrase is “ad nauseam,” which I learned when my 7th-grade English teacher wrote it in my yearbook. I can’t remember the exact context he used it in, but as he liked to mock students, it wasn’t complimentary. I was too afraid of him to ask him what it meant, and looked it up when I got home. It’s a fitting phrase for times when you and another person (usually a family member) have discussed something over a long period of time without coming to an agreement or resolution, as in “if he brings that up again, I’m going to be sick.”

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  18. I’m now reminded about the language courses offered by Moorhead, Minnesota middle school in the early 60’s. Latin and German were the only two available but restricted to students with above average grades. Only “smart” kids allowed! Ridiculous! Language arts had changed dramatically by the time my kids started school.
    More Latin that everyone now learns at a very young age: Tyrannosaurus Rex.

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  19. I had a great Latin teacher, Miss Sadoff, the first year, and she made it really fun, sprinkling her teaching with Latin phrases, and constantly pointing out Latin derivations in everyday speech. Wish she had also taught second year…

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  20. Today is a Niedsersachsen day here, no Latin. Made Heidesand, a Friesian cookie, and Fischgulasch (North German Bouillabaisse). Lots of shellfish, paprika, and halibut, cod, and salmon.

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    1. We will eat it with Gerstenbrot, sourdough barley bread with sage topping. Husband made that earlier and had it in the freezer.

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  21. “Mirabile dictu”, which means “amazing to relate.”
    It’s useful when something unexpected and wonderful happens, or if the Donald ever did something that wasn’t venal and destructive.

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  22. The score of The Lion in Winter had a lot of Latin. In this scene, if the Internet can be trusted, the lyrics are “Eleanore, Reginae Anglorum, salus et vita.” And it translates as “To Eleanor, Queen of the English, health and life.”

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