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Randomness

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

And we thought it was cold during the last cold spell.

Not much happening on the farm this week. The sun is sure getting stronger, and the chickens stand on the south side of the shed, in the sun, out of the wind, against the white steel, and they don’t venture much further. They even laid a few eggs.

I’m having a hard time feeling motivated lately. Every now and then I get to a point where I feel like the Earth is going to fall into the sun, so what’s the point anyway.

Sigh.

And then I get up and go do something.

It could be the political climate, it could be the cold weather, it could just be the same old routine day after day. Have you noticed? Even though there’s a lot going on, and every day is different, the routine is still the same.

And coffee. Evidently, I’m a coffee drinker now. One day I bought a bag of coffee. Wait, back up—Why didn’t this group tell me there was different flavors of coffee?? I spent a day researching coffee flavors, and then I was determined not to buy a coffee maker because I wasn’t sure how committed I was to all this, so I tried various methods of making coffee without a coffee maker, and I researched egg coffee, and reusing the grounds, and strainers and filters, and I spilled a lot, and I made too many cups, bowls, and pans dirty… and then about the fourth day I bought a $10 coffee maker at Menards.

Sigh.

And a bag of small bag of Highland Grog coffee.

Sigh.

When we say we had “one cup”, are we actually referring to the volume measurement of one liquid cup? Because my travel mug is roughly two cups, and if I have two in a day, am I having four cups of coffee or two? This morning I made about three circles in the kitchen trying to figure out what I was doing first or next. I just haven’t gotten this whole coffee making process figured out yet.

Sigh.

There’s a spot in the yard where I get a real good echo off the barn and chicken coop. I stood there one day and yelled ‘Hello!’ a dozen times. I’d get two good echo’s off that and it was kinda fun and I enjoyed myself.

Out in the shed, I’ve gotten a cabinet mounted, and I’m working on the bolt storage shelves.

I saw a truck from a concrete company on the road the other day. I took a photo of it at the stoplight and was able to contact them for an estimate on adding more concrete in the shed. $13,000 for a flat slab 25’x50’. Well, that’s not a ton of money. I mean, it’s still $13K, but that’s hardly anything! Oh, it’s not going to happen this summer. I’ve said before, just because crop prices are up one year, doesn’t mean we should go crazy buying stuff, because you’d still have to make that payment next year. That’s how this whole shop project started: crop prices were really good in 2022 and I felt like I had money and I signed a contract for concrete in 2023 and began my shop. Here we are in 2025 and I’m still paying off the shop.

People may be curious about the agricultural environment in this administration…well, there’s lots of speculation. Prices are holding steady for the most part for corn and soybeans. They vary a few cents up and down every day based on talk of a trade deal with China, or good weather in Argentina. And I’ll say again, it’s such a global market, tariffs will send a price down, but bad weather in Brazil will bring it back up. It’s kinda crazy. I have a little corn in storage at the elevator, I put it there last fall, knowing I always need cash come spring, and hoping the price will have gone up enough to offset what I’m paying for storage of it. $0.06 / bushel / month. So, maybe today I win, and tomorrow I’ll lose. I’ll need the money either way.

This weekend at the college is the physics department club doing their demonstration show fundraiser. They physics kids are nerds as much as the theater kids are. They’re a good group though, and even though the show hasn’t changed too much in the 15 years I’ve been doing this, the audience kids seem to like it.

WHAT’S THE BEST ECHO YOU’VE HAD?

29 thoughts on “Randomness”

  1. Highland Grog is my #1 choice… I get it from Berres Brothers in Wisconsin. I always keep some “plain” coffee in the house because I have one friend who says she can’t even stand the smell of the Highland. That’s OK — leaves more for me.

    And I think you should only count it as 2 cups. If we start getting into the actual measurement of differently-sized cups, where will we be?

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  4. You are a treasure, Ben, I’m laughing with tears: “Why didn’t this group tell me there was different flavors of coffee??”

    And I think going out in the yard and yelling “Hello” for the echoes can be very useful whenever you need to get out of the doldrums.

    I like some of the flavored coffees, and Highland Grog is right up there with Hazelnut.
    Oddly, I don’t like anything else with mocha/coffee flavoring – i.e. ice cream or frosting.

    Best echo was probably yelling into some canyon when we were on vacation in Utah… or maybe it was Colorado?

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Echo: I cannot remember a great echo.

    The lack of motivation and winter blues. I am right there with you. My torpor is a combo of late winter and the political situation we are in. Uff Da.

    Coffee: usually I just use a good ground coffee, but occasionally I get one of the flavors or roasts that are out there. Jamaican Blue roast is unbelievably smooth, not to mention delicious. I also like the Verona roast–I love the bitter Italian roasts with cream. Yum.

    WE are headed out for the weekend. There is a big baby shower in Iowa for my niece who has had fertility problems, so this is also a celebration. Baby is due March 31.

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  8. I don’t care for flavored coffee, at least I don’t think I do. I have never deliberately ordered it, but may have inadvertently been served it somewhere along the line.

    I’d be surprised if I could tell the difference in taste of where the beans were grown. I find that after we have been drinking a certain coffee for an extended time, we no longer really taste it, so we change it up at that point. We do buy whole beans and grind them as we need them, that does seem to give a more flavorful cup of coffee. But we drink only one cup a day, so not huge consumers of coffee.

    The only echo I can think of at the moment is the very annoying echo there used to be on overseas phone calls in the olden days.

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  9. Coffee from the excellent Seinfeld Bookman episode. I never waste the coffee I make with basic grounds. A little vanilla extract is great despite heating up in the microwave.

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  10. I like flavored coffee. I like Jamaican Me Crazy and Highlander Grog. I also like Hazelnut. And a good medium roast South American coffee with a touch of vanilla in it is good too.

    You’re drinking two mugs of coffee. Just forget about the word ‘cups.’

    I remember echoes, but none recently when I really think about it. It would have been fun to have been a chicken in the yard, listening to you holler hellos at the shed, Ben.

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  12. echos in montana or maybe its wyoming … yellowstone country.
    ben check out one of those little cement mixers you pull behind a pickup truck. making cement is easier than making coffee. sand gravel and water. a couple 2×6’s and a wheelbarrow and your in business. my buddy through school was a stucco/ plaster/drywall guy and taught me the ropes. get a load of rock snd a load of sand dripped off and work through it over time and it would be a fraction of your bid.

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  13. I believe I’ve finally got an echo!
    This is political.
    Trump ran on ending the war in Ukraine in “24 hours.”
    My comment on a political website about that promise was (and is) that on Planet Trump a day is 24,000 hours long, hence Day One has just begun.
    I’ve now seen another poster repeat my joke.

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  14. I’ve never heard of Highland Grog, so I’m a little nonplussed to see that everybody in the world nows about it except me. I guess I’ll have to try it.

    A long time ago, the Starbucks company had a firm belief that you never flavor the beans, if you want flavored coffee you brew unflavored grounds and then add syrup. This firm belief seems to have gone my the wayside since then.

    I like the Indonesian coffee beans the best.

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