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What’s the Point?

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Another Wednesday, another blizzard warning and snow day.

For good measure, the three of us took Thursday off as a snow day as well. Wanted to make sure we gave the roads time to improve. And really, on the north side of Rochester we only had about 2 inches maybe, and most of our driveway didn’t have any snow on it. Credit to my dad for having the road built up like he did 50 years ago. I remember maybe 30 years ago there was a snow storm every Thursday for about a month. I would plow the driveway before milking in the morning, Kelly would take the kids in and go to work, and then before they came home, I’d clear the driveway and again wait for them out at the highway. Must’ve been before cell phones, and in one of those odd little memories that sticks with you, I remember sitting in the tractor with the door open while one of the sheriff deputies that we were friends with, stood outside and we talked for half an hour. I remember watching his ears get more and more red and thinking “I’m sure glad I’m in this tractor cab.“, and “why doesn’t he end this conversation and get back in the car already??” Maybe Kelly finally came home, I don’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe I should have had him get in the cab out of the wind at least. Don’t know.

Daughter and I have the place to ourselves this weekend as Kelly flew out to Boston to staff a booth for some work-related event. Flew out Saturday, works Sunday, back on Monday. I don’t think you can even call that a working vacation. Sounds like just plain ‘work’ to me.

I think I have finally finished farm bookwork and can get our taxes done now. The software I use generates a Year End report that will be 31 pages this year. About half of it being farm related expenses, and the other half being household expenses. There’s no profit on the farm this year and that’s primarily expenses related to the farm shop. I always enjoy looking at the final tally of these expenses. The dogs cost us $3000: Half is vet expenses, the other half are dog treats, joint medications, and frisbees. Pretty astounding how much we’ve spent on groceries.

I have finally, I think, finished all the construction in the shop. In fact, I moved the miter saw and table saw off to storage corners. I started moving bolts to the new bolt shelves and placed another order for more storage bins and dividers. I am throwing out a lot! A lot of not only old, rusty, bent, things, but just bolts that I’ll never use. For example, a box of nuts and bolts from my father-in-law when he had a grain bin taken down. There’s just not a chance I’m gonna use 1000 round headed, 1 inch bolts, that have a glob of tar on them. I also threw out a box of 3/8 inch flat headed plow bolts. Again, it’s just not something I’m gonna use. I use plow bolts, but they’re ½” diameter and 2 inches long.

I have two boxes of stuff I’m saving for my crafty sister. Just weird little odds and ends that she always appreciates. Although in this case, I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with all this metal stuff without a welder. Maybe I should buy her a tube of JB weld to go with this junk. I mean “these supplies”.  

One of the boxes of dad‘s odds and ends and bits of doo-dads, contained eight sets of ignition points and three condensers. I have no idea if they’re from tractors or cars and it sort of boggles my mind that if he replaced a set because it wasn’t running well, why did he not just throw it right away in the first place??

I saved those for my sister.
Some of you might know what those are. Electronic ignition and everything these days has eliminated the need for these things, but these were a pretty remarkable creation in the history of the automobile and kudos to whoever invented them.

(OK, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Charles Franklin Kettering, founder of Delco, and worked for GM, is credited with creating this ignition system. It was first used on the 1912 Cadilac. Huh!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_ignition_system

The online auction in Plainview finished on Tuesday. I had taken a small, 4 drawer toolbox that I got for free, a large 5 drawer ‘document’ cabinet that had large, shallow drawers, and the anhydrous applicator toolbar. There were two other, much nicer anhydrous applicators than mine on the auction. I got $200 for that item. A lot less than I paid for it ten or fifteen years ago. I also got $40 for the small free toolbox. So at least all that stuff is out of my hair.

I’ve got 1 chicken laying eggs in the garage.

I’ve chased her out of the garage a couple times recently, so I was keeping an eye out for eggs. Every now and then I get a chicken laying eggs in the garage for some reason. Once they were nesting up on a shelf behind a box of sidewalk chalk. This time she’s on the ground, behind a shovel. I figure that out one day when the shovel was tipped over. Chickens are so weird.

Hey- check out this ‘egg fetcher’ tool I use when the eggs are in the corner underneath the nest boxes:

WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON THING IN YOUR JUNK DRAWER?  DID YOU GO LOOK OR DID YOU JUST KNOW?  WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY OF THAT THING?

31 thoughts on “What’s the Point?”

  1. First of all, which junk drawer? There’s a general junk drawer and also more specialized ones.
    In the general junk drawer, without looking, I would guess that the item most represented is padlocks. Why do we have several? Because we have been around a long time. The padlocks vary in size and formidability. They were acquired for specific purposes sometime in the past, purposes that no longer serve, but it doesn’t seem sensible to throw away a perfectly good padlock.
    I don’t quite know why we locked up more things in the past than we do now. Some of the locks were for things like lockers at the gym. We still use the gym but don’t change or shower there. One of the locks was used on a storage facility we employed as a transitional space when we were moving houses. That would have been about 25 years ago. It’s a sturdy lock but I haven’t had an application for it since then. Even storage facilities tend to supply their own locks now. I imagine that’s so they can keep a key themselves.

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  2. Not exactly a junk drawer. More like a miscellaneous drawer.
    Short pencils, face masks (ready for the next epidemic), rubber bands, safety pins, sticky note pads, hot sauce packets, hand cleaner packets, plastic spoons.
    And I didn’t have to search it.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Pens, pencils, and rubber bands. Also an array of post-it notes of various designs and sizes live in my junk drawer. I must say that Bill’s question, “which junk drawer” is appropriate. I have several. There is the household tools junk drawer (tools, batteries, and the Costco receipt envelope, not to mention flashlights that do not operate at all). Then there is the communication drawer with the pens and rubber bands. There is an old style calculator there, too.

    Why do I have these things? Because i always think, Maybe I will use that for something someday. Lou’s toolbench in the garage has the same variety of bolts and screws that you describe Ben. This includes the black blobs. I did not have to look at these drawers.

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    1. JacAnon, who has already logged in a bunch of times. Good Grief. I also am filled with admiration for your “invention” of the egg-picker-upper which appears to be a modified pasta server. I like the action figure on the calculator, too.

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  4. We really don’t have junk drawers, except for one in a lamp table in the livingroom that has pet brushes in it. Instead, we have junk work tables in the garage, several, in fact, that sit below the multitude of my father’ tools that we moved to Dickinson when we moved my father here to live with us. The tables are covered with all sorts of things, like bird seed containers, pet treats, grilling supplies, etc. Pens, pencils, and rubberbands are in the house in holders on the desk in the study as well as husband’s brief case. Now that I think about it, our study, which has the piano, the computer, filing cabinets, the wine rack, and surplus food that doesn’t fit in the kitchen, is just one big junk drawer.

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  5. We too have multiple junk drawers:
    – the tool drawer in this solarium where the computer, library shelves, and puzzle stand reside. It has an inordinate number of little felt pads that go under furniture legs to protect hardwood floors…
    – beside it is the candle drawer, which also holds matches, antique keys, more felt pads, some flower pot items…
    – the electrical drawer, with cords, batteries, light bulbs…
    – the kitchen junk drawer (tiny), organized with check boxes (remember, that checks used to come in?) – rubber bands, band-aids, post-it notes, more felt pads…

    Anyone familiar with Trader Joe’s Green Tea Mints? They come in a square metal container with see-through plastic in the lid. I use them to put in little amounts of things like chains, cup-hooks, tiny Christmas light bulbs, favorite sides of screws… there are some in every junk drawer mentioned above.

    https://www.ebay.com/itm/326432600307?var=0&mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5338590836&toolid=10044&customid=242c418dec231028acb42652e2f16a0d&gclid=242c418dec231028acb42652e2f16a0d

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  6. I got rid of a lot of stuff that would have filled junk drawers when I moved here 9 years ago. There isn’t much room here for junk, and there is no actual junk drawer, but I still have a collection of odds and ends.

    I also have the same stuff as most others do. Old pens and mechanical pencil sets, sticky notes, pencil erasers, stamp pads, boxes of staples, tape, rubber bands, tacks, glue. I also have a lot of nuts, bolts, screws, and nails. I always think I will need them someday, but that day never comes (until I get rid of something – then I need it.)

    I have a lot of old keys, including an old cloth bag filled with skeleton keys. I have some padlocks too. There are some old decorative brass lamp top thingies, and some old light fixtures for old lamps.

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  7. Leaving Taiwan 7 years ago, we left the junk that had been in the drawers mostly behind. It accumulates here, though. During Covid we acquired cats, and went through a succession of different boxes until we and the cats found what worked for them. The remainders were cleaned out and have pride of place on my “workbench” (a dining table I picked up for free) in the garage. One holds hand tools, and the other has “parts” (like screws, washers and stuff). I was running out of screws there, so today I opened a junk drawer that came with the house when we bought it. I sorted screws out of the picture hangers & etc. in there and recharged the box in the garage.
    In less than 7 years, we have accumulated several drawers-worth of junk. I hesitate to throw much out, not because “maybe I’ll use it some day”, but because “maybe that’s a treasured family heirloom paint-can opener that once belonged to my father-in-law.”

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  8. Twist ties, and those plastic things that come on bread bags. Popsicle sticks. Pieces of thread and string, which are saved to go out for the birds to use in nest-building – which reminds me, now would be a good time to gather up that stuff and hang it up for the nest-builders.

    nestingmaterials

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    2. Speaking of nest builders, the Big Bear Valley eaglets are doing well.
      There was a scare yesterday as Jackie, momma eagle, had a fishing line and hook stuck in her beak. It was painful to watch her trying to get it off. I couldn’t bear to watch long. She was eventually able to shake it off. What a relief!

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        2. When the dogs shed and I brush them outdoors, then I let the hair go. I find that hair woven into birds nests that fall onto the ground.

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      1. The whisk idea was not original, I saw it online somewhere. The blue stuff is pulled-apart frayed denim from ripped jeans. It’s mixed with bits of thread & miscellaneous textile scraps.

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  9. OT – BLEVINS!!!

    My bad – forgot to send out reminders. Blevins is TODAY
    2 p.m.
    Kathy & Jim’s

    Lady in the Lake – Raymond Chandler
    Tom Lake – Ann Patchett

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  10. I’m stuck on this one because of the definition of junk drawer. I would call my drawers “mixed-use“ drawers, but they are like bills specialized. Without going to look in one drawer I pretty sure I have more allen wrenches than anything else. This is because every time I get something that has to be put together and it comes with a little wrench. I think “I might be able to use this in the future” so I keep it. And it is true. I have many times been able to go to that draw and find a little wrench for some project I’m working on.

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  11. Ben-Before I could answer the question of what was in my junk drawer, I had to open the drawer in the kitchen rather than recall what was in it- then I took a photo. It is truly miscellaneous. A cord for charging my car battery (I think-I have an old-fashioned gas car but installed a plug in), few pens, clips, bandaids, scotch tape, post its, toothpicks, corks, small batteries, magnifying glass, small tools (those little tiny screw drivers or mixed use ones) etc. I have a separate tool drawer, a tape drawer, an office junk drawer. Really since only the one in the kitchen has mixed categories, it is probably the only one that counts as a “junk” drawer, don’t cha think?.

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  13. Im afraid we have three junk drawers. And I don’t have to go look. Drawer 1 & 2 are mostly phone and iPad charger cables. Plus the other misc cables for other odds and ends.
    Then there’s the junk drawer with felt pads, screws, nails, rulers, night lights and bulbs, tape measures… just all that stuff

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