2025, animals, Farming Update, Health, Nature, Theatre, Uncategorized

It Is What It Is

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Life is what you make out of it. It’s always an adventure.

Monday you’re bit by a dog, Tuesday daughter will run out in bare feet to greet you when you return home, and Wednesday she stands outside your door and says she hates you. Thursday there’s a tree on fire. Is it any wonder I can’t remember what day of the week it is? 

Whoosh! Another week gone. Or maybe that was just the wind on Thursday.

Got the college show open and it is going well. The floor turned out OK and the wall patterns, well, I can’t decide if it looks like giant presents, or wall paper. The concept is still good, it’s just the execution that lost traction. There’s a lot of justification in this if you know the story and think about it long enough. Love, relationships, difficulties in both.

I got corn and oat seed picked up last Saturday,

Got the wagon top swapped on the running gear,

Had all four tractors out and running, and got 3 of them back inside the shed.

Got the shop stereo hooked up to one speaker, and the blu-tooth receiver connected to an old cell phone and streamed Radio Heartland as the inaugural music. Will be better when I get the second speaker mounted, but at least it works.

Monday I got bit by a stray dog I was trying to pick up for the township and spent a few hours in the Emergency Department. I was inspected and injected and injected some more. Two more rabies shots to go (four total) I got a Tetanus booster, and immuglobulin in the ED. Had a great RN and to my astonishment, the ER waiting room was empty when I arrived! Honestly, there are worse things in life, this was nothing. I joked, I’m going to go pick up all the rabid dogs now! The other township guys joked I will need to wear a rabies tag.

I got a call about running another 20 acres of ground in the neighborhood. I’m going to do it, but I also had to run some numbers first. It’s not the best soil, and there are just as many deer there as my place. And with input cost up, and crop prices down, I offered a low rental price. It was accepted for this year, and we’ll see how it does. “Experts” are predicting an increase in farm income, due to Government Rescue payments, and cattle prices are up, but…it’s still going to be a tough year financially.

We had thunderstorms Thursday night, and over an inch of rain, which we really needed. As I came home from the college show, about 9:30 PM, I could see a light where there shouldn’t have been light. A tree was on fire.

I always thought if lightning struck a tree it exploded. Nope, this was just on fire 30 feet up. I called the non-emergency line for the fire department, because I wasn’t quite sure what to do about this. It rained enough after they put it out that there wasn’t a risk of re-igniting. At the time, I didn’t know how much rain we had gotten and I was concerned about the dry grass below it.

We got our new baby chicks on Tuesday. These 40 chicks are Black Australorp, and Barred Rock. Twenty of each.

I used a new hatchery this year due to supply issues with chicks at the hatchery I have been using, and these were the available breeds. We’ve been looking up guineas to order later this summer, and again, some places have NOTHING available for 2025. I’d sure like to do more ducks, but not if they’re only going to get eaten by something.

There’s a female Cardinal really stuck on watching herself in our car Windows.

I did a little fieldwork Thursday afternoon.

It was good to get out in the dirt. And now with the rain, I can take the time to check tires, and grease machinery and replace some parts.

So it’s been a busy week. With the show open and no more evening rehearsals, I hope to get some farming done now.

It always feel like I should have more time, and then suddenly the weather is nice, and the ground has dried up and, worst of all, I’ve seen some neighbors out working, and then I gotta get out there! Springtime is always hard. There’s always a college show to open, and then concerts, and commencement, and depending on how the winter was and how soon the snow melts, assuming we had any, it all affects what all I should be doing at the same time. And it will all get done. I still should cut down some trees hanging over the fields, and I still have branches to pick up in the waterway area. Plus getting the machinery greased and tires checked, and oil changed.

When I swapped the wagon top last weekend, I tightened up the rear wheel bearings and added grease to the bearings on the running gear. That’s not something I do often enough, but this was the perfect time to do it before I put the wagon on top.

We’ve got an Easter ham thawing and I’m looking forward to that.

I’ll promote a place we’ve been ordering meat from lately:

FarmerGrade.com

It was started by a couple guys who raise hogs down in Iowa. They have a Youtube channel and I watch them. They started marketing their own hogs, and it expanded into other farms with beef and chicken. Beef from Sonne Farms in South Dakota (and others). Sonne Farms also have a YouTube page I watch.

Happy Easter.

Take some time to appreciate what you have.

LIGHTNING, DOGS, CHICKENS, AND SHOTS.

WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?

32 thoughts on “It Is What It Is”

  3. I had to have rabies shots when I was in Grade 1 after the neighbor dog bit me. I got the shots under my shoulder blades because I was too skinny to get them in my abdomen. The dog wasn’t rabid, by the way.

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    1. I got two little bites on my right hand. One small bite on my index finger that just broke the skin, and a bit deeper one on my right middle finger. That’s the one that bled. The rabies shots have been in the arms. But the immuglobulin, 8CC total, was spread around, but they wanted some at the wound site. Well, it’s hard to inject much into that first joint of the finger. There’s just not much flesh there.

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  4. Benjamin Franklin: don’t try this at home.
    DOG has a high number of definitions in the OED.
    CHICK/CHICKEN has quite a few too.
    So does SHOT. Why is a shot glass called that?

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    2. It is now because because shot glasses came to be used to measure alcohol. Go vac a couple centuries. When they sat beside every plate on the dining table when wild birds were served.

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      1. When you shoot a bird or a rabbit with a shotgun, some of the pellets(shot), remain in the carcass, so the shot glass was there for you to place the shot you found. I went down a rabbit hole. Sorry.

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        1. Now that you mention it, that’s come up before, possibly on the Trail, but I had forgotten. I remember when I was young, eating pheasant at my great uncle’s house at the conclusion of a hunt. The pheasant was very tasty but you chewed carefully and finely to recover any lead shot. No shot glasses, though. They just went on the edge of the plate.

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  6. Sorry for your week(s), Ben. Farming does that. My last three months frequently pile up with stretches of details to be handled. Yesterday overwhelmed me. Meditation helped. One question was do I start a drug that costs $409 a month, go on living with a tough issue, or try a very unattractive option.
    Clyde

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    2. look at good rx clyde
      i bet it will reduce cost in a big way
      or canada
      my mom goes to a mail ordee pharmacy that cut her cost dramatically

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  7. I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that question. I abstain.

    It’s a lovely day out there today. I’ve had a super busy week, and today is the first day I’ve had a chance to catch up on things at home. I’ve got half a dozen pans in the fire. It will be nice to stay home this weekend. Next week will be busy for me too.

    I’m glad WP has returned to normal. One day last week it wouldn’t allow me to log in. Then I couldn’t post. Then there wasn’t even a comment box.

    Enjoy your spring fertility festivals this weekend, Baboons!

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    2. After choir rehearsal Wednesday night, bell choir rehearsal and singing at Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services, and playing bells at two services tomorrow, I am quite ready for Easter to be over.

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  8. Better Late Than Never, Baboons,

    The only thing in common that lightening, chickens, dogs, and shots have that I can think of is you, Ben. What a week you had! Your theater set also looks good. I don’t know how you do it all, but I am glad that you do. And now I know more about where the term “shot glass” came from. That is a new one.

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    1. BTW, I did not know there were narcissistic cardinals in the world, but you have a picture of one. Watch out Ben. She might overtake the henhouse in her own self interest.

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  11. Chorus
    Lightning creases the sky.
    Lightning creases the sky.
    Dogs whimper beneath the porch.
    Chickens flap to their haven.

    Who shot the rooster?
    The alarm clock,
    Jealous as can?
    The slug-a-bed flock,
    Blackbirds in a tree?
    Chorus

    Why shoot the rooster,
    Lying in the rain?
    Many could have done him in.
    The moral: do not be vain;
    It is for sure a sin.
    Chorus

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  12. I was trying to explain the Trail to somebody yesterday and I completely forgot to talk about the occasional haikus and poetry!

    My body and brain is too tired to think about the weekend question. Big baking project on Friday, World’s Most Over-Engineered Egg Hunt on Saturday and then a gruesome four hours of raking, yard cleanup today w/ YA. I am sore all over.

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