2025, Farming Update, pets

Buns And Rope

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Today’s Farming update comes from Ben.

When I grew up we didn’t splurge on hotdog buns or hamburger buns, unless maybe it was a special event, or there was family coming, then it was buns for Messy Josephs. (Sloppy Joes). 
Hot dogs? On a piece of bread. Hamburgers? On bread. Kelly’s family did hamburger buns.
Kelly would cut hot dogs in half to fit them on a hamburger bun. Well, that’s just weird. But It’s how our parents survived. 
We are living much more recklessly, and we get the appropriate buns. And it’s tough to use them up before they mold. And it bothers me once the hotdog bun gets a little dry and breaks open. Or we have real fat hot dogs and you can’t smush it into the bun without the back opening up. And on the other hand, I still struggle eating that last bit of bun without the hotdog. We certainly don’t eat as much bread as we used too.

So much of food is tied to our up bringing. 

And then there’s ratchet straps. Dad never owned a ratchet strap. And I didn’t know about them till I started working as a stagehand because everything there is ratchet straps.


And it seems like those really are the only way you should be securing something in a truck or trailer or securing it. Not rope, not bungee cords. Ratchet straps.

Dad had two long pieces of rope; they were probably 100 feet long. One was about a half inch diameter and there was another one that was maybe three-quarter inch diameter, and I think it was the old rope that used to go up through the hay mow to pull the bundle of hay up into the barn. They always hung in the shed. Seems like he was always using rope for something. This was the old sisal rope. The thicker one was worn smooth and probably didn’t really have much strength left in it.

And now, I very rarely use a piece of rope. At the college I’ve got some polyester rope, every now and then I have to move light fixtures from the cat walks either, up or down to the stage, and I use rope for that. Sometimes when the physics kids are in and they wanna hang a bowling ball as one of their demonstrations of The Conservation of Energy, I tie a rope around a piece of steel 40 feet in the air. But I don’t remember the last time I used a piece of rope at home. Twine, that’s a different story. Just bought two more bales of twine for the baler, and I am often cutting a length of twine to tie up something.

I have an assortment of rachet straps. Some have flat hooks on the end, some have regular hooks, some are 1” wide and 10’ long. Some are 2” wide, and 20’ long. Learning how to tie up the loose end is another skill I’m still working on.

On Thursday I took the trailer to Plainview to pick up some 12’ tall pallet racking. The guy helping me load it also helped me strap it down and he did the ‘fold and tie’ with the slack. I haven’t perfected that one yet, so I did the ‘Roll and loop’ method, which takes longer.

Luna is not a good rider, yet she can’t stand missing a ride. I had time to take a side trip to Theilman, MN, which I remembered being too once before, but I didn’t remember it being in the driftless area. It was a great drive and a fun way to use up 20 minutes.

For some reason, Luna sat nicely in the backseat a few times. It was odd.

Crops are all planted, and I noticed the first soybeans I planted are just starting to emerge. We got a nice 1” rain on Tuesday; slow, all day, light rain. Just perfect. On Monday I took the old plow over to that field of grass. Of the two fields, one was heavy soil, and more wet than I would have expected, and it didn’t work up well.

In proper conditions, the dirt would have ‘spread’ more as it turned over and you end up with a nice smooth field bed. I think there’s a reason this field was taken out of production 20+ years ago and put into a ‘conservation’ program. But the new owners think this would be a great food plot for deer hunting. Well, there’s a lot more deer around than there was 20 years ago, and if I ever get it planted, it will make a good food plot. Seems like every generation must relearn some things. Good or bad.

I’m done at the college, and I guess I’m on summer vacation.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM YOUR PARENTS THAT YOU DO DIFFERENT? OR NOT?

33 thoughts on “Buns And Rope”

  1. Interesting question, as we are in Brookings for our Son and Dil’s baby Sprinkle. Regarding buns, Husband grew up in Sheboygan, WI and is accustomed to eating brats in hard rolls, which are hamburger buns, in my opinion. We never buy hot dog or hamburger buns. Too much starch. We rarely eat hamburgers and never eat hot dogs. We eat many kinds of sausages and brats. I prefer prefer them without a bun as well

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  2. Maybe Luna is finally learning to like riding?

    My parents were of the mindset to be upwardly mobile – both came from large families that at times (esp. during the Depression) struggled to keep food on the table. They expected me to also be upwardly mobile, but here I come home with this hippie guy who (for a while anyway) just wanted to get back to the land. For a while that caused tension between me and my dad. They breathed a sigh of relief when Husband went back to school for a degree where he could teach in a college.

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  3. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    We use buns, but we always freeze the packages of them, because we do not eat them quickly and they spoil if not frozen. As a child, my family often had bread/hamburger sandwiches and bread/hotdog sandwiches. I rarely eat hotdogs anymore. They have too many preservatives. I am picky about my bratwurst–they often have way too much salt, so there are only a few brands I will eat. Otherwise I am so thirsty afterwards. Ben, that question made me laugh! I love your example of ratchet straps vs. rope. On the farms I was familiar with as a child, there were pieces of rope everywhere–hanging on barn or shed walls, laying on the grounds, coils stacked everywhere.

    The list of what I do differently than my parents is longer than the bun issue. My mother and grandmother taught me to garden. Those methods have held up. I understand that my grandfather gardened, planted and farmed by moon phases, but I did not ever learn to do that, and I wish I knew more about that.

    Every meal I ate as a child was meat, potato, vegetable, bread and butter. Then dessert. I still make potatoes but certainly not for every meal. Rice, pasta, and various breads show up regularly. I also use meat more as an addition to other things, rather than the feature on the menu. Think stir fry or pasta with a bit of meat scattered in there. I try to feature the veggies more. My grandma especially, focused every meal around the meat. She lived to age 99 years and her arteries did not seem to be the worse for it, but we are more sedentary and it seems unwise to me to eat that much fatty meat. But I did just cook bacon for breakfast. I love bacon.

    OT: we have a nest of baby bunnies right outside the back basement door. Phoebe found them last Friday before we knew they were there. She had one in her mouth and nearly killed it before we realized what was happening. There are four bunnies there now, and they are moving around a lot. Soon they will hop around the yard, attracting predators and driving her crazy. They are so cute and just so much trouble. I have not allowed Phoebe back there since, because I want to avoid the carnage and the tape worms involved with dogs killing bunnies.

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  4. The way of life my parents taught me—simplicity, frugality, people help each other, make it or fix it yourself, be satisfied with what you have—was too alien to Sandra’s way of thinking. But her health limited her income and increased expenses. Thus in the end my point of view sneaked in the back door.
    My father taught me many things not to be and many to be, as well as many skills. But so much about construction changed that only basic carpentry applied. When I added onto our house on the North Shore, I had him in mind as I figured out how to do everything, which was complicated, but the trusses. He approved of everything I did but was suspicious about the trusses.
    My parents together modeled a life-long commitment of love and marriage. Sandra had seen that with a great aunt and uncle who partly raised her. We kept both couples in mind throughout our marriage, which is approaching 60 years.
    Rope: a 3/4” rope to pull up hay? Sounds dangerous. My father was a master with rope, none of which he taught me. Wish he had.
    Clyde

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  5. Great pictures of Luna! She looks like she could get used to riding in the car with you. It must make you wonder if something happened to her in a car before you found her and gave her a good home. She’s a great dog!

    I don’t eat much bread. I don’t eat hotdogs at all, ever, and no hamburgers either. I do eat black bean burgers or salmon burgers. You can get what I call “Thin Buns” in most grocery stores. They’re usually multi-grain or whole wheat and they’re about half the thickness of a regular hamburger bun. I think they might be called “Sandwich Thins” or something like that. If I don’t buy those, I just buy sandwich wraps. I liked “Flat Outs,” but apparently those are gone now.

    There isn’t much that I do that was like my parents. My mom used to make me spend my Saturdays vacuuming the carpet eight times in rows. She was emphatic about it, and would stand there and watch to make sure I was vacuuming, slowly, one row at a time, eight times. Then move to the next row. Vacuuming took me all morning. From the living room, as I vacuumed, I could see the neighbor girls swimming out to the raft and lounging in the sun. It was a kind of lonely frustration that I will never forget. So no, I don’t do things the way my parents did. On a positive note, I did earn an allowance from all that vacuuming that paid for boarding my horses at Farmer Christie’s place.

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      1. Yes. Some carpet salesman told her that, I guess. She believed that in order to get all the dust, debris, and dander out of the carpet it had to be vacuumed weekly, eight times over every square inch. I spent some of this time wondering why she didn’t do it herself once per day while I was at school. Then I’d only have to do it twice in rows instead of eight times.

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        1. I don’t know whether vacuuming eight times is the magical number for clean carpets, but I do know that speed vacuuming (like my mother, my husband, and, alas, the woman who cleans my house) doesn’t get the job done. The machine needs a little time to lift the crud out of the fibers of the rugs, and that simply does not happen if you vacuum at lightning speed.

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  6. My current way of life and difficulty standing to cook drives me to use too many starches. Too easy to just make a sandwich. I make turkey burgers eaten on bread, more starch. My blood tests last week tell me to quit on that. Bet my GP says it’s not that high for my age.
    Don’t eat hot dogs. Do eat brats purchased at wonderful butcher shop, but not often. Do not use bun.
    Clyde

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    1. Yes, I did. I’ve been a little quieter this week because I had company for several days. My friend who lives in Madison/Arizona. We went to Dunkin at about 730. We got there just in time because literally right behind us came a couple of larger families and a big group of bikers. After we paid and we’re leaving there were easily 25 people in that little store behind us. It was kind of cute because they were putting all of the donuts in little teeny tiny donut bags with handles.

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  8. brat buns and thr brioce buns are wonderful but costco quantities leave me deal with them before they go bad. i crouton them. avacdo or olive oil with balsamic vinager in marinade with herbs and spices in the fridge for a few days then baked in the oven and added to potato onion tomato and fake meat forms basis for tuperware goulash i eat while moving through my day. thats after eggs potato onion and bacon sausage or brats (boy have they ever improved fake meat) i do for breakfast. potaro pancakes get crouton breadcrumbs as a binder. i got a new ladke recipe from a new york jews family cook book that adds baking soda and baking powder and maybe cream to recipe and is a wonderful application. my daughter just introduced me to a new bread from grocrey freezer that uses no flour but lentils and otherstuff and its my new favorite. wonder how to make buns like that?

    i have lots of wratchet straps and bungies and rope from years of hauling stuff on trailers and truckbeds and rooftops. my friend growing up was a plaster, drywall, stucco guy who taught me rope knots and ties that i love. i could study knots til im dead. its like functional slight of hand.
    my dogs have maybe 5 hours of drive time total in their lives. mothers day my daughter realized it was 13 years ago that her husband came here from kosovo and his first day here we picked up vinnie and nala. when they were new we tried car rides but vinny foamed at the mouth and gagged and nala was so nervous she almost had a breakdown right before our eyesso car rides are only to vet nowadays. (doesnt add to pavlovian car rides response)
    debbie and i have incorporated traditions into our little family unit. we put all her weird ones and my normal ones together and it works … sort of. my dads philosophy was that instead of doing a crappy job hed work harder and hire it done. i tend to go the opposite way. you become an expert after youve done it twice so go get started learning . youtube videos on everything from every aspect of life make it semi idiot proof.
    the comment about every generation finding new use for the land makes me think about china and how they build terraces on hillsides that take generations to get done but these are the correct applications for the geography . they seem to have 100 year plans for every plot of land. france and england are examples of adapting to change. climate change is making french wine production go to hell and all of a sudden england is the perfect growing environment for grape production.
    the mountains in columbia have grown so warm coffee bean plants need to move to higher elevations but as they mature enough to produce its gotten warmer and they need to move higher yet.
    used to love getting barge rope to tie up in the trees and create epic rope swings . bill huber still walks funny from being launched at the furthest point of the pendulum of a rope tied to an awe inspiring swing site overlooking the riverbottom below from the heights of the ravine we picked to make our platform built near a giant overhang in a thick part of the woods. the cops and parents came to see where the ambulence had to come fish him aut and that rope was cut down quick. what on earth were those kids thinking.
    how do i do things differently from my family traditions? only where my way makes more sense. how do my kids do it differently than me? they not have been paying attention. they are doing so many things wrong ans missing out on all the life guiding examples i gave them. i still have some time for them to realize how wise their father was. it took me a while to realize how much i enjoyed my dad and just now really appreciating my mom in the way i do.
    my drummer died a month ago and im helping his daughter deal with how much she misses and appreciates his input. puts a different perspective on it when you think about the stuff you leave behind. not just stuff but more like memories and mantras
    ari told me yesterday ”you’re the best papa ever”
    gives you something to shoot for.

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  9. I won’t tell the story of how in a rush to get last load of hay into the barn and get big door shut, I got bad rope burns on the palms of both hands. But we got it done, Looie and I.

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    3. Clyde, how big was the rope in your barn for pulling hay?
      I missed all of that, but the ropes were still there for opening the big door. There’s that fancy pulley / trolley with a clip on it.
      For those that don’t know, I’ll try to explain. And I’m speculating here since I never did it. There’s a trolley that moves through the barn on a track attached to the roof. At the West end of our barn, where the big door is, the trolley would stop, and the rope pulley would ‘detach’ (?) and lower the door. You’d unhook the pulley from the door, and then you could attach it to the hay fork, right? (For the last 50 years, there’s been a fence here and the door doesn’t open flat, it hits this fence. I have a vague memory of a feed bunk there when I was very young, and I stepped on a nail. Guess that’s why I never liked going barefoot.)
      The rope goes through the barn, out the East Window, and down to the horses or tractor. There’s a hook out there at the peak, but I never saw it used. Must have been another pulley out there.
      The horses would back up, the fork would lower on the west end, it would catch a load of loose hay, someone would whistle (my dad had a piercing whistle without using his fingers that I am still trying to replicate!) and the horses would go forward. The hay would rise, hit this trolley, move into the barn, and when the hay was in the right place, whoever was in there would pull another rope to release the hay. Then they walked over it; tromping it down, to pack it. I suspect the ones outside, could feel the load drop (rope slack?) and the process would start over.

      Kelly’s family did this using a tractor to pull the rope, and the clamp lifted bales of hay into the barn. When I got older, we had the grain elevator to take the bales up, and a hay conveyor in the barn to move them to the back.
      Sometime in the late 1970’s, one of my sisters married a carpenter, and Dad got him to cut a door into the side of the haymow. That way we could put the elevator directly in there, not needing the hay conveyor in the barn.
      Course I don’t use any of that anymore, without the milk cows, don’t need hay.
      My summer Palawan’s think they’ll clean out the haymow this summer. We’ll see. Be interesting to have that empty. Not sure it’s ever been empty. I remember getting down to the last two rows, but never empty.
      There are 3 sections, Number 1 was rarely used, so a lot of dead raccoons, raccoon scat, and loose bales, maybe 3 or 4′ deep.
      Sections 2 and 3 have 4 or 5 rows of hay left, maybe 70 bales / row. They get it cleaned out and we can have a barn dance!

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      1. Maybe with the lighter loads of a fork 3/4” carried the load. We used a one inch rope because we used slings. Our rope ran from the carriage to the back of the barn, to the side, back to the front, down to the ground where a pulley directed the rope away from the barn pulled by the tractor. Everything was at the front of the barn. The person tripping the load could see the person driving the tractor and vice versa. My father did all the splicing of the slings and the heavy rope. Every year he would make repairs.

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  10. We never had buns of any kind at our house when I was growing up although we did have real buns on the occasional Saturday night that we would have dinner at Nana and Pappy‘s. Saturday night was always hamburger night with french fries and real buns. Otherwise, it was bread. Bread for hamburgers and bread for hotdogs, although we didn’t have hotdogs much. YA has taken it a step further because she prefers brioche buns to hamburger buns. We’ve been getting them at Trader Joe’s, she likes those best.

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  11. I buy buns just for a change of pace, but it is usually too much bread. What we don’t use right away freezes well. I can’t believe we used to have meat-potato-veggie AND a roll of some kind… all those carbs.
    And I love English muffins, but now try to find the whole wheat kind..

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  12. I have a rope that I inherited from somewhere. Over the years it’s usually lived in my cars. I think it was in the Olds Cutlass Supreme that was the last car my parents owned,and came down to me.

    It has a loop on one end. The other end used to have a coating that might have been something like glue or paraffin, but the coating eventually wore off and now the end is fraying. I keep intending to come up with a fix that will keep the fraying from progressing.

    The last half dozen or so cars I’ve owned had roof racks, and that rope has secured a lot of stuff to the roof,, mostly for transport to compost sites.

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