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July

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Happy day after July 4! Everyone still got all their fingers and toes?

Corn and oats both made knee high.

It’s been a busy week for a lot of different reasons. Monday morning I got a call from the co-op asking if I could pull out a stuck sprayer. No, I couldn’t, I was about to head to town with daughter and I also had an appointment. They called neighbor Dave, and he ran right over. I was pretty sure where the sprayer was stuck: a field that was wet when I tried to plant it a month ago, and that was before we got 6 inches of rain.
I talked to Dave later and he said all he did was get the sprayer more stuck. The sprayer driver had gotten out and looked before he drove into the field, and Dave agreed, it was dry on the top. But you broke through that crust and it was muck underneath. And he didn’t get more than about 10’ into the field. Heck, I didn’t even think that was the wet spot.

Eventually a tow truck was called to pull the sprayer out. This was one of those fields that neighbor K wanted for a deer food plot and it’s the first time it had been worked up in 20 some years. I kept telling the neighbor there’s a reason this field was put in the Conservation Reserve Program back then, but I don’t think he’s figured it out yet.

Sunday afternoon Kelly and I had our usual Sunday Farm Gator Tour and we also found a wet spot in a field. Didn’t get stuck but close enough.

When I came home Monday afternoon there was another drone at the farm. neighbors Dave and Parm, who rent our pasture hired a company that uses a drone to spray for weeds. They used the drone to spray the wonderful crop of thistles. It was really pretty cool to watch. The pasture is so rugged, with so many gullies, and steep slopes, that you can’t drive it with a tractor and mower, so this was an absolutely perfect application for a drone. Talking with the operators, the drone will cost you about $25,000. They also have $75,000 in the spray trailer, complete with a 30 kW generator on the front, landing pad on the top, room for a second drone, chargers, chemical storage tanks, etc. Maybe we could all chip in and buy one. Then what should we do with it? Oh, you also need the drone operator’s license, which is fairly involved, and a license from the federal government allowing you to spray chemicals from a drone.

I did cut the grass on the sides of our road, and the one small field here in the front of the shed. I put the exhaust pipe and the new muffler on the 630 and used that for raking. That thing is as loud as ever. I never really thought about it before but evidently John Deere two cylinder tractors were not known for being quiet. I got it baled Wednesday afternoon. The baler worked perfect, never missing a knot on the bales, and my camera to watch the knots, is still slick to have.

Kelly’s tractor and the smoking wire I still haven’t completely diagnosed but I’ve ruled out a few things.I replaced a couple wires and I’ve disconnected both the rear light and the front lights and the wire still gets hot, so now I’m not sure if it’s the switch, or there’s something else wrong. I don’t really know what it could be, and adding to the mystery is a blown fuse on the dash. And if the fuse is blown, why is anything still working?

There’s a couple different places I order old tractor parts from. Lind Brothers included a bag of microwave popcorn in their box. It was really good popcorn. Steiner Tractor Parts always puts “Cow Tails“ candy in with their parts. When I order theatre stuff from Monkey Wrench, they throw a handful of candy in their boxes, usually something banana shaped. And Sweetwater, of course has to put candy in their box too. Can’t have a name like that and not include candy.

The padawans and I spent three days working on summer remodeling projects at the Rochester Repertory theatre. One day I painted the bottom of the balcony black.

We are adding a few more hanging racks in the costume room, and trying to remove an old boiler that was original to the building,1959. I asked a few plumbers how to get it out and they’d all groan and roll their eyes and say get a sledgehammer and a couple young men. Every day I bring a new Implement of destruction, we are working on it, and it’s slow going.

The big job will be insulating a north wall which is just concrete block. 
I have two by fours and blue insulation board and I’m bidding on a power actuated nail gun on an auction. It’s a “hammer“, that uses a 22 blank as a charge to drive a nail. I’ve seen them, never used one. Sounds like fun. I think that would be faster than trying to use cement screws. This is the auction that I took that old cultivator, running gear, and garage door to be sold. As of Friday the cultivator is at $41, the wagon is at $6 and the garage door at $7. Drifting off to sleep one night I bid on a really nice 26 foot cabin cruiser, and a mower. I need to not open the auction page as I’m falling asleep. Thankfully I was outbid on both within a day or two. The boat was gonna be a steel at $6!  Kelly said I should at least go up to $10. It jumped to $96. We thought we could make a B&B out of it. Park it out on the lawn. 

REMEMBER CRACKER JACK’S? WHAT SURPRISES WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET IN A BOX?  

39 thoughts on “July”

  2. I think Cracker Jack is still available somewhere but the prizes have devolved to a slip of paper with a web address for a game or puzzle or something. There are people who collect the prizes that once came in Cracker Jack. You can see some offered on eBay.

    The Monopoly set at our house when I was young still had the metal tokens— hat, iron, race car, cannon, etc. I think it was a mistake for Milton Bradley to cheapen the game by doing away with those. I know Monopoly is a long way from Cracker Jack but that’s where my mind went when I thought about the question…

    that and what in my estimation was the best in-the-box promotion ever—the Quaker Big Inch promotion.
    For the Big Inch promotion, every box of Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat contained an official certificate entitling the bearer to one square inch of land in the Yukon. This was at a time when Sergeant Preston of the Yukon (and his sled dog Yukon King) were popular on television and kids had the idea that the gold rush was still unfolding. The whole story of that promotion is entertaining. Here’s the Wikipedia summary:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_Big_Inch_Land_Promotion

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    3. I was at Lake Okoboji in Iowa last weekend. The average lakefront lot now sells for $2M. They have been breaking down the cost by the linear inch, rather than the square inch of the Yukon of your youth.

      It is not a place I would buy property. Not only is it expensive, it is Iowa’s party lake, a la Lake Minnetonka Big Bay, here. Definitely not the North Woods paradise of my fantasies.

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    4. I had to google the correct spelling of Cracker Jack (not “Jacks”) and was surprised to see it is still available. I liked the peanuts, not the popcorn. Still not a fan of caramel corn…

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      1. The stores here still sell Cracker Jacks and I buy a three pack occasionally.

        I resist the insistence on the singular, and stick to the name I always called the product – Cracker Jacks.

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  3. Is the boiler cast iron? Maybe the host of one of the iron pour events would send out a crew to help break it up. I know that they often source their iron by breaking up old radiators. There’s an iron pour site in Decorah and another in Eagan.

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      1. Found a few artists, one in WI, sent a message, he called back and we had a long talk about cast iron and the pours, and how breaking them apart really is a job. Mostly they use old radiators because the cast iron is thinner. This monster, being thicker, his furnaces won’t melt it he says. Or it takes too long.

        It was some fun research and really interesting talking with him.

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        1. I just ran into a Richard Feynman quote, advice I try to follow:
          “ Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough”

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  4. I used one of those 22 shell- powered nail guns to attach studs to a concrete wall back in the ‘70s. It worked pretty well. It’s amazing to me how much power those shells pack. I rented the gun and the rental place supplied the rest.

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  5. Rise and Open the Box, Baboons,

    I am with VS on this one: cold hard cash in a box will do.

    OP Ed: I do not like Cracker Jacks, and I did not like them as a child. On the rare occasions I had a box, the prizes were disappointing to me. Recently Lou got a box on a trip down memory lane. They were still disappointing. There is a lot of gourmet popcorn out there, so why would you buy this product?

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  8. Popcorn purist. Maybe a little butter but no other flavorings. Used to be a routine evening snack for Sandy and I after we put kids to bed. We would eat it while we played cribbage or scrabble. Now it bothers my digestion.
    I did eat cracker jacks now and then. I have no memory of the prizes. The only cold cereal in our house when I was a child was corn flakes. I don’t think it ever had prizes. My 12 year grandson and his father will be here tomorrow. I have not seen the boy in 10 years. I asked my son for a shopping list which included lucky charms for the boy. The cheapest box was the largest box. It includes some kind of game you play with the marshmallows. Seems odd.
    They are coming to say goodbye to Sandy. They may be too late.

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  10. I have a memory of a little caramel-colored plastic horse figurine that I believe was a Cracker Jack prize. There were many fun prizes when I was a kid – the modern versions are pretty sad.

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        1. Our computer was so old, we had to take the phone off the wall to stick it into the modem! 🙂

          Seventh grade we could sign up for half hour slots in the school library to play computer games. Put the phone handset in the thingy, and type in numbers about parachuting on a planet with various gravity. The lower you got to the ground – without dying- the more points you got. Someone figured out if you entered “0000” in all the slots, you’d immediately SPLAT and we thought that was funny. So much for educational.

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  11. I never liked Cracker Jacks since I don’t like peanuts. Weeded the yard like fiends the last couple of days, and today we will try to finish the weeding and put strings on the bean poles for the pole beans to climb up.

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    1. I was out weeding this morning, trying to catch up from my recovery period when it all got away from me. Beautiful day here. I worked for 2.5 hours, then napped for 1 hour.

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  13. I’ve never ordered anything where the shipper added candy to the shipment. Is that a regional thing?

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