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NIGHTLIFE

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The weekend Farm report from Ben

Every day this week, five AM pretty much right on the dot, Bailey barks outside. Luna and Humphrey bark inside until I can get to the door and get them out. And then everyone runs in separate directions and Bailey quietly wanders back to the garage, thinking, “suckers”. Pretty sure there’s been a coyote around for all the sniffing the other two are doing. Luna, she’s just running in circles barking. Humphrey is on the trail of something along the trees and around the crib, and down the field road. He’s got his nose to the ground and his tail is up and going. Bailey may sit and watch a bit, but mostly she’s letting the others take care of it. She will not engage until she has back up. Raises the alarm well, but not going to do anything about it on her own.

An hour later, they’re ready to come back in. Luna with a gentle bark. Humphrey with a scratch at the back door. Very randomly Humphrey might get locked in the feed room and he will not bark for attention. We realize he’s not around, call and call him and he will not bark. Eventually we backtrack enough we find him in the feed room, just waiting for someone to let him out. Not a sound from him. 

And every night for the last week, there’s been barn owls calling. The first night, there was one in a tree right in the back yard and I had a flashlight and it just bobbed back and forth looking at me. I didn’t know what the noise was; I thought Kelly was whistling in her sleep. Sometimes they’re further away from the house, and Thursday night there was two of them right here, plus at least one more further away. A soft, whistling, screeching noise. 

Daughter and the dogs take their daily walks. Sometimes, especially in this hot weather, daughter will text us asking for a rescue pick up. And Humphrey, just because he’s 10 years old and has a sore leg, sometimes we just go pick him up to give him a break. Bailey and Luna don’t always go for the walk. Bailey especially, as Luna is a bully to her, she’ll opt out just to get a break from Luna. And Luna sometimes thinks there are more interesting things happening at home with me. But Humphrey always ALWAYS goes for that walk, sore leg or not. I went to pick him up one day, and, not thinking, took the 4 wheeler, rather than the gator. He does not like being picked up, which is the only reason I was able to pick him up and put him on the front rack of the 4 wheeler; he didn’t expect this! And he sat there quietly and didn’t have to walk home. A win-win. 

Last week on one of those hot days, the fan in the chicken coop stopped working. What was in there was an old box fan from the theater because their other fan had stopped working last summer. And that fan was a replacement for a previous barn fan. I’ve always thought electric motors were interesting what with stator and rotors, the windings, the capacitors on some of the bigger ones, brushes, ect. We have had a lot of electric motors on the farm, many more when milking cows and they were vital to daily operation. Big 5 and 7.5 hp electric motors on the silo unloaders, a 5HP on the feel bunk, a 5HP on the vacuum pump, a ¾ HP on the milk pump, and any of them failing was a bad day. The ones on the silo unloader might be 35 feet up in the silo, so if it failed, it was a pain in the butt not to mention an expense. I learned how to check and change capacitors, and most of the time that was the only problem. They could be replaced in the silo. Getting the motors out of the silo was a much bigger deal. Ropes and pulleys were involved. 

So the chicken’s fan. The box fan I threw out. I took the one motor apart, found decayed wires deep inside and tossed it into the scrap bucket. The old barn fan motor; it would run for ten seconds, quit for ten, run for another ten, repeat. I pulled it apart. Well, first I watched some You Tube videos, then I pulled it apart, which first meant getting the fan blade and the cage guard off. (A torch was involved, just to heat up the set screws and shank to facilitate removal, not to cut it off.) I remember Dad buying this fan as an exhaust fan for the dairy barn, maybe 40 years ago, and it was too powerful; it got too cold in the barn in winter, so he took it out and it collected dust for a lot of years. Then I rescued it and hung it in the middle of the barn alley so I had a fan on those hot humid summer days milking cows. And I sold the cows 22 years ago and it’s been gathering dust again. Not really surprising the motor had quit working. I got it apart, found a wire shorting out on the windings, added a piece of heat shrink tubing to protect it, and Viola! It works! The chickens are pleased to have a fan back. 

The padawans managed to get the theater boiler apart and out on the boulevard. One of the neighbors asked if he could have the metal. I said “If you can move it,  you can have it”. And he did! I don’t know how, but it’s over in his yard now!  

One of the padawans brought his car to my shop.

He was replacing some part of the exhaust, to make it louder or sound “cooler”… I didn’t follow the full explanation. He and a buddy spent many hours removing the old parts. Started at 8PM, went for supper and came back, left at 2AM, back at 4AM, left at 7AM. Every time they came back the dogs barked. By 9 PM the next day it was reassembled. Padawan’s girlfriend drove him out. She hung out in the shop, played with the dogs, made a chicken friend that she sat with for an hour, and helped daughter do chores. We like her a lot. 

WHEN WAS THE LAST ALL-NIGHTER YOU PULLED?

WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR YOU TO DO IT AGAIN?

40 thoughts on “NIGHTLIFE”

  1. When I worked freelance I frequently had to work late into the night, well into the AM. When there is no one between you and the client, it’s easier to just push through on a project than to explain why it’s late. And, as a freelancer, sometimes your biggest selling point is absolute timeliness.

    Our recent flight to Japan amounted to an all-nighter, though with the time zone shifts it’s a matter of consecutive hours awake. We got up at 4:00AM for a 6 AM flight. We were flying economy on Air Canada, so our first leg was to Toronto. After a two-hour layover, we boarded for a 13-hour flight to Tokyo. Economy was so cramped, sleep was out of the question. In Tokyo it took about an hour and a half to get through customs and make our way to the train that would take us to the bullet train station. An hour and a half to the bullet train, half an hour to get tickets and make our way to the platform and then an hour and a half in the bullet train to get to the Kyoto station. A half hour to get to our hotel. All in all, we were awake for about 24 hours. Would I do it again? Sign me up.

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  2. Never Go to Sleep, Baboons,

    Probably my last all-nighter was on our way home from Ireland in 2017. There was a woman next to me in the row (I was on the isle) who could not sit still. Each time I would start to drift off to sleep, she would want in or out of the seat. I offered to change seats with her, but she would not do that either, so she kept me up the entire 6.5hour flight home. I was resentful and sent her eye daggers full of anger. On that same flight an elderly in the next aisle over became very ill, causing the flight attendants to intervene.

    Today I am working at a Master Gardener Tour which will be fun, but smoky, given how this day is beginning.

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  3. Used to work rotating shifts. Every third week 11-7. Does that count?
    For most of my life I have needed less sleep than is common, about 5 hours most night before age of 30. In Chicago every now and then I stayed up all night studying for exams or working on papers. All the dorms had silent 24 hour study rooms with cubicles and big chairs, which was very convenient.
    Night flight to Alaska once had a couple inside of me who argued in whispers the whole flight. And it was right before summer solstice. At that elevation sun was up most of the flight. I always allowed a day to acclimatize.
    Clyde

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  4. Greetings –
    I have a few redeye plane flights, or emergency room visits that took all night long, and often don’t go to sleep until 2AM (and sometimes I’m just stupid and end up watching a movie until 3AM) but my favorite memory of a mostly all-nighter, was working on a show in Alexandria, at Theatre L’Homme dieu, with a great director and cast, and I programmed lights until 1:30AM, then found the cast and crew around the bonfire with a bottle being passed around and sat there until 4AM. I knew we didn’t have rehearsal until the next afternoon. It’s a very pleasant memory. That I would do again. IF I could stay awake for it…

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  5. Maybe not all night, but close – in 2016 when my mom, in her new assisted living place here, had fallen out of bed while reaching for something. They took her to Urgent Care. She ended up with a broken arm, so was then moved to the Memory Care part of the nursing home next door.

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    1. Oh, I spent a few hours messing with the motors. And today the fan is rattling on the chickens fan; I just gotta reset the setscrews.
      It was sure nice, being out in the shop and being comfortable, and having time to just ‘putz’ on those motors.

      I was impressed the owls just sat then and let me take pictures. I may try the big camera rather than the cell phone if it happens again. Still heard them last night in some other tree’s.

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        1. Using the Merlin Bird ID app, they are juvenile barred owl sounds we’re hearing. We thought they were too dark to be Barn owls, but couldn’t quite match the sound either.Thanks Krista!

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  7. My last all nighter was in the Montreal airport catching a 6:00 am flight and needing to be at the airport three hours before departure.

    My neighbor to the north transplanted those horrible purple flowers in the header photo into her weed patch that borders our yard. Those abominable things bloom once, then spread all over the place. I am constantly digging them up from our flower beds and I utterly despise them. I think she got them out of the pasture she and her husband ran cattle on. She took anything that flowered into town and planted them in her yard and we pay the price for it. Sorry for the rant.

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    1. They look pretty for 30 seconds. I admit they are perfect for farm yards as they spread to spaces around farm buildings where nothing else will grow. Another neighbor to the south has a patch of it, and they, too, are farmers who live in town and brought plants in to their town yard.

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      1. Yes, they are creeping bell flower, and they are extremely invasive. I agree that they are not a good choice in most gardens. However, it’s not true that they look pretty for 30 seconds only. Their flowers are actually quite long lasting, even when cut. Unlike many wildflowers that wilt within the hour after you’ve cute them, the creeping bell flower last for days on end. I often include them in bouquets of cut flowers.

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        1. Gosh, they’re just out there on the side of one building and we had to look them up. After I plucked stems off the Iris’ this spring, because I didn’t know what those were, I was pleased to show Kelly there was still flowers growing!
          I don’t recall them being there other years, but heck, I don’t remember that stuff.
          They’re just pretty flowers. There isn’t much space or them to spread here.

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        2. My disgust with my neighbor makes it hard for me to appreciate any prettiness in the flowers.

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        3. Yes, also called European bellflower – Harebell family…. I used to feel a bit like Renee in Robbinsdale, where they had taken over one of my flower areas. Here I have just a few, and they add a different color in my July garden. I am keeping an eye on them, though.

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        5. Don’t fret about them, Ben. A good definition of a weed is a plant that’s growing in a place where you don’t want it.

          I know you have issues with thistles when they show up among your soybeans or other crops. But they have really beautiful flowers and they provide food for and attract finches. Other plants that are commonly considered weeds are essential to bees’ and other pollinators’ survival.

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        6. A few years ago I was mowing a field and in the middle was a large patch full of thistles already flowered and now was the white puff and the field was full of Goldfinches. I left that patch for the birds.

          Yesterday, mowing weeds in a pasture full of wild parsnip, there was milkweed in there too. Pulling a 10′ mower behind me, I’ve learned over the years how to skirt around most of the milkweed. Usually I let majority rule, and I’ll mow off 2 milkweeds to get 3 wild parsnip, but in this case, I left just about all the milkweed. It makes the whole process a little harder, and at a neighboring field, the neighbors don’t like it when I leave “clumps” like that, they just want it all mowed off. Well, they’re paying for it, so they get what they want. But in the back of the field, if they can’t see it, I’ll leave milkweed.
          You’re not the boss of me.

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  8. Sometimes the night staff would call in sick when I was working 3-11. If nobody else wanted to come in and get some overtime, I would be forced to stay. I don’t miss that at all. It would mean I worked from 3 p.m. until 9 a.m. the following day, or 18 hours. The night shifts were 10 hours long, and I already would have worked 8 hours. I wouldn’t do that again. Nuh-uh. No way. It was brutal.

    The last one I did, though, was on the way over to Ireland. It was an 8 1/2 hour flight. We landed in Dublin at 8 a.m. I couldn’t sleep on the plane. I haven’t decided whether I would do that again or not.

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  9. I actually sleep just fine on planes so I can’t count any of my trips is all nighters. So that means the last one was about 15 years back. A horrible program and it was just making me crazy. It was a U.S. Open nd there were several divisions of this company and every division had a different set of requirements for what their people could get and do and then even within the divisions, there were ranks — different dealers got more than others so in the end, it was like 42 different programs, depending upon who you were and where you were in your division. It was awful. Thank goodness for excel. I hadn’t intended it to be an overnight. I really just thought I was going to be working really late, but then it was so quiet when everyone else left and I didn’t have to do anything except work on my spreadsheet, no phones calls, no meetings so I just kept pushing through. Luckily there was plenty of caffeine in the pop machine in the kitchen. I managed to last until about noon the next day before I had to go home and take a nap for a couple of hours.

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  13. all nighters are me. amazon started delivery at 3am so 1:00 alarm was set for shower tea and dogs before i left often either with short or no sleep. lots of flights that rolled into days where sleep would be en route from airport to appointment. 4 or 5 hours was my normal sleep routine but i can do catnaps and catch up 20 minutes at a time.
    got to sleep last night at 2 and neighbors dog started in at 5. age must be catching up. i can sleep and wake up wanting more. never an issue before.

    typical day today is early rise , work 7am to 10 pm . snack dinner sleep after internet 1-2ish up at 5-6 and roll again

    i am planning a rework of agenda this year. all nighters will likely pop up as they are often the best way to get things done. you cant wait for time to apoear. it never does.

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  14. Well, I have finally settled down from my Dutch fit from yesterday over the bellflower. We spent yesterday trimming back the grape vines from climbing on the roof (yes, they are invasive) and weeded the strawberry bed and other flower beds. Hoed the front veggie bed this morning, and made a rhubarb, raspberry, and cherry crumble. It will be hot later today, so I am spending the rest of the day inside. Husband is smoking a leg of lamb.

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    1. Do your fits come in different nationalities and flavors? Mine tend to be Irish, although after 50 years with an Italian surname, I can mange a pretty impressive Italian one, too. Either way, it ain’t pretty.

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        2. Dutch fits that involve cleaning are common in the Dutch-American population in the part of the world where Renee grew up. They are known for stridently clean homes.

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