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WHERE IN THE WORLD IS FARMER BEN?

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This weeks farm report from Ben.

I finished lighting the show in Chatfield last week, in time to fly out on Saturday with Kelly and our daughter. Kelly had a work conference and we got to travel along and amuse ourselves for a few days.
 I was under the impression that taxi drivers were always better than Uber / Lyft because they are more professional and know the roads better. But that plan falls apart if they’re all independent taxi’s and they all seem to need to enter the address in their phones anyway. And they tell me they’ve lived here multiple years, so it makes me wonder why they don’t know their way around yet? But whatever. Our first driver was crazy; drove like a maniac and told me he liked American women and big boobs! Second taxi was a nicer driver, but his car broke down and when daughter and I came out of the Butterfly Pavilion he was sitting right where he had left us. He called a friend of his to take us back to town. And the taxi back to the airport was a nice guy with sheet metal screws holding his car door together. Resourcefulness! 

Daughter and I had a good time walking around downtown and there was lots to see. I took lots of photos of old buildings. The day we saw the butterflies, that only took an hour. We never got going too early in the day, because we were on vacation after all. I was surprised that I could out-walk daughter. It was as hot there as it was back in MN, but less humidity, so that was nice. I didn’t expect it to be that hot. I found it interesting so many restaurants and bars had wide open windows or garage doors and yet there was very few bugs. One bartender told us they really spray the place down at night, but she said there was less flies this year than usual.

On Wednesday Kelly gave a presentation on Laughter Yoga. I snuck in the back and watched. It was well received, the group liked it, and she had several good loud laughers, so that got the rest of the group going. 

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She picked up some swag for me with the catch phrase: “Wicked Smaht Pathologists” and a link to their group. It makes me laugh. If you need a pathologist, you’re gonna want one that’s Wicked Smaht.

We had a young lady staying at the house to deal with dogs overnight while we were gone, and some other friends that would take care of chickens and eggs and amuse the dogs during the day. They said, “Bailey and Humphrey make us want dogs. Luna reminds why we don’t have a dog.” 

And on the way home, in the MSP airport, the gate agent was a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in 40 years. We had a little reunion right there at the gate for 15 seconds. It was nice to see her again.

Last week as I was headed to Chatfield one night, I saw, walking on the side of the road, three nuns in full black habits with the veil and headpiece. I had to double take, and double take again. This was out in the country. A few days later, Facebook, of course, provided the answer. There is an old order Catholic Church in the area and they have been seen coming from there. Well that explains it. Sure did make me wonder though. And then, ten days later, I saw two more nuns in full habits. But that was outside a Catholic Church, and they were selling baked goods at a street fair. Although when I saw them, they were packing up. I saw them pulling the totes with the collapsible tents up the street. I hadn’t seen a nun in full habit for years and now here was twice!

You all had that big storm come through on Monday night with high winds… the oats got beat up. Yep, sure did. Maybe 50% of it down. We didn’t get any hail so nothing threshed out on the ground, it’s just broken off and lying down and it makes it more difficult to pick up for harvest. 


The plan is to start harvesting Friday. Going to try taking it straight- meaning I don’t swath it and lay it in windrows first. A lot of guys do take it straight. When we have tried it in the past it didn’t work so well… we shall see. I have the swather ready just in case. 


The soybeans are waist tall and looking good. At least some of them. They don’t all look this good, but some of them.



There’s a guy on YouTube goes by ‘Bushel Billy’, from the Ohio area and he was talking about a corn issue with a certain variety, in extreme weather conditions, having “tassel wrap” meaning the last leaf doesn’t unwrap from the tassel. So of course if the tassel can’t open up to shed pollen, it’s going to be tough to get all the kernels (silks) pollinated. It takes 90,000 kernels to make a bushel. Hence 90K pollen grains to 90K silks are needed. He pointed out how after pollination the silks turn brown and detach from the kernel after pollination. I didn’t know that and I had to check it out myself. 

Notice how many silks are loose. Just a few on the tip still stuck. 

HUH!
Sweet corn would be so much easier if the silks would detach. 

Read more about it here:

https://images.app.goo.gl/FEkAcj9D6XXozUvV9



YOU THINK I’M GOING TO ASK ABOUT HABITS, BUT THAT’S LOW HANGING FRUIT. 

HAVE WE TALKED ABOUT CRAZY TAXI DRIVERS? GOT ANY TO SHARE?

23 thoughts on “WHERE IN THE WORLD IS FARMER BEN?”

  1. No crazy taxi driver stories to tell. I think I’ve only been in a cab 2 or 3 times in my life. However, I WAS a cab driver in Minneapolis for Yellow Cab Co. one “interesting” summer in 1974. Learned my way around Mpls. very well. Also learned that St. Paul is a cab driver’s nightmare because the streets and numbering system were created by a bunch of drunks at a frat party. No rhyme or reason for the most part other than maybe downtown.

    Only had a few weird customers. One drunk who insisted on sitting in the front seat and then, when we arrived and he got out, I think he tried to talk me into coming inside and having a drink with him. Also picked up a lot of little old ladies at Red Owl and drove them three blocks home with their two or three bags of groceries. *Yawn* Not much money there. I never figured out that good service and friendliness generated better tips. I (at age 18) was too intimated by adults to do anything but drive them to their destination. No newspaper in the backseat for them to read, no bottle of water, no friendly chatting.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. I was prepared for a wild ride to my friends’ apartment in the old city of Mazatlan last January when I visited them there. My taxi driver was older and I think he was from Mazatlan, but he was clearly not familiar with the old city. When someone is familiar with a place, they know how to drive there. He didn’t have a problem, except with how to get to the address I’d been given. He was driving fast and using his phone to map the route. It was a wild ride through narrow streets filled with people on bicycles or foot. There were also pigeons, chickens, and stray cats and dogs. He was glancing at his phone quite often. My heart was in my throat. He was one of the taxi drivers hired by the airport, not an independent one. That was what my friend had told me to do. I had to take another taxi back to the airport when I left, but that ride was a little tamer.

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  6. I can’t think of any memorable taxi rides. I did have a friend in the 80s who drove a taxi independently – don’t think he would have been the friendly, talky type, and he didn’t do it for very long, so I think it wasn’t working out very well.

    And I’m not sure where it is that Farmer Ben has been!

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    1. Wicked Smaht sounds like an L. L. Bean ad, but the photos don’t look like Maine, so I would guess that the swag came from a visiting group.

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  8. After I graduated from high school I spent a month and a half in Mexico staying with a family there. At one point one of the daughters and I visited Mexico City (to visit another daughter of the family) and while we were there, we took a taxi into town to see a museum. It was a Volkswagen bug with no door on the passenger side And at one point I think there were six of us crammed in there are two people upfront and four of us in back. It was a wild ride and I’ve been grateful ever since that I wasn’t one of the two in the upfront passenger seat with no door.

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  9. We have a Benedictine Monastery and a Benedictine Priory 15-20 miles from us. They tend to wear regular clothes. There is a new order of holy sisters in town who wear the full regalia and I see them walking all over town in groups of three.

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  11. i went to catholic school. sister mary magdaline had no sense of humor.
    my best taxi story is about rickshaw races in china. a fun night with interesting stops between segments of the race.
    another in china where we wanted to get 200 miles north to another city and hired a local cabbie and told him wed pay $50 for the ride to our distant destination and when we got to the city he had no idea how to find our spot. communication was non existant so i figured we would be better off if we unloaded and grabbed a different cab
    all we had was a address written in english and chinese but that was enough for the new cabbie. i lost a beautiful piece of art and my panama hat as the first driver drove off quickly

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  12. I really dislike driving in Denver and take taxis or Uber there whenever I can. Husband’s stepmother lives there, along with various stepsiblings. I find Denver drivers quite rude and inconsiderate.

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