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TIRED

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This week’s farm report from XDFBen

Going to work early one morning and there was the football team, under the stadium lights, all in uniform, having practice. Whew, I think early morning practices would be tough. Like getting up to exercise.

We saw a “V” of geese flying over one day. 

Later I listened to about 2 dozen barn swallows gathered on an electric line chittering and chattering and having quite the discussion about when and where to go. Although the ‘where’ is pretty well defined, at least in general. South. Everybody. Just head south. 

Kelly got one of those hotel sales calls that would take us someplace south if we just listened to a sales pitch. We don’t like to make hasty decisions, and I didn’t realize the salesperson was on hold while Kelly and I talked a few times. Then the salesperson’s manager came on and tried to shame Kelly for keeping the person on the phone for so long and not immediately just saying ‘Yes’. Snort. Give her attitude, will you? Click.

We will not be going south.  

I had my first day of class. Forensic Chemistry. It’s a hybrid class, meaning a lot of it is done online, then we meet Wednesdays for lab. My friend Paul is taking a writing class. Here’s our first day of class photo.

FIRST DAY OF CLASS

I got the front end off the wagon where the wheels went wonky.

It’s not supposed to look like this. I have a nephew, Matt, who is a welder. He’ll be coming to look at it and see if it’s salvageable. A lot of cracks and old welds where the axle attaches to the frame. Old welds must be mine, but I don’t remember fixing this. 

Mid-September there will be another online auction in Plainview. Last week when I dragged all the old machinery out of the trees, I pulled out a pretty nice disc. I had used it for several years until I got something bigger and better. I cleaned the disc up, greased it, and towed it to the auction. 

WIDE LOAD COMING THROUGH

It is 20’ wide so I took up most of the road and part of the shoulder. I try to take the back roads when I do this sort of thing, but I have to get to the back roads first. Most traffic was pretty respectful. I had the SMV sign on the back, and I bought two magnetic flashing lights, one for the front corner, and one for the back corner. I travelled about 25 MPH. When able, I’d pull over and let traffic pass me. 

Then I got to the road where they were painting new lines on the road. And putting cones down. I knocked over the first two cones before I figured out how far I needed to move over. And I scared a couple garbage cans. But I got it there in one piece. 

The next day I took in a 24’ bale elevator, but that was on a trailer and wasn’t any big deal. 

Several times, Kelly and I would go outside planning to do “this” and we’d go off and do “that” instead. And we’d laugh, “This isn’t what I came out to do…” Yep, but it needed doing anyway. 

I picked an ear of corn.

THAT is a nice ear of corn

It’s filled to the tip, which means it had ideal growing conditions. Any stress and the plant aborts the kernels at the top. This one was 40 kernels long, and 16 around. (It’s always an even number around). So 40 x16 = 640 kernels x 30,000 (plants / acre) = 19,200,00 kernels in an acre / 90,000 (kernels in a bushel) = 213 bushel / acre. Never in my life have I had a crop that good. This won’t be either. Factor in the deer, the raccoons, the clay or rocky spots, the trees on the edges… and I might actually make 180 bu / acre. We shall remain cautiously optimistic. 

The soybeans are looking great.

BELLY BUTTON HIGH!
TOP EXTRA TENDER LEAVES

Notice these extra leaves and pods on the top? Again, terrific growing season. The deer just haven’t found this plant yet… that’s what they’re eating off is all the tender bonus growth on the top. 

One evening I burned a brush pile. Later, Kelly and I sat in the gator and enjoyed the fire.

BON FIRE DATE!

I removed the tires from the rims on the old junk wagons. I watched some YouTube videos how to do this quick and easy. They were using car tires that didn’t have innertubes, and they hadn’t been sitting in the trees for 30 years. But I figured it out. Cut it open with a Sawzall, then use a grinder to cut the bead cable. Removed 16 tires.

One didn’t have a tube! Just about every farm tire has an innertube in it. And most of the tubes had patches on them. It made me smile, and feel a little nostalgic. Dad or I had these tires apart before and patched a hole. If you don’t know, getting a tire off the rim is difficult if you don’t have the fancy tire machines. The bead, that inner ring of the tire, has a steel cable in it, and that’s what holds the tire on the rim. And it seals tight and it’s a pain to get off with hand tools. Dad took off a lot of tires, patched the tube, and put the tire back on. You have to get the bead to seal. I have done a lot of tires, too. But now days, with the tire goop stuff you can just pour inside, I don’t take so many apart; I’m not subjecting the wagons and tires to the wear I did when milking cows and making hay. And, like I mentioned last week, I’ll often just go get a new tire before replacing the tube. Working smarter, not harder. 

Some of the junk was two old flare boxes. Wagons we used for hauling ear corn or oats. I haven’t used them in a lot of years. The floors are rotted out and frames are too small and lightweight to be reused. It’s just scrap. 

WHAT IS THE FURTHEST SOUTH YOU’VE BEEN? 

STORIES ON CHANGING TIRES?

59 thoughts on “TIRED”

  2. Miami.
    Tires: same as yours. Did you ever change big tractor tires? I know we did. Don’t remember much about it. Remember in detail about switching between steel wheels (not tippy-toes) and rubber. Rubber tires were filled with ballast. Scary to move around.

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  3. Courtesy of the US Army, back in 1970, I was as far south as Saigon. During that same year, and working for the same employer, I had the privilege of changing some 29.5 x 29 tires on Clark 290M wheel tractors.
    One night, on guard duty during a mortar attack, I almost panicked because I had neglected to bring my gas mask. There was “hissing” behind me where some rounds had landed in the motor pool. I relaxed a few minutes later when I realized that sound was coming from punctured tires.

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  4. Makes me TIRED just to read this, Ben! Nice that you have another class this fall. You may have already explained this at some point, but… “sitting in the trees for 30 years” ?

    I guess farthest south I’ve been is the Yucatan peninsula in about 2002. A friend’s sister had a little place in Puerto Morelos, maybe 12 miles from Cancun.

    I have luckily never had to change a tire by myself.

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    1. All this machinery had been sitting for 30 years. It wasn’t in the trees at first. There is a line of trees where we’d park machinery when not in use. Sometimes, you park a wagon there in the fall, by spring I had changed plans, and I didn’t need that wagon anymore. And in the blink of an eye it’s 30 years later and there’s a tree growing through it.

      One old wagon, the tongue had broken off the front. I guess I always thought I’d fix it. And then the vines grew over it, and I really didn’t need it, and then 10 years ago I threw out the tongue for scrap metal. And then pushing back brush and trees I rediscovered the wagon.

      Or the flare boxes. Keeping the floors in shape was a constant battle. I quit saving Oats when I started buying new Seed for every years Crop (rather than reusing seed). And then when I quit picking ear corn and I didn’t need them for that either. And they just kinda got left on the edge there. I think we used to have four of them. One had a really good hoist on it and I sold that at an auction several years ago. One I used a storage for calf feed, but that was 20 some years ago. And I remember selling one to my nephew who just wanted the running gear to build a portable deer stand.
      For a few years you might still need them for something, and then the tire has gone flat and the floor has rotted out, and here we are.

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  6. The furthest south I’ve been is the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas, which is a bit further south than Miami.

    I’ve never had to change a tire myself but remember flat tires on family trips of my childhood, with my father or an uncle changing the tire. And I had a flat tire in my teens while driving the family car home from my after-school job. I managed to limp home and my dad changed it.

    A few years ago, we drove to Chicago for a weekend. Husband was in our car, I was in daughter’s car tending to the toddler grandchild. We left after work, planning to drive through the evening. Near Menominee, I got a text from Husband that he was on the side of the road with a flat tire. It had been punctured by road debris, and the replacement tire that came with the car was not of much help. The thought of changing it in the dark on a busy freeway was frightening. Luckily, a kind state trooper came to his rescue, called a tow truck, and gave him a ride to the repair shop. I can’t imagine what would have happened in the days before mobile phones, texting, and other tech wonders.

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    1. Sandra broke down on a freeway in rush hour in the Cities many years ago. A trooper and one of the state repair vehicles showed up in less than 5 minutes. She was right on camera. Repairman diagnosed it immediately and called a tow truck which was there in 15 minutes. Trooper stayed with her.

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  7. Before I moved away from home, my dad made sure I knew how to jack up the car, change a tire and put on chains (I was from upstate NY where they were used at the time). The first time I had a flat tire by myself, I got the jack placed, car up but then could NOT loosen the lug nut (put on by something automatic I guess). I felt deflated by that! Called my office mate at Cornell grad school who came and finally loosened the nut.
    Furthest south: Antarctica!
    Jennywren

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  8. Actually Jennywren and I tie for the furthest south. I have also been to Antarctica. And I have been to the southern part of New Zealand, which isn’t quite as far south as the Antarctic Peninsula.

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  9. Mexico City in Grade 11. I attended a Spanish language summer school in Saltillo, and we had a field trip to Mexico City. We saw Tenochtitlan. It was wonderful.

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  11. We left for Mexico City by charter bus when it was still dark, and most of my classmates fell asleep, but I stayed awake. I saw the sun come up in the desert, and it made such an impression on me as I had been reading “The Teachings of Don Juan:A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” by Carlos Casteneda. It was eerie.

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    2. I remember I was reading Carlos Casteneda on my meal breaks when I worked as a work/study janitor at night at the University of Minnesota Hydrology Lab. The place was eerie enough on its own. It was down by the riverside and remote from the rest of the university. The only two people in the building were me and a retired farmer named Newton Brooks who drove in to work from Princeton, MN—quite a drive.

      The building was engineered so that gates could be opened to allow a portion of the river to flow through the building and that flow was used to test dam models, etc. Just upriver a few dozen feet was a weir that limited the flow. Occasionally a body would float up to be lodged in the weir.

      The lights in the lab were kept at a minimum. It was quiet except for the sound of the river and various unidentifiable noises.

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        2. Yes. And the almost jumpers I have heard of too often. When driving to work one day on the Highway 5 Mississippi Bridge one day there was a naked guy. I called the police.

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  14. I come in behind K-two and jennywren. My farthest southern reach was Cape Agulhas at the southernmost tip of South Africa. It’s where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean—a pretty little lighthouse there as well.

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  15. A flat tire is why I got my first cell phone. I was coming home from Coon Rapids on a Saturday evening when YA was about two. We passed someone pulled over on the side of the road on Highway 252 who was changing a flat tire. I have changed a flat tire when I was learning how to drive but as I was passing them I thought would I want to be changing a flat tire on a busy highway? And with a two-year-old in the car? And what if it were dark? Or cold and snowy? I got my first cell phone the next day. And AAA.

    I’ve only experienced a flat once in my life, but it was actually two at the same time. Horrific pothole on the parkway near my house and it got both my back tires. Two flat tires at once with only one spare means an immediate call to AAA so I’ve never had to test my ability.

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  16. When we went to Scotland back in 1990, our seats on the airplane were against a bulkhead and didn’t tilt back. For that, and other reasons, we weren’t able to sleep on the way over. When we landed at Prestwick, on the west coast near Glasgow, we picked up a rental car—a little red compact of some European make—and headed northward. By the time we reached the first town—Troon, I believe—we had a flat tire. We were both so tired and with an unfamiliar car that we couldn’t even figure out where the jack and spare tire were stored.

    Helpless, we went into a pub to ask where we might locate a mechanic. In response, a couple of the men came out, located our jack and spare and changed the tire for us, refusing our offer of recompense.
    “Welcome to Scotland!” was their send-off.

    Without a spare, we had to return to the airport for a substitute vehicle before continuing on.

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  17. I’ve been to Cozumel. It was beautiful in places and not so beautiful in others. It wasn’t a really fabulous trip or memory, but I did see Tulum. I’m not a huge world traveler. I wish I’d traveled more when I was younger.

    I’ve changed a tire twice. Both times took great effort. I accept help when I can get it. I got AAA too.

    When I was 16 or 17 my dad went through treatment for alcoholism at Abbot. He was in the program for two months. Part of the treatment involved all of us in family therapy. By then our family relations were pretty sour. I viewed my parents with distrust. I remember being very upset after these sessions. I was shaking, nauseated, and physically sick over them. I didn’t want to tell my dad how I really felt about him. It was terrifying. They decided I needed counseling on my own. So they arranged an appointment with a therapist up on University Avenue. Mom brought me to the first appointment, way up in St. Paul. At the end of the first session, he asked her not to come back. (The look on her face!) I was to come back, alone and on my own. Terrifying. I was given a map to his office and I was even told which lane to be in so that I’d make the turns correctly. I did it. Then, during the second session, we talked a bit, and he gave me a list of things to do on my own – no help from my parents. The first thing on the list was to change a tire. I knew where the spare was but I had never used a jack. I asked my brother if he knew how to use it. He showed me where to put the jack and how to crank it up. I figured out the rest on my own. I did it twice after that, but I have never succeeded in doing it again because they put the lug nuts on so tightly now that it’s impossible to get them off.

    My parents were put off by this new independence. They had raised me to be a very dependent person. They saw me as their property, but I was growing up. The more I learned from Bruce, the better I felt about myself. Changing a tire was an amazing growth lesson.

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      1. He was a very good therapist. I’m not going to say his full name, but you might even know him, or know of him. I really liked him and the sessions stuck with me. I still think of that time as the beginning of my independence.

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      1. I was going to say, it belonged to a certain time and that time has long past. Casteneda has been largely discredited, I think. If you read it, I think it would be as a visit to that milieu rather than as an anthropological account.

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    2. I have not read it either, but I think I started it once and put it down. I have so much to read that it will take me a lifetime! I’m not going to put that particular book back on my list.

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    3. I had the book for awhile when I was about 17 or so. It was loaned to me by a friend who was impressed by it. I don’t remember how much I actually read, but it didn’t really speak to me the way it did to her.

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  19. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    When I consult the map, the furthest destination south where I have been is Jamaica. While I enjoy beaches in the deep of winter, the rest of the year I do not like heat at all.

    As a child flat tires and running out of gas were 2 chronic issues that were part of driving. At one point someone taught me how to change a tire, but I did not ever do it myself. I do remember many incidents of being at the side of the road with someone changing a tire or pulling out the gas can and walking to the nearest farm for gas. This did not appear enjoyable to me. So I kept a log in the glove compartment of gas mileage and filling the tank so that I was certain to NEVER run out of gas. It just did not seem sensible to me to allow the car to run that low.

    Then I decided to pay for AAA or other roadside insurance services. As a single woman (post divorce) it seemed dangerous to be that vulnerable on the side of the road. I have used these services several times. Last July 2024 I had a tire blow out while driving on a frontage road at about 40MPH. I had been in a parking lot where there was some construction. I drove slowly to a nearby Cub parking lot, then called the roadside service. The guy that came to change the tire said it appeared I had driven over a sharp object. I was glad to watch someone else change the tire.

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  20. As a kid and teen I patched many a punctured bicycle tire. I learned to change a car tire from wasband in Cheyenne, Wyoming on our 1963 VW bug.

    The first time I needed to change a tire on my own was on hot Sunday afternoon in Southern Illinois. Wasband and I had had an argument about something or other, and I decided to go swimming. I put on my bikini, grabbed a beach towel, and hopped in the VW and drove to Little Grassy Lake a few miles outside of Carbondale. I spent a couple of hours alternating between cooling off in the lake and sunning on the beach, and then I headed home.

    I hadn’t gone far when I realized I had a flat tire. I pulled to the side of the narrow road, got out the VW’s jack and spare tire. By then it was late afternoon and the asphalt on the roadway was so hot it was soft – it was also burning my bare feet – so I was gingerly hopping from one foot to the other while trying to jack up the car. As I was working on loosening the lug nuts, the jack slowly tilted to one side as the hot asphalt gave way. Unable to get the jack off, or raise the car off the ground again, I was stuck.

    That’s when a big old American convertible with five college age young men, all wearing swim trunks and sandals, pulled up behind me to offer their assistance. With their jack for the much bigger American car, they managed to get the rear end of the VW off the ground, freed my jack, and replaced the flat tire with my spare. They had me on my way again in no time.

    I learned that day that driving without shoes on a hot summer day is unwise, but that if you’re also young and wearing a bikini, it may help minimize the consequences of poor choices.

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  21. Renee, my daughter, s-i-l and their daughter Lily are staying Dickinson tonight, the place of Lily’s birth, getting in late and heading out early. Moving Lily to Bozeman.
    Clyde

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      2. A youth and young adult director in a church. She had a much better offer from a church along the Columbia River in Washington. But no mountains.

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  22. I took a class in basic auto mechanics to learn how to change my own oil and change a tire. The bigger lesson I learned was that on my very old rusty vehicle the oil plug and the lug nuts were not going to give easily. Also I couldn’t budge the oil filter without a filter wrench, and even then it was iffy. Most tools are not made for people with small hands and little upper body strength. I decided pretty quickly that I was going to be a Triple A and a local auto shop customer instead of a do-it-yourselfer for these tasks.

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    1. Years ago, I used to change my own oil but it’s not as fun as you would imagine and life is too short, so I let other younger and more flexible people do it.

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      1. At some point about 15 years ago I became enamored with The Tightwad’s Handbook, published by someone in Lewiston, Maine. Among the various short articles in there was one about the highest pay raise you could give yourself was to change your own oil. I did it once or twice, but found it too much of a mess. Now I drive an electric (not a Tesla) car, and basically only “take it in to be serviced” regularly. I’m not sure if it even HAS any oil.

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  24. jakarta

    tire story was about a tire the had one of those balloon bubbles come out the side odf the tire as i left grand marais. my memory is that it was a football sized bubble. i hitched to town and got the tow truck with 23 hour service to come give me a hand and sell me a used tire. he turned out to be a great guy who made it a delightful hiccup snd sold me a workable tire for $10 instalked. i asked him about his 23 hour service and he laughed and said when he gets a call and hes in the middle of something he gets an hour to get his life in order brfore heading out.

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