2025, animals, Farming Update, Uncategorized

A DIZZYING … SOMETHING

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The weekend Farming Update from XDFBen

Not much happening at the farm this week. I got a case of vertigo about Thursday, and I worked half day, and felt like crap the rest of the day. The weekend was pretty much spent in bed. Several years ago Kelly had vertigo for a few weeks, the plain old BPPV, positional vertigo. We tried the head exercises to reset those crystals in my ears, and last Friday they seemed to work. Saturday, oh boy, that just made me feel absolutely terrible. I remember being at the clinic with my Dad when he was maybe 70+. He must have been having dizzy spells because the doc laid him down on the bench and had him turn his head and I can still picture and hear him groaning. Dad, not the doc. And it wasn’t a good Sound. And Dad didn’t want to do that again.

Monday I picked up some motion sickness pills and they’ve helped a lot. Wednesday I was at about 80%, now I think I’m back. I’ve got too much stuff going on to lay around. To quote my favorite movie, ‘All That Jazz’ and the doctor telling Joe Gideon he needs to rest, Joe responds “I GOT A SHOW TO PUT ON! WILL YOU TALK TO THESE PEOPLE?? THEY DON’T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING!”

Anyway, not much happening out in our countryside.

Most corn chopping has finished, and guys doing high moisture corn are working on that. Soybeans will be coming along soon. And from there it’s right into the fall rush.

Tuesday afternoon I did manage to hook the tractor onto the haybine and pull it out of the shed. I need to get the oat fields mowed off before the weeds take over. The last few years, I’d been digging them up after oats, to stop the weeds from sprouting. Then I would plant cereal rye as a cover crop. This year, crop prices and finances being what they are, I decided not to spend the money on rye seed. The cover crop wasn’t a direct cash benefit; it was one of those bigger picture concepts where a person has to realize they’re doing this for the greater good. And I know that, but still… it was another $600 in seed and my time, and fuel, and I just decided to skip it this year. And now I have to mow off the weeds. They’re too big to dig up at this point, and I want to keep the oats growing until winter. The other thing about rye, it had to be sprayed to kill it in the spring. So, there was another expense I decided to avoid.

We got 2” of rain. Rain is always welcome, almost always, but it’s getting late enough in the year, and with harvest approaching, most farmers would rather skip the mud. It’s a tough alternative, rain or no rain. Good thing the weather isn’t left up to farmers.

I hauled in all the old tires I cut off the machinery. Plus a few others I threw on from the shed. There was a corner of the old shed full of old tires. One never knew which tire might be the one we needed to fit whatever it was that went flat. Including a couple tires with such an odd rim, there wasn’t a chance it was gonna fit anything except the 1949 International Harvester baler it came from. The one dad sold in 1968. But we still had a tire for it because you never know. And there’s an old pick-up tire that fell out from under the truck as I was leaving one day, that’s still leaning against the wall in the shed. Why? Just because. I still keep spare tires in that corner, but it’s not such a huge pile anymore. I have  3 or 4 plain old wagon tires, size 9L15’s that fit every wagon and just about every implement on the farm. I should have run the old tires to my favorite tire place in Millville, but that is half hour away and I didn’t have half an hour, so I took them into Rochester and they charged me $6.35 each. Dang. I was sure they had said it was like $6 for a set when I called.  At least they’re gone.

The guineas. Remember when they hatched, there was 3 parents taking care of the 13 chicks. And then it was 12 chicks for a while, then 10, 9 for a week, 8 for a week, and now 7. And the other two adults have disappeared. Not sure what’s become of them, or why or how they managed to hang around long enough to get the kids mostly grown up, but they haven’t been spotted in a few weeks now. We were hoping maybe one was sitting on a nest somewhere, but usually we’d have seen them by now. Out behind the barn, near the pole barn, I did find a teenage chick missing a head. Which means raccoons. Did some of them move to the pole barn and raccoons got them out there? I don’t know; haven’t found other carcasses yet. But dang.

The guinea mom, she is a real bully. She chases the chickens away from her kids. Even the roosters.

Working on a show, the Dolly Parton musical “9 to 5”, opens at the Rep theater next weekend. The vertigo kinda messed up my schedule finishing theater projects and working on that show. It will be fine. Que sera sera.

REMEMBER ROLLING DOWN HILLS AS A KID? EVER ROLL IN A TIRE?

29 thoughts on “A DIZZYING … SOMETHING”

  1. I do remember rolling down the hill, particularly one in Ames Iowa near my cousin’s place. And I remember skating there on the pond right on campus by the Student Union – got to do that later when I went to college there.

    Never have rolled in a tire, but I’ve swung on one.

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  2. Yes, I’ve rolled down hills, but never in a tire. We did have a great tire swing at the lake when I was growing up.

    Ben, vertigo can be caused by an inner ear problem. You might want to visit your doctor, just in case.

    Those beans in the photo are looking very golden!

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  3. I’m sure I’ve rolled down hills in my childhood, but I can’t dredge up a particular memory right this minute. I’m sure I never rolled down in a tire. It’s not much of a city girl thing.

    It was a tradition when I was younger (living in St. Louis) to go down to what was called Art Hill in Forest Park. It’s the hill coming down off of the Art Museum and the Jewel Box which is an indoor plant conservatory. It’s a great sledding hill and if it was cold enough, which wasn’t always the case, you could skate on the little creek that runs through Forest Park at the bottom of Art Hill.

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    As a very small child, rolling down hills was a favorite activity. This was especially true in a small house my parents rented in LeMars, Ia because it had a hill behind it. I spent every moment I could rolling down that hill. And there was a bonus! When Dad came home from work, he would roll down the hill with me. I was enfolded in his arms and down we would go, shrieking with laughter.

    I don’t remember ever rolling down a hill in a tire. I think that was an activity with my feet too far off the ground. I like my feet firmly planted.

    That house had many good memories. The neighbor there was bald. Eisenhower was president at that time, and I was convinced that this neighbor was the president, so prominently featured on the news. I called him President Eisenhower and truly believed that this man was the president.

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  5. Since our farm was on the side of a hill and since like Ben’s farm there tires about the place, I certainly must have done both. But I have no memory. There many hills to choose from. One hill on a road above our place was very steep, wonderful for sliding on cardboard and inner tubes. I know we sometimes rolled down it in deep snow.
    There was a collection of steel wheels lying about, too. My friend Dennis and I would build them into carts to ride down the hills, sometimes achieving rather high speeds with very little control.
    I wake up with balance issues unless I have my head on the right pillow positioned correctly.

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  7. I have had vertigo, and it is awful. I was much younger at the time and living in Indiana, and the doctor kept referring to me as as a “dizzy blonde”. I was not amusef.

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  10. I rolled down hills as a kid, but if I remember correctly, I had a hard time rolling in a straight line. I’d always go off at an angle. My dad made us a tire swing at our little cabin in the big woods on the Iron Range.

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  12. I can remember rolling down a hill only once, and it was by accident. It was winter, and I was on skis. I attempted a ski jump, but the thing I thought was a ramp turned out to be a giant root of a tree. It didn’t go well. I broke one ski, and hurt my tailbone pretty badly (a mistake for which I’m still paying the price).

    I’ve done some pretty stupid things in my life, but rolling down a hill tucked inside a tire isn’t one of them. Is it To Kill a Mockingbird that has Scout rolling down a hill tucked inside tire?

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      1. into boo’s tree
        i always wanted to do the tire but it never came up. i guess i didnt want it bad enough to initiate it. ive mentioned before rolling down the hill with my little sister in front of me . she stopped, i didnt and rilled over her and broke her collarbone

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      2. “The tire bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into a barrier and popped me like a cork onto pavement. Dizzy and nauseated, I lay on the cement and shook my head still, pounded my ears to silence, and heard Jem’s voice: “Scout, get away from there, come on!” I raised my head and stared at the Radley Place steps in front of me. I froze. “Come on, Scout, don’t just lie there!” Jem was screaming. “Get up, can’tcha?” I got to my feet, trembling as I thawed.”

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