Monthly Archives: September 2025

2025, animals, Farming Update, Kids, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Seasons, Stories, Travel, Weather, work

THEN THIS HAPPENED

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This weeks Farming Update from Ben.

When I started the rough draft of this blog Thursday, I didn’t have much farm stuff to talk about. Now Friday afternoon and I’ve got a few farm related things. 

I needed some straw bales for Friday. First of the 2025 crop to be used and climbing up into the straw pile and trying to hit the truck bed was a challenge. 

Trying to aim under the rafter and get the bales in the truck bed.

We hosted daughters group, PossAbilities, and gave them a wagon ride through the fields. Kinda cold and windy, but they had blankets, Kelly made hot chocolate for them when they returned, and they enjoyed it. 

I hauled in the scrap iron on Thursday. The wagons I pulled out of the trees and scrapped last week. 

The net weight of the scrap was 3200 lbs. 

The cranes are always fun to watch. My goodness, the amount of scrap is overwhelming. Juxtaposed with such a pretty blue sky!

I took secondary roads there, and I took gravel back roads most of the way home. I saw two Bald Eagles eating something that left a pretty good sized red spot in the field. I saw more of those ‘Bigfoot’ silhouettes. A few farmers are starting to chop some corn, and lots of guys are doing 3rd or 4th crop hay. 

A couple months ago when our fridge died, we purged a lot, and moved a lot to the basement chest freezer and spare fridge downstairs. I still haven’t figured out why the new freezer section upstairs is so empty. What happened to all that stuff?? I thought we needed it? Isn’t that a story for our times…”But, I need that!” No, evidently, no you don’t.

One of the things missing from the upstairs freezer was the last loaf of chocolate chip Amish friendship bread I had made back in March. Most of us freeze and savor those summer time flavors in January. Here in September I’m remembering last winter. I didn’t think I’d have thrown it out as I know the chocolate is bad for dogs. The chickens would have loved it, but I just didn’t remember doing that. Took a month, but I found it in a bag in the chest freezer and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s not as dried out as I thought it might be, and I look forward to baking more this winter.

When I was researching how to remove those old tires last week, I saw one video where the guy talked about using  diamond tipped cutting blades. The cheap abrasive cut-off blades I can buy at big box stores wear away quick. They’re about $3 each, but as the name implies, ‘abrasive cut off’, meaning they wear out as fast as they’re cutting. Cutting off the 16 tires I used 4 small, 4” wheels, and one 7” wheel. So I went shopping online for diamond tipped wheels. An “Indestructible” wheel comes in a 5 pack. Well, Huh. You see where I’m going with this? If… then why…?

I ordered a 3 pack of diamond tipped cut off wheels. We’ll see what happens when I get to the next set of old tires. 

(There might be a photo here if I remember to go out to the shed and take a photo)

I REMEMBERED!

Abrasive disc on the top, diamond disc on the bottom

Kelly and I have a joke that I can’t find anything if you’re going to put it under my nose. This morning it was my cell phone. It was 6” away from where I was looking. No wonder I couldn’t find it. I had to borrow daughters phone to call mine and track it down. I was the kid with my mittens attached to my sleeves…Why is that getting worse instead of better?

We’ve talked before about that magic ten minutes in the morning. Every. Morning. It was later than usual one morning. Daughter and I got in the car to leave and she says “I was pretty fast this morning, wasn’t I.” Uh. Not really. But I don’t know why. Maybe it was petting the dogs longer than we should have. Which seems like a pretty good excuse. One night she was mad at me for not letting her do something. She begged and pleaded and then stormed off yelling “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” I replied, “Actually, biology has nothing to do with this.” and then I got the giggles. She didn’t think it was so funny but a few minutes later we talked it over. She gets over stuff quick. I like that. 

Last weekend Kelly and I attended a wedding in St. Paul. It was at a relatively new wedding venue called Le VENERÉ. A pretty nice place. Newly remodeled. The Groom told me when they toured it in February it was full of scaffolding. It is an old building with a really cool stone foundation. They had a 1920’s ‘Speakeasy’ theme and encouraged people to dress the part. I wore sleeves. And after looking up 1920’s styles, just decided to order a cheap 1970’s style ruffled shirt like I had in high school. It came with a bow tie that wouldn’t fit around my fat neck, so I just wore it on my sleeve. Kelly and I drove up Friday and had a weekend vacation. We had a great time at the wedding with friends.

Who is this captivating woman!
The groom and I. He is a former college student.
The hats were complimentery

OXYMORONS? 

2025, Art, gardening, home, Uncategorized

A Lightbulb Went On

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As of last Sunday we had our house on the market for two months. We had many showings, but no offers.

Our real estate agent couldn’t understand why. The house was clean, well kept, and nicely updated, with lovely features. We knew that our rather wild yard with the mass of raspberry canes, the large strawberry bed, the front veggie bed, the large flower beds, and the rampaging rose bushes just didn’t appeal to some viewers. Others wanted a larger yard, something we really couldn’t do much about.

Our agent wondered if the basement, which we had extensively remodeled and updated. was just a little dark. She advised us to try ro make it brighter, so last Sunday we replaced all the basement light bulbs with Bright White LED bulbs. We did the same to the upstairs lights for good measure. The whole interior was somewhat brighter, with uniformly tinted bulbs.

The next day, Labor Day, was somewhat trying as we had two showings, and that meant keeping the house beautifully pristine and having to leave for about an hour with the dog. I don’t quite understand this, but both of the viewing parties on Monday gave us offers immediately after the showings!

Was it the lightbulbs? I seem to think it was, and I find it ridiculous. I am grateful and relieved, though. Now we can focus on wrapping things up here.

What would you look for if you were buying a new house? What decorating trends, past or present, have you loved or loathed?

2025, Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, home, Nature

Tomato Land

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My bales look sorry this summer.  Saggy and disintegrating looking.  Ben explained to me how this can happen – kinda made sense.

But saggy and disintegrating doesn’t seem to be a problem for my veggies.  We’re having a bumper crop of everything.  Basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, poblano peppers, hot macho peppers, mint and 4 kinds of tomatoes.  Romas, some heirloom, sweet 100 cherry and in a summer surprise, I’ve actually gotten a couple of Santa tomatoes from the plant that I grew from a seed.  I’m sure there’s more out there but I haven’t harvested for a couple of days.

Santa Tomatoes

I used up all the cilantro already.  Four jars of pesto so far, an ice cube tray of chopped mint with lime juice, another ice cube tray of chopped basil with olive oil.  Eight containers of tomato sauce.  Gifts of tomatoes to neighbors and friends.

And lots and lots of tomato recipes.  (This was all going on while I had a MASSIVE zucchini to deal with as well.)   I’ve made my favorite pasta with cherry tomatoes a couple of times.  Made tomato butter that was terrific on the zucchini corn bread.  This weekend I’m making panzanella, tomato basil soup and some tomato rice.  Probably time to consign some of the tomatoes to the freezer as well.  Whole tomatoes right into freezer bags for use this winter. 

Gosh – I feel like Renee and Chris with all this produce and cooking!

Any ideas for too many tomatoes?  Or peppers?

2025, Fantasy, Movies, Mysteries

Godzilla – Again

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You all know I have an affinity for Godzilla movies.  I don’t know why.  Most of them aren’t all that well made and of course they are pretty violent.  But like many of the mysteries in life, Godzilla and I seem to keep crossing paths.

It happened again last week when I stumbled across Godzilla Minus One, which came out in 2023, written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki.  This is the 37th film in the Godzilla franchise and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen most of them.  While Minus One got great reviews, I wasn’t holding my breath. 

There is much more of a human element to this one, although seeing the aftermath of WWII on the ordinary Japanese citizen was depressing.  Then this massive, basically indestructible monster comes and destroys what little is left.  And, as always, nobody can ever say why Godzilla does what he does. 

I noticed right away that this Godzilla is a really good match for the earlier Godzillas.  Of course, much better CGI and photography but his spiny back and the shape of his head and neck were just like the classic.  And then towards the end, I thought “this music sounds so familiar”.  After the movie was over, I found the original 1954 Godzilla with soundtrack composed by Akira Ifukube.  This is apparently now known as The Ifukube March and has been used in several of the movies over the years:

The composer for Godzilla Minus One (Naoki Sato) did a great salute by incorporating the march into the final “battle scene”:

If you had suggested to me when I was younger that someday I would know enough about Godzilla to recognize his classic form and his classic music, I would have laughed until I cried.  Guess I’d better get out the tissues.

Seen any good movies lately?  Any stinkers?

2025, home, Movies, pets, State Fair

Why Bother with a Pillow?

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When I went to bed the night before Opening Day (do I need to say, of State Fair?), I was ready! 

I had the alarm set for 5:40; I wanted to have enough time to do my leg exercises before we left for the fair.  We normally get home around dinner time and I didn’t figure I would do both sets of exercises at night. 

The turtle bag was packed – everything on the packing list crossed off – cash, coupon booklets, tickets, Tylenol, bandaids, wipes, container for cookies, fan, hat:

Packed and ready to go

I went to bed a smidge earlier than normal, but not too much.  I pet the cat and then snuggled down.  That’s when the trouble started.

Apparently several episodes of Death in Paradise was a bit much for evening viewing.  Woke up from a weird intense dream of bodies floating in the Caribbean.  Dozing off again did not come easily and I ended up turning on “To Catch a Thief”.  Then woke up to the dog whining at 1 a.m. – one of the smoke alarms was squeaking.  Took a few minutes to figure out if it was my room or the hallway and then we had to dig out batteries.  Dozing off again did not come easily.  Ended up reciting A is for antelope, B is for baboon, C is for capybara…. got all the way to the end of the alphabet – twice.    Woke up at 2:30 to make a trip to the bathroom.  This time I ended up turning on Murder on the Orient Express.  At 5:15 I rolled over and when I looked at the time, I just gave it up.  Plenty of time to do my exercises, pick up a bit, feed the critters, water the bales. 

I can’t recall the last time I had such a rough night.  Obviously opening day was clearly keeping me a little over-wired!  Luckily it didn’t keep me from enjoying my first day at the fair and I slept exceedingly well that night.  But I do wonder if I need an updated “go back to sleep” routine?

Why couldn’t Goldilocks sleep?

2025, Automotive, Travel

Vehicle Bound

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You’ve probably heard me say that the only good things to come out of Covid were working from home and drive-up service.  I know that many businesses are making people come back into the office but hopefully drive-up service is here to stay.

With a sore knee, running errands wasn’t the top of my to-do list the last couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, you can’t just keep putting off errands or else your household starts to sag at the edges.  As I started to list things that just needed to get done, I realized that drive-through was going to be my friend.  Here’s what I managed to do without getting out of the car:

  • Aldis
  • Target
  • Value Village (this was a drop-off, not a pick-up)
  • Post office (again, a drop-off)
  • Bank ATM
  • Dunkin’ Donuts
  • Caribou Coffee

There was one more errand that did require me to get out of the car – returning a library book.  The only library with a drive-through return in the Hennepin system was the Southdale Library – and as of this past week, the drive-through is no longer available:

I can’t remember a time when I had so many things I could do without exiting my vehicle.  I do like drive-up and drive-through!!

Do you do any drive-up or drive-through?