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BY THE NUMBERS

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This weeks Farming Update from BEN

On Thursday I collected the mileage and hours from vehicles and tractors then put it all in my ‘Yearly Mileage’ spreadsheet. Everything was about average. We used the lawn mower 31 hours, put 43 hours on the big tractor, and 127 hours on the other tractor. Drove the 4-wheeler 22 miles, and put 306 miles on the gator using it 48 hours.

Egg count for 2025 was 419 dozen. 5028 eggs. Plus a few dozen that froze or got broken.

On Tuesday daughter and I took a road trip to Potsdam and Meyer’s Seed, then John Deere in Plainview. And got sundaes at DQ and then back to Rochester for a stop at Barnes and Noble. She thanked me for the adventure. 

At Meyer’s the oat seed for 2026 is ordered and paid for, and corn and soybean seed has been ordered and financed, at 0% interest with a 4% savings. (6% savings would have given me prime -2%). $11,700. A bag of seed corn now is over $300. I ordered 25 bags. That’s a separate loan from the $43,000 for fertilizer and spraying. I got TWO free seed corn hats!

You know how you’re supposed to save receipts for seven years? I brought up a box from 2002 and sorted through that. Oh my goodness. We’d been married 12 years. Kelly was making $17 / hour. We had 2 kids in daycare, and $36 in our savings account. I’d get a milk check twice a month. It totaled maybe $2200. I owed the vet $1000, the breeder $500, the feed co-op $500, plus there was always other bills and expenses. I got anxious just looking back through this stuff. Once I saved the important stuff, I took the unneeded stuff out in the snow and burned it. 

It was a small fire; not much stuff. And I just used my gloved hand to ‘swish’ it around to get all the papers to burn. Evidently the cheap nylon mechanics glove I was wearing have a lower melting point than the flame of even a small fire. I didn’t get hurt or anything, it just melted the sides of the fingers of the glove. Daughter came over to see what I was doing. I pointed out that she shouldn’t use her hand to stir up a fire. She looked at me like I was a complete idiot. And she basically said, “Well duh!”. Oh good. A win on the parenting front! She knows enough not to stick her hand in a fire. 

The wedding we attended on New Years Eve was really very nice! The bride was stunning, the groom looked sharp in his black tuxedo. They were both relaxed (or at least looked that way) and the ceremony was low-key and they wrote and read their own vows and had fun. We had a full three course meal, and there was a live band. I got a lot of compliments on the fact I was wearing sleeves. I did have to dig to the back of my closet for this shirt, and one cuff was a slightly different color than the other. Solved that problem by rolling them up a bit. 

For Christmas Kelly gave me this hat:

I picked up oil filters and grease tubes at John Deere. I changed the engine oil and filter in the 630. I was looking in the operators manual for the tractor and realized I’ve never checked the oil level for the transmission. On modern tractors there’s the engine oil dipstick, and then a dipstick, or sometimes a site tube, showing transmission and hydraulic oil level. On the 630, there’s a dipstick for the engine oil, and one for the hydraulics and I remember always checking that as a kid. I don’t know what fascinated me about that dipstick, but I checked it often. And then there’s a check “LEVEL” plug for the power take off. And on the side, according to the book, another check “LEVEL” plug for the transmission.

HUH!

Never seen that before.

I had to scrap some dirt off to find this.

You take the plug out and add oil until it starts to run out the plug, then it’s full. I don’t remember Dad checking that. I’m sure he did, I just didn’t know about it. Now the tractor is good to go come spring.

And the 1940’s music station is back on my car radio.

Life is good.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR RECIPTS?

HOW ARE YOU AT RECORD KEEPING?

21 thoughts on “BY THE NUMBERS”

  1. We used to keep “important papers” in accordion files. Once things were “in”, they didn’t come out until a need arose. After about 30 years of married life, we were drowning in paper. We sat down with it ALL one afternoon and set the standard of 7 years and, with exceptions in mind like “instructions for appliances we still owned” and “birth records for our children”, eliminated more than half of those papers. There was too much for a shredder, and we weren’t permitted to start a fire in the faculty housing area where we resided, so I put everything into a barrel and added detergent and water. A week or so later, I buried the mess in the back yard.
    In retirement, we inherited a file cabinet from my father-in-law. We also got a desk with a file drawer. The desk drawer overflows, but we’ve now been retired 7 years, so some of that can go. I sense a clear-out on the horizon some coming winter day.

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  3. Love the header photo, Ben – is that where the squirrels are?

    Yes, a clear-out is due here – I started purging some old files over Thanksgiving weekend, and now need to do more… it really shouldn’t take long, but requires Husband’s input, so is a little more complicated.

    I still save grocery receipts, etc., and reconcile them with the credit card statement when it arrives. I realize this is an archaic mindset…

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  4. Rise and Burn the Paper, Baboons,

    When I was running my business (I sold it 9 years ago) the technology of receipts and saving paper was changing rapidly as more portable scanners and things like signature plates were just coming on the scene. Up until then I learned to organize my receipts in notebooks with pockets. This was all necessary to itemize taxes.

    Because the business got big in the last 5 years I ran it, it was a lot of paper and it had to be organized. I am not good at such things. My bookkeeper, who was such a help, would sort through the receipts monthly for reports of income, outgo, and pay. When I started it was disorganized and insufficient. 14 years later when I sold it, everything was organized and stored for the mandatory 7 years thanks to this bookkeeper. I shredded the last of it 2 years ago.

    If I was doing it now, all receipts would have been scanned and stored in the cloud and the paper receipts would be shredded. The bookkeeper would still have been vital to the process of staying organized because, really, I do not care that much day-to-day. But at tax time I care a lot!

    Now things are pretty simple and straightforward. No itemizing. Standard deductions (although this may need to change as husband’s need for care increases). Less paper, and what paper I have I scan. And I now do my taxes myself.

    OK. I am done. These four paragraphs just maxed out my tolerance for numbers and paperwork. Necessary but I do not have to like it and now I am retired so I do only the minimum.

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  6. For the record the IRS says to keep tax records for 3 years unless certain conditions apply. You can easily look it up. I assume that is for personal taxes not business. My account provides everything on a flash stick which I keep, which does not include receipts.
    Clyde

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  7. I guess I’m more organized than I thought! I don’t want to keep a lot of unnecessary papers around. Like Barb, I keep grocery receipts, etc., for a month. Then I get my bank statement and make sure everything matches. I only keep the receipts for things that might someday need returning or repair.

    I shred lots of things. Anything with any kind of ID, even name, phone number, and address, etc., gets shredded. I have a file cabinet with seven years of tax documents. I keep bank and credit card statements for one year, then shred them once taxes are done. I keep health information longer, but I do try to thin those files every couple of years.

    That is a great header photo, Ben! Your dogs have a great life and it shows! What’s in that shed?

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  9. I save too many documents for too long. But I’m slowly getting better. Until a few years ago, I’d saved all our tax returns going back 20+ years. Now I’m tossing a return each time it turns ten years old. I also keep all sorts of financial receipts, bank statements, utility bills, etc. with those tax returns, so each file is about three inches thick.

    But I’m a whiz at keeping track of our finances. I’ve used Quicken since 1994 and track our income and expenses to the dollar. I used to track them to the penny back when a penny was worth something. Now they’ve stopped making them so they’ll slowly fade away.

    I was also a budgeting nerd from maybe day one (thanks, Mom!). I used to buy annual budgeting books and tracked all my meager expenses in college. Then I started Sandra tracking her expenses while we were dating. I still have every budget book going back to 1978, the year we were married. It’s amazing to think we could survive and live a modest lifestyle on about $20,000/year; the combined income of a teacher and a nurse back then.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. By a guy with dementia bragging about all those cognitive tests!

      I am very angry about this and the negligent GOP Congress. When the time comes to demonstrate, vote, and be an activist I will do so.

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    2. Listen to Heather Cox Richardson’s explanation of the background and implications of that action. This could have very serious consequences, and not just for Venezuela and the US. We are on a very slippery slope indeed.

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  11. I’m very good at recordkeeping but my guess is that the records I keep are vastly different than what you’re keeping Ben. I have a spreadsheet for practically everything. And I like it that way.

    I’m with Wes, I only keep a paper receipt around these days if I think there’s a possibility I might need to return something before I actually use it. Otherwise, once I see that it’s hit the bank statement, the paper receipts go away. Copies of bills I saved for about a year and a half to two years until the final draw is filled up and then they all go to the shredder. I am still keeping the checkbook for up to seven years, but that’s kind of silly since it’s online anyway, but old habits die hard. Of course I only write one check a month so it’s not like I have a lot of of those check stubs laying around.

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  12. The stuff I’m saving are all farm, therefore business, related.
    I don’t save household receipts unless it’s tax relevant.
    Of course capital purchases are saved as long as we own that item, but it is fun to see what dad paid for certain items.

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