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EQUALIZING!

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THIS WEEKS FARMING UPDATE FROM BEN

*Header photo by Kelly

Did you notice? 

Yesterday about 9:46AM… the vernal equinox. The sun crossed over the equator. i stood outside and watched it. 

No. Not really. 

Not indicative of any actual person. This was an AI generated cartoon image.

(I started this at work (( Don’t tell!)) and the college uses ‘Co-pilot’ as their AI tool. It won’t use political figures to create an AI image. But it would make a cartoon! Great. Have at it! )

The equinox happened at 9:46 AM for us here in the central time zone. From my daily Weather channel email, I learned an “upright stick in the ground (called a “gnomon,” from the Greek word meaning “to know”) on the equinox, the shadow from an upright stick will mark a straight line East to West.” I marked a shadow and compared it to the compass app on my phone. Hmmm. Is science wrong? I got a shadow about 60° off of North. Hmmm.

You hear about the astroid in Ohio? Also from my daily Weather email: 

We now know more about the asteroid that fell from space and shook northeast Ohio on Tuesday morning with a loud boom that grabbed the attention of many residents of Cleveland and beyond.

According to NASA, the asteroid was 6 feet in size, and weighed roughly 7 tons. As it fell, it was seen by eyewitnesses from at least 10 states, plus the District of Columbia and the Canadian province of Ontario, and when it broke apart, it unleashed energy equivalent to 250 tons of TNT.

And all we had was a lousy blizzard. Last weekend during the blizzard, I made steaks. Got them out of the freezer earlier in the week. Since grilling was out of the question, I said to Kelly I’d fry them. She’s not a fan of frying foods due to the smoke and grease splatters. I said we grew up with our moms frying meat: I can still picture mom smacking them with a knife to tenderize them. (It wasn’t the best cut of meat in the first place being that it was usually some old milk cow that was butchered and it was mostly made into hamburger), so I grew up not liking steak because I had to smother it with ketchup and it was tough as shoe leather.) 

I got the potatoes going, frozen sweet corn going, and poured some olive oil in the hot pan. Oops. The house, like, immediately filled with smoke. All the new smoke alarms, conveniently wired together, start going off upstairs and downstairs. Daughter downstairs was upset, Luna the dog was upset and cowering in a corner. I was trying to get the pan in the sink and rinsed off and cool it off. I opened some doors and windows. Kelly opened windows and was fanning the smoke detectors. 

About then I looked at her and said ‘What was it you were saying about smoking up the house?’ And we got the giggles. 

I do remember reading something about using a high temp oil. But heck, I don’t have any frame of reference to that; maybe it should have said “Don’t use olive oil, Ben.” Anyway, now I know and they were good and I’ve got left overs for the week. 

Daughter still got her walk in during the blizzard. It was a struggle just to get to the shop. And then I had to go out and clear the snow to get the door shut again.

Yep, there was a lot of snow. My family was texting on Monday about cleaning up and digging out. My brother, the keeper of the family history and all the old photos, provided this photo of Dad:

This was taken in the 1970’s. He’s on the upper half of our driveway. I had never seen this photo before and I’m more interested in who trekked out there to take the photo.

I knew of this one: 

Man, those guys back then were so much tougher than me. 

Here was me dealing with the snowstorm: 

Yeah, it was a lot of snow. What that means is it took me an extra hour in the tractor with Bailey and my coat unzipped and the radio on. Oh, woe is me. 

The Red Wing Blackbirds are back. 

The dogs are enjoying the sunshine.

The chickens are out and about. And it’s muddy all over. Again.

Pretty much got my farm bookwork done for 2025 and need to get that to the accountant.

I got re-elected in the township elections last week and will serve another 3 year term. That will get me 30 years on the board. It’s a good group and I still enjoy doing the work.

One night I couldn’t sleep. My brain was very busy. And the next night I slept hard and had a long-involved dream about being in a tractor with several implements hooked behind me. Some kind of tillage tool, then a wagon, and then a tank of something behind that. I was in a big four-wheel drive tractor. John Deere of course. Headed to a field, driving in Rochester and decided not to go down Broadway, even though I’d seen another tractor there recently. (in the dream). And then took a short cut through someone’s garage. About halfway through realized I was just a little too tall for everything to clear. Backed up (and backing up several things is nearly impossible, but in the dream I did it). Got back out, started to pull away and wasn’t hooked up to the first implement anymore. Got that hooked back up, started to move and the next thing was unhooked. Got that hooked back up. And then the third thing was unhooked and I couldn’t’ understand it; I know it had been hooked up before. It went on from there. Perhaps it was my brain thinking about all the stuff I need to be working on in preparation for the spring play, for planting, for general spring work, or who knows. 

Thursday night I spent a few hours in the shop disassembling a massage unit that was getting wonky. It was really interesting and there was some creative and ingenious engineering. Plus I saved all the copper.  

WHO WAS / IS THE TOUGHEST PERSON YOU KNEW / KNOW?

ANY GOOD DREAMS?

26 thoughts on “EQUALIZING!”

  1. There may be others, but since my mom is definitely on my mind, I’m nominating her. (For those who haven’t heard yet, she passed away last week. Quickly and painlessly, which is the way she wanted it.)

    She was a depression baby so learned early to be frugal and to not waste. A rough childhood. When she and my dad were first married, they were poor as my dad struggled to find a career path with his law degree. She taught school to help support the family when he opened his own practice. Dealt with three miscarriages and eventually had my baby sister at age 39. She then took over as office manager for my dad’s practice. When his health began to fail, she was by his side, committed to keeping him at home as long as he could. She was a liberal all her life, avid volunteer and serious believer in the “pay it forward” tradition. Fiercely independent, she lived on her own until her death. She would have turned 94 in July.

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    2. the greatest generation by tom browkaw is a wonderful book. my folks were 20’s 30’s folks and the understanding of doing what it takes was different. its so hard to lose someone so close but it sure is nice to have such wonderful reference points to recall.
      here’s to nonny!!!

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  2. When that happens here, Ben – the smoking oil in the pan (usually because I left the kitchen for too long) – I run that pan outside and leave it in a snow bank for a while… Or just on cement if no snow.

    One of the toughest people I know is my former boss at the little consulting group. Nothing got by her; she had her standards – she wasn’t unkind, and she would negotiate, but if she really wanted something, she got it. She was all of 4′ 9″…

    I’ve only remembered dream fragments lately, nothing I can remember for more than a few seconds. Back later with something I’ve written down in a journal, maybe.

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  3. I could probably make a case for all my immigrant ancestors, but the one that leapt to mind is someone I have only recently been made aware of.

    Shortly before COVID shit everything down, I started hitting the History Center’s library and the newspaper collection housed there.

    I was able to fill in a lot of gaps and I hope to someday go back and tidy all that up for myself. We’ll see.

    Anyway, I ran across a great (x?)grandmother who had my great (x?-1) grandfather while crossing over from Germany to Minnesota and lived into her 90s. Both of those I think make her a tough cookie.

    Of the people I actually met in life, I’m going to go with my grandfather, who got married and started farming on his own in 1930, until the early 1990s.

    I remember those 70s blizzards in Western Iowa, Ben. Drifts up to the windows in our split-level house. I showed the s&h when we were there when he was in high school. I’m not sure he believes me. Should show him your pictures. The only thing that comes close was the storm that collapsed the HHH dome.

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  4. Rise and Shine,Baboons,

    Last night I was dreaming like crazy, as I have been all week. It seems to me that this often happens as the daylight increases from the deep winter darkness. Last night I dreamt of my high school band teacher. I awoke after that. Then upon sleeping again I dreamt that I was with a group who was swimming in a Minnesota lake in March. The water was warm so I started pondering the effects of global warming in the dream. Then I found McGee swimming and getting tired in the water, so helped him to shore. Then I awoke again. Not as active as Ben’s dreams, but current events are entering our dreams.

    Catherine’s story of her ?xgrandmother. While doing some family history during the early stages of COVID isolation, I reconnected with the story of a great-great grandmother who must have been tough. Martha Gearhart was widowed twice and divorced once in the 1870s. She was widowed in her early 30s when her husband homesteaded in Kansas, and died when someone jumped his claim. She gave her children to her mother to raise, then homesteaded in South Central South Dakota where she remarried twice. My grandmother visited her once as a child around 1910. Grandma was still mad at her because Martha made her go out on the prairie to pick up dried buffalo dung as fuel for the stove.

    My mother was probably the toughest person I have known. She was also pretty traumatized. Unfortunately, it caused her to be self-centered and unkind to the point of cruel, and she ruined relationships, or refused to interact with anyone but her family. She then could not figure out why I would not ever be alone with her. It took me years, and a lot of therapy, to find my way out of her mess. Since she died almost three years ago, I have not missed her. That statement is so sad. I have missed my dad every day. ‘Nuff said about that.

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  5. Ben, I don’t care for steak for the same reason as you, growing up on tough beef, over fried by my mother.
    I looked at the clock last night. To my surprise, it was quarter to 9. Didn’t feel like it, but time to start my bedtime protocol of drugs and 3 steps of eye treatments. When I got in bed, I looked at the alarm clock which has big digital numbers two feet from my blurry eyes. They said 8:15. I check with Amazon Dot. Yep, my blurry eyes misread an analog clock. I just stayed in bed. Slept straight through to until my usual time of 5. Check with Dot to be sure. I seldom sleep straight through.
    Toughest person, my father for sure. Told many stories about him on here. Tough physically, emotionally, with pain. We did not connect well, but he taught me so much.
    Clyde

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  6. Mom was pretty tough, but maybe not as tough as her parents. They raised two kids on a postman’s salary back in the Depression and were as frugal as could be.

    But I gotta believe toughness decreases with each generation, starting maybe 300-400 years ago, before industrialization and advancements toward our current modern society began. I can’t imagine surviving in MN before gas heat and motorized transportation. Or being a settler in Florida or southern AZ before air conditioning.

    I want to believe I’m relatively tough. I can endure a bit of pain. I don’t mind hard work. I muddle through brutal cold and extreme heat (by MN standards). But overall, I’m a total wimp.

    I used to have regular dreams where I was naked or nearly naked in all kinds of social situations—some more formal and crowded than others. Haven’t had that dream in years. (Uh-ohhh! Just doomed myself to having that dream tonight!)

    I also used to dream regularly that I could fly (sometimes naked!). It was a wonderful feeling but never lasted long. I never flew high or far. Thankfully never had the dream where you crash to the ground and die.

    More recently my recurring dreams have been about golf. Often I’m trying to get to the course for my tee time and have one delay after another. Or I’m on the course golfing, and I have problem after problem that delays my group and makes me rush to finish the hole or the round. Weird because my biggest pet peeve about golf is slow players. I’m one of the fastest players I know, so when I dream that it takes me forever to play, I go crazy and often wake up in a sweat.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  7. Let’s put toughness to a vote.
    Ben!
    How the hell he gets so much done daily/weekly/monthly/yearly is incredible!
    I’ve had many dreams about flooring projects that include my respected coworker, Shawn. I’ve shared these with him. About a month ago, he told me that he dreamt about me and a flooring project. Now HE was flying!

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  8. Way OT: I had on a Prime show that has ads even if you pay not to have ads. I was half watching it while I was searching through my orders on Amazon for something I bought 2-3 years ago? Suddenly a $250 product appeared in my cart. It was being advertised on Prime.
    Clyde

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  9. After reading through all the comments, it sounds like many of us look to older generations for “toughness.” I think we’re all tough in our own ways, when we have to be.

    My maternal grandfather was tough because he loved my grandmother; his family and the entire Waseca community was opposed to the match due to Catholicism. He went ahead and married my Protestant grandmother, and was disowned by his mother and cut off from his church. He crossed a line and never looked back. He went to the Associated Church in Owatonna with Grandma for the rest of his life. He was a loyal and loving husband to her, but also somewhat rigid and judgmental with us. Grandma carried guilt about it for her entire life. I only found out about her feelings just before she died. She said to me, “Tootie, I’m goin’ to Hell. I took your grandpa from his family and his church, and I’m going to Hell.” It broke my heart that she thought that. I prayed with her until she fell asleep. She passed away a few days later. If there is a heaven, they are both there, holding hands.

    Mr. Christie was tough. He was 75 when I got to know him. I boarded my two horses at his small farm. He was the skinniest man I’d ever seen. I watched him grab two empty bushel baskets and carry them over to the corn crib, fill them both with corn, then hoist one, then the other up onto his shoulders. I was astonished at his strength. He carried them on his shoulders up to the barn, then let me scoop some out for my horses. Then he fed the pigs and steers. His wife had passed away many years before, and he was alone. He enjoyed my company. He was tough in a solitary, country sort of way.

    My friend Pam is tough too. She raised two sons with an extremely abusive, alcoholic husband, and continued to raise them after their divorce. She worked two jobs and raised both sons while working. She was exhausted all the time, but she kept going. I think there are many women who are tough like that. She’s the one that I know.

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  10. I had a dream shortly before waking up yesterday morning that pleased me. In the dream I had just acquired a house, a mansion really, in the neighborhood around Summit Avenue, near the University Club. I was just getting acquainted with the new house, and there were a couple of people there that I was talking to, my sister and a friend.

    The previous owner’s furniture was still there. There was a room set up as a guest room, with a large, maybe queen-sized bed, and a couple of twin beds. I was thinking about how I could invite people from out of town to come and stay with their kids, in this lovely guest room. Although who I would invite with their kids, I don’t know.

    There was a large living room that sort of wrapped around a kitchen are, and there were built-in bookshelves filled with books everywhere.

    My sister wanted to know how I came to own this house, and I told her I paid $295,000 for it. It seemed like a really good deal. At sround this point in the dream, it started to dawn on me that this was a wildly implausible situation, for so many reasons. Including the fact that the house was obviously worth maybe ten times that amount, and I didn’t have $295,000 lying around to spend on a house anyway.

    Still, it was lovely to walk around and admire the place, so I told the people I was with that although this was quite likely just a dream, maybe we should explore a little more. We looked at the books for quite a long time. Most were hardcovers, some looked like they were chosen for show, having fancy gold-trimmed spines, but there was also an alcove with shelves that held some sort of ratty-looking mass market paperbacks. That had the effect of humanizing the previous owner for me.

    There was also a room that was decorated with an elaborate wooden structure, like the world’s most architecturally complex bunkbed. It was sized for kids, so I had to duck to get into the bunkbed area. At one point I removed a wooden spindle and admired the construction, and then put the spindle back.

    We also walked outside and admired the fenced yard, and walked into a really huge carriage house/garage that had a wall lined with cabinetry. The cabinetry wall was like something you’d see in a high-end kitchen. In a garage.

    When we went back in the house I paused to consider how I would deal with the books – I’d want to have room for my own books, so perhaps I would contact a book dealer who would make an offer on the collection. The mass market paperbacks could always find lodging in a little free library in the neighborhood. But even as I was thinking about this, I had an awareness that this was a hypothetical consideration, not actually a real one.

    The dream world began to merge with the actual world in which it was morning and the cardinals were chirping outside my windows, my imaginary house windows and the real house windows.

    Don’t know why, but it put me in a rather good mood all day. In a weird way it was an adventure. Most of my dreams don’t go into detail in the way this one did.

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    1. Oh, that is amazing. Cool that you wrote it all down here, now you have a record of it. I have had lots of dreams about being in some new space or house, and have read that that means something specific, but can’t now recall what!

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      1. I took a Jungian symbolism class in college. Houses are often symbolic of the self. It sounds like Linda’s “self” is doing really, really well!

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