It was a year ago on the 25th that mom died. Here’s to mom.
This weeks Farming Update from Ben:
It was April of 2021 I started writing these farm updates.
This week I learned if I use the diesel pump for semi’s at the gas station, they pump fast. Like really REALLY fast! Twenty two gallons in about a minute! It’s awesome. I’m gonna make a habit of filling the truck with them when available.
I thought Padawan should have his own set of chainsaw chaps. (We have big plans for summer! He may not know this part of them yet…) I have pretty good chaps from Stihl, a very reputable name. When Kelly bought them for me – I think it was a Fathers Day Present- she said if I was going to have some, they better be good ones. Yep. I’d agree. And now I’m looking at them for P and I’m not sure how much we’ll really need them and good ones are $150+, so I look at cheaper ones and then I think, I’m going to skimp on something that could save his life?? I pictured myself at the ER. “Well, Doc, I thought they’d be good enough.”
I bought him a good Stihl pair.
It’s a little crazy around the farm. I went from late nights in rehearsal to late nights in the tractor. Life is still relentless! Daughter asks me why I’m out in the field. Well, because. Work to be done! I just keep thinking, what if I was still milking cows?? Add another four hours into my day.
Padawan is going to be able to go full time for me this summer. That will be huge. I was listening to a podcast in the tractor the other night and they talked about jobs and how people have ‘soft skills’ and ‘hard skills’. The hard skills can be taught. It’s the soft skills he needs help with. That can be our goal this summer. He’s got some of them, he’s a really nice young man, but he’s 19 and they’re not his focus right now. Just gotta bring them back to the surface.
I had him doing fieldwork. A hard skill.
Sold some more straw to the Fire Department. They add it to their practice fires to make smoke. They tell me it’s the least toxic way to make smoke.
The oats is all planted.
Used the new Track Wacker! Or ‘Track Eraser’ as I learned the company calls this machine. It took a little finagling to get it adjusted and folding properly, but it worked great!
After the first 100 yards I stopped to check and be sure everything was working on the grain drill. That’s when I made a terrible mistake. I backed up with the drill in the ground. The drill uses two disc’s, in a V shape, to get the seed into the ground. The front is the point and makes the seed trench. The back is open. And when I backed up, I filled that open V with dirt. I knew it felt wrong as I backed up and it took driving ahead another 20 yards before I saw it plugging up and knew what I had done. Crap. It’s tough cleaning them out. I had to go back home and get a long screw driver and vice grips and I got all but one cleaned out. The last one I had to take one disc off to get it cleaned. NOTE TO SELF: Don’t do that again.
Wednesday I hooked up the new drag — the new to me drag– and went over all the oat fields. It worked pretty slick!
Got the corn planter out and greased and ready to go. Paddie did that and hauled out deck furniture while I was using the drag. I gotta get a list of jobs for him when I’m doing something else. He needs more self motivation. Is that a hard or soft skill?
I headed out to the corn fields Thursday afternoon. With my buddy.
The chicks and chickens are doing well and they love a field of freshly tilled dirt.
I thought, what should I listen to as I begin? I chose a ‘favorites’ playlist on shuffle mode and the first song was Mingo Saldivar playing ‘Rueda De Fuego’.
Tex-Mex Ring of fire. Haha- perfect!
Got a good start; enough to check seed depth, placement, and be sure everything was working on the corn planter. Then it rained a bit and I had time to go home and take a nap before coming back for another college show.
Friday was a road trip (me and the dogs) to Byron for a 275 gallon water tote to water the trees. Then to Plainview for parts, then to Wabasha for another 100 trees. Back through Plainview, picked up stump killer for Kelly in her pursuit of buckthorn, and finally home. It was a nice drive.
I planted another 40 tree’s. 60 to go! And it was Arbor Day to boot!
So farm so good!
HARD SKILL OR SOFT SKILLS?
Trail Baboon 
Absolutely gorgeous photo of my girl Bailey!!
While I feel that I have definite hard skills, I think my life leans more towards soft skills. I had to look up examples of hard and soft skills to make sure I was understanding them. If I am entirely self-taught in what seems like a hard skill, say cooking…. is it still a hard skill or does the self-teaching make it a soft skill?
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You are right about the Bailey photo–really nice, as are the chicken pictures.
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I’d say cooking is a hard skill, or rather a suite of specific hard skills no matter how you acquire them. Choosing to acquire them, having the confidence and persistence to acquire them are soft skills. Deciding how to combine those skills in the cooking process is another soft skill.
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Husband and the young man working for us when he’s not doing his cement day job are hauling bags of stones and the 150 bags of raised bed dirt into the back yard this morning. The rocks are for the bottom of the beds for drainage. Our helper is going to assemble the raised beds, too. He has really nice soft and hard skills.
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Such a good picture of your mom, Ben; and then Bailey… Nice to see the chicks doing well.
The soft, people skills (one way they described when I, too, looked it up come more naturally to me for some reason. I may have picked up some things from my dad, who ended up being a guidance counselor.
I can learn the hard skills if motivated, but have found at some jobs that this isn’t always my forte. When I was a veggie coordinator (1979..) at the Wedge Co-op, I never was that great at getting everything displayed and looking its best. I’m good if the need for detail and organizing is involved, though.
I need to do more cooking (hard skill?) around here, but am not very motivated, and have started cutting corners with more packaged and prepared foods. We don’t always have the greatest meals at this point.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
Yesterday I purchased a new keyboard (typing is a hard skill) because the old one refused to work anymore. The space bar was only working if I pressed it on the extreme left side which was making typing laborious! Thus, my short entries the past few days. This is soooo much easier today.
Ben, thank you for your reliable Saturday posts. They are enjoyable and informative. And that is a lovely picture of your mom. Thanks for posting it.
I also read the definition of hard and soft skills, offered up by AI summaries. I finished my career as a behavioral therapist teaching “soft” skills as if they are hard skills. And really they are hard skills if practiced and learned. But people push back hard at changing behavioral patterns because they always serve some kind of purpose, even if the purpose is not visible. Talk about living between the two types of skills.
Is teaching a soft or hard skill? My guess is teaching is a combination of both. For example playing music would be a hard skill. But how do you teach the behavioral skill of practicing? Practice is a behavioral pattern performed regularly. How does the relationship of teacher/student affect the music? In the bad old days of abusive conductors, musicians hated those guys and found really subversive ways to get revenge. Now there is a soft skill in a hard skill world. Relationships, defined as soft skills, can drive people to perfect soft skills.
So now I wonder, is there really a division between these two things or are they symbiotic.
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Correctly administering an IQ test or other psychological tests is a hard skill. Interpreting the results is a soft skill that takes quite a while to master.
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They seem to go hand in hand to me.
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The actual administration is a hard skill. Knowing what behaviors to note during the testing is a soft skill.
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Essential skills.
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Great work on getting the good chainsaw chaps for Padawan. Shows him you expect he’ll get the use out of them. I think your wise head and his young, strong back are going to be a good team!
Lovely picture of Bailey and good luck to Kelly with the benighted buckthorn. Happy Arbor Day! I am reminded of Pa planting trees on the homestead in Little House. We drove out there and say them. Wonder if they’re still there.
Always considered to be better at hard skills, and am having to work on the soft ones more lately.
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I live in the city. Saturday was “dumpster day” for the neighborhood association. There are enough of us old guys to run the dumpsters, so we put a couple of 12 year old girls on the “entry table” to run the clipboards… asking if people actually reside in the neighborhood and getting their email addresses for the mailing list. It is amazing how well they took to this “soft skill” aspect of the job, and how well a retired preacher among us became the “loadmaster”, making sure that the dumpsters were packed well to get the maximum amount of old furniture and such into them. “Loadmaster” is a hard skill.
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I suppose the particular denomination would dictate how judgemental the pastor would be.
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which brand of lutheran would be the nicer one?
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Oh, ELCA, I suppose.
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I thought I had a good handle on the difference between hard and soft skills, but the more I think about it, I think there’s a lot of overlap. I also think both can be taught and learned, at least to some extent.
Bailey looks like a really sweet dog. Nice photos, Ben. I also like the photo of your mom. What a beautiful young woman she was.
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Sleeveless, too!
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Ha ha!
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The liger is bred for it’s skills in magic.
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i helped my sil put in a deck yeaterday i ended up being the gopher. two runs to home depot, lifting the 2×6 and deck boards and they had some cool new tools called camo brackets that line up the deck boards 1/4” apart and are jigs to put nails in on front and back edge so the nails dont show. the guys doing the nailing are both construction guys who do this daily so it surprised me that they didnt do some of the simple stuff like lining up the boards on the ends so the deck edge would be straight. i asked about it and suggested they factor it into the equation. they said the boards would be trimmed up after. i suggested they do it as they installed and they listened. i think skills are skills and how to swing a hammer can be taught but the details about how to position the nails the boards and how to avoid denting the wood are soft i suppose but the art of plugging your brain in to tasks that are physical make the determination as to wheter youre a worker or an artist.
a question of life eh?
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Practical nursing is a blend of hard and soft skills. You have to be intuitive enough to understand what someone is not able to tell you, and skilled enough to intervene quickly and correctly. I think my years of applying both skills on a daily basis has made it difficult for me to tell one from the other. I’m sure there are lots of other careers which also require both skill sets at the same time.
Playing musical instruments are hard skills, but the ability to feel the emotion in the music and relate it using your hard skills is also a combination of hard/soft skills.
This has been a challenging question for me. I never thought about it before. Thanks, Ben!
I love the photos of your mom and Bailey! That Bailey is a real sweetheart!
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Ben – you should enter that photo of Bailey is some contest. She looks like she’s deep in thought… makes me want to get a dog.
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OT…
Sunday, May 31
2 p.m.
Jacque & Lou’s
Where Rivers Part (Kao Yang)
&
Three Bags Full (Leonie Swann)
(re-reading Three Bags Full in anticipation of the movie “The Sheep Detectives” coming out in May!
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