2026, animals, chickens, crops, Farming Update, Technology, Theatre, Uncategorized

TICK’ED OFF

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This weeks farming update from Ben


Yeah, I know. When I was planting crops I commented on how nice it was to have good lights on the tractors and lights outside the shop so I could keep working after dark. But now that the crops are in, and I’m on the rest of my ‘to-do’ list, it’s a good thing it gets dark so I know enough to quit and come in the house. 

Sometimes that happens because I’m still at the college so I don’t get home and doing anything until 5:00, or the last few days it was so hot I didn’t go out until late in the afternoon, I worked in the office and did bookwork and fought with websites and dealt  with government bureaucracy in the morning, and then I went out and fixed the hole in the bottom of the feed room door and finally got half of the larch trees planted, and weed barrier around them one night, and then the next night rounded up the weed barrier that had blown away, got them all stapled down and found some hoses and gave the trees a good watering. I gotta find a good place to put about 10 more larch trees.

Kelly and I worked one night, finishing the mulch around the seedlings, and building the deer fence over the windbreak seedlings. The deer sure like the Ninebark. They aren’t bothering the gray dogwood, but they’re peeling the bark right off the Ninebark. Stupid deer. When we finished that night Kelly had 6, SIX ticks on her! And she had applied tick repelant! No one hates Hates HATES ticks more than Kelly. She still shivers when we talk about it. I said it’s because she’s irresistible.

I got a 12Volt pump hooked on the large water tote and that’s working pretty slick. Now one person can water the trees from the cab of the gator.

The dairy guys are working on that first cutting of alfalfa. Good weather for that. Some guys are making hay from cover crops they planted last fall, and will get soybeans in after they take that off. 

I’ve got a contractor out and he’s gonna fill in a gully and construct a couple berms to help control erosion. And then fill in another gully, and get a tile inlet and perforated tile installed to prevent a gully from returning in a place that has springs. As dry as it is, the springs are pretty well stopped for now. It’s all part of the Soil & Water projects that I’ve got going this year.

I’ve got the last of my college rentals on Saturday, and then Tuesday is officially my last day for the year, but there is an ongoing project that I’ll stop and work on throughout the summer. It’s no big deal, doesn’t need to be done until fall. It’s sound baffling for the music department.

Padawan had a minor hiccup with his job so he’s still helping me out for a while. At least that’s what he says, that there was a minor hiccup. We believe 98% of what he tells us. “Trust but verify“

Soybeans are finally up enough we can see the rows. 

They need some rain. I was talking with one of the agronomists from the Co-op the other day and she said everyone is in the same situation. Just waiting for rain. 

Growing Degree Units: to Date 631,  Normal is 370. 261 above normal… jeepers. Need some rain. The corn is looking real good, it’s about a foot tall. The co-op was out and sprayed for weeds on Thursday.

The chicks are enjoying being outside. They’re about half full size. They’re big enough to get OUT of the fence, but can’t figure out how to get back IN the fence. Unless Luna is “following” them, I’ve seen them freak out enough they fly over. 

Chickens always look so ticked off.

Stop taking pictures and put me back in the pen!
GET THAT CAMERA OUT OF MY FACE!

Last week I worked a GOP debate at one of the local high schools. They brought in 3 candidates for governor. Three that “agreed to abide by the Republican Convention endorsement and support the candidate who the convention endorses”. Well, that left out a few. 

Wasn’t much of a crowd to be honest.

I just turned on the lights and let the local TV station crew and the schools IT guys sort it all out. The technology of live broadcasting has really changed from the days of the Van with the big tower coming out the top. So that was kind of interesting. 

In the past I have mentioned the monitor that works with the corn planter to alert me if a row stops planting seed. It’s a box with 6 light bulbs and orange covers over them. This is 1980’s technology and they’re like old flashlight bulbs. Well, one burned out on row six, and I really hoped it wasn’t row six that ran out of seed first. I was almost done planting and I didn’t have a spare. So I figured I’d get LED versions of those bulbs. And then trying to get a bulb out of the unit, I  dropped the bulb in the tractor cab and it vanished. I thought for sure I saw it in a tote I carry in the tractor and I took out the paper towels to get the bulb and it still wasn’t there. Don’t you hate that? Where could it go?? Well, no matter, I took out another one. And then I found out I can get PURPLE replacement bulbs. Well, yes, Please and Thank you!  Now I’m looking forward to planting crops next spring with my purple light bulbs.  I hope they work. Sometimes, because LED’s take so much less power, it messes up the circuitry and things don’t work right… In theater lighting, sometimes we have to put a ‘dummy load’ backstage, just something like a 15 watt incandescent bulb to pull enough current to make the LED dim properly. New technology has mostly solved that, but it’s not unheard of to need a dummy load in addition to the LED. In regard to the planter box. I may need to leave one row as an old bulb. We’ll see. 

HAVE YOU EVER HAD ‘TRUST BUT VERIFY’ ISSUES?

ANYONE TICKED YOU OFF THIS WEEK?

30 thoughts on “TICK’ED OFF”

  1. trust but verify is a modified dont trust at all and i need to get me some of that because i am guilty of trusting and being disappointed. my wife trusts no one ever and mocks me for being a doorknob. im working on it. i cant help it . i believe em.

    ticks me off…. im working on that too. my mantra is kind of universal. its the way i quit smoking. i believe its the 12 step trick…when i was smoking and went to quit it was hard to never have that cigarette but i can deal with not having right now. not for a week or a day or an hour or even 10 minutes but for this one second i am in right now i can put it off and be ok. now with people, missing paper work, bolts that wont loosen. drivers and people doing public service on the phone or internet or in person…….. i just mantra myself with that saying”i can do this for this one second im in right now and be thankful i only have to deal with this driver, phone helper, rusted on bolt for this couple of minutes. some poor soul has to live with this person / issue all of the time.” it really helps

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  2. I prefer to trust, and hate having to verify. I tend to feel that a report of the process of “verifying” will come back to the person that I am “trusting” as “checking up on him/her.” The result is that, because I haven’t verified, I end up disappointed.
    So, lately, I’m trying a different route. If it is about something that “both of us” are promising to do, I just ask to get each of us clarity. I say, “OK, I will pick up the load of trash and get it to the dump before sundown on Friday, any you’re going to pump out the septic tank before noon on Saturday, right?”
    Then, when it comes down to verifying, we have a foundation to work from.

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  3. I’m a truster too. I have been really naive in the past, and I’ve gotten burned. I always just believe that everyone is honest and has integrity, and will do as they say they will. Then I find out that isn’t the case. I’ve become more cynical with age, but I’ll still trust first.

    Yes, someone did tick me off last week. The leader of our music group has been rude to me and lashed out at me in the past. He has given me some nasty verbal tongue-lashings. He’s a really unhappy guy with an ego similar to 47’s. He isn’t naturally musically talented, but he really wants to be. He is very hard to play music with, but I’ve done it for several years now because I want to play music so badly. He has picked on another guy in the group too, but not as often as me. He really dislikes me. I usually can ignore it for the sake of peace, but it got pretty hard in the past couple of weeks. Some new people joined the group. One of them is a local guy, well known, who has had a local band and is involved in the local music scene. I knew him and liked him before he joined our group. Nice guy, relaxed, inclusive, tolerant, and outgoing, a good guitar player, able to bring people together. Our leader lashed out at him because he must have felt like his role of leader was being challenged. He was really rude and really yelled at the new guy. I wasn’t there, but I heard about it right away. The new guy told us he would not be back to take such abuse. He was trying to get a few of us together to play downtown at RiverWalk Market Fair on June 20. I was included. I was afraid it would all fall apart, but we practiced together last week. Our leader came to the practice and proceeded to lash out at three of us, continued with rude tirades, then started to complain that he had a learning disability, so we would have to play all of the songs in a way that he could do it. My co-singer quit the new group after that, which will badly damage the new group. The leader hadn’t been invited, but he came anyway, and now the group might be ruined. So yeah, I got mad. One of these days I’m going to take him aside and tell him how I feel about it

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      1. He started the group. He runs the tech we use to project our song book onto a screen or a tv. He’s the contact person. It’s kind of his show.

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    3. As my mom would say, “Who died and left you King??”
      Or else, “If you have to walk on eggshells, you may as well dance.”

      I think you’re diplomatic enough, you can tell him to stuff it in a polite way.
      Remember to smile when you say it.

      Go for it!

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  4. “Trust but verify” was originally associated with diplomatic agreements with the Russians. In that context, I think “trust” meant “proceed”. Actual trust was never involved, otherwise verification would have been superfluous.
    Likewise, in ordinary dealings, I only trust once. Trustworthiness is absolute. Verification, such as it is, comes negatively when my trust is betrayed. That applies to business entities as well as individuals.

    My dentist office and other medical offices have been aggressively verifying my intentions in advance of upcoming appointments. That never used to be a thing but now it’s common. Verification ahead of the event signals mistrust. Have patients become markedly less trustworthy? It would seem so.

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    1. Having been on the provider side of places like your dentist office, patients are not more untrustworthy. But they often missed appointments which becomes a real problem. I had a policy that if someone missed the intake, they were not allowed back. Otherwise, if they missed an appointment there was a $100 fee. So the computer scheduling programs have developed these text messages, email, phone call systems that nag. As a consumer, it drives me crazy, especially the phone messages that leave partial messages with no identification and the end of a message that says,” we look forward to seeing you,” but I cannot determine who it is.

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  6. Were those regular ticks Kelly found, Ben, rather than the tiny deer ticks? It really is a bad year for tick infestations – it got warm so danged early… (that carry Lyme, etc.)

    In my dealings with Board people, et al., I’ve learned which people can be trusted to respond in a timely manner to emails, which ones have to be texted to look at an email, and which ones need an actual phone call.

    Can’t think of anyone I’m ticked off with this week beyond myself, for continuing to react badly to something “unreasonable” that Husband does, instead of using patience, etc. In this case it was turning on the bathroom heater when it’s already 79 degrees in the house, and I’m trying to not turn on the A/C.

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        2. The guineas are said to eat a lot of ticks. I haven’t heard of chickens eating them so much, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
          Never seen a tick on a chicken…?

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  7. I spent 35 years having to figure out who I could trust – local ground companies, hotels, caterers, etc. It was much easier if I was speaking to someone directly — once I’d had a few conversations, it was ok to move to emails. I did have four times when I had to have someone else (all four were hotel contacts) assigned my progam and it was all the same issue – they would give me answers that didn’t make sense and couldn’t be verified. Two of the four simply ghosted me when I pushed back on their answers – that meant an immediate call from my VP of Purchasing straight to the supplier. (These 4 were a very small percentage – I did 275 programs during my years.)

    No personal tick-offed-ness this past week. Just the general state of the world tick-offed-ness!

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    No wood ticks yet this season, but I found several last year on the dog who was treated for them, so they were dead. I also had one under my clothes but not yet attached on myself. The dog park seems to be the primary source of them. But around the 1st of July, during the time our cherry tree needs picking, the chiggers will start which are a source total misery. I did find a salve that helps the itching quite a bit–ChiggerX which has Benzocaine. My son always helps us pick them because he is so tall and he can reach the upper branches of the tree, but then he is covered in chigger bites that swell into big welts. The ChiggerX helps a lot.

    Like everyone else I am in a state of ticked off over the many political and power issues we face right now.

    The most bitter pill I have had to swallow in life is that some of the least trustworthy people I know are part of my own or husband’s family. That just bites. Life goes so much better when I have a lot of distance between my mother’s family and me. There were parts of that family (especially my mother herself) who behaved exactly like what Krista describes in her music group.

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    1. Yes, chiggers are awful. Got them a couple of years ago at an outdoor music venue, when we got too close to the river and chose to sit on the ground (stupid). I found an anti-itch spray at Walgreens that helped some, but good to know about ChggerX.

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  9. Working yesterday, Kelly didn’t get ANY ticks. She was much happier.
    I found one on my hand and brushed him off.
    Good news is we finally finished the tree shelters.
    I don’t believe it’s a once and done, I’m sure it’s gonna need maintenance, there might be a section I have to redo, and I sure don’t see it surviving the winter either, but at least it’s done for now.

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