This week’s Farming Update from Ben
You know, if he was gonna leave the excavator here for a week, the least he could’ve done was leave the key in it. He even locked the door. It’s like he doesn’t trust me. Or maybe just that he knows people like me….
Graduation season and the local newspapers have been highlighting the top graduates at the four High Schools in Rochester and you read about the achievements of these kids and where they’re going to college and what they’ve been involved with and double majors and even one triple major and pre-med and you look at their pictures, (We were all that young once!) plus I’m struck by how senior photos have changed. Nothing formal in the studios anymore; they’re sitting in the grass or leaning on a railing or holding a basketball, anything they want. One kid in shorts that I thought to myself I could hear my mother‘s voice “you can’t have your picture taken in shorts!”
Here’s a sub question, what do you think of that, good or bad they get to do what they feel like in the photos?
And how about those kids working two jobs? Supporting their families? Working a job, going to school, raising kids or supporting their parents, and just trying to survive? Too bad they don’t get celebrated in the papers more often.
I realized the other day we didn’t get any lilacs this spring. We have a row of lilac bushes 75 feet long and there was one branch on one end that got a few blossoms and nothing on the rest. I expected them to be coming and all the ones in town blossomed and ours are always a week later than that and then the other day I realize we never got any. They must’ve frozen off at some point. And then we have that one tree that does it in the fall and I don’t know what’s up with that either. But I miss the lilacs.
Let’s see, on the farm, the Oats was sprayed with fungicide, it looks really good this year and it should be heading out I’d say in a week.
Corn was sprayed last week with herbicide, the weeds are starting to get bad in places. Over on some of the rental ground there’s a neighbor that is not a fan of the spraying so the Co-op can only spray there when the wind is out of the north, or there’s no wind so there’s no drift around their place. Plus I asked the Co-op to leave an extra buffer around their place. And that’s not a problem, I completely understand where they’re coming from, it’s just tough to find the right weather conditions. It got sprayed Friday morning.
Last week I took the back off the chicken coop and have the fan going in there.
On Tuesday I had a contractor fill in a gully and dig in a tile line out in the pasture. This one area is what started all of this work I’m having done with SWCD this year. Soil & Water.
I was just gonna put a culvert there in the gully and fill it all back in but they said we should really get to the root of the problem which was a much better idea. There’ll still be some work to do on the upper end of this, building a small dam once the oats is off (because some of the dirt they’ll need will come from a field where the oats is). It’s sort of two problems: Some erosion at the top end, and springs on the bottom end where they put in the tile, which will take the spring water underground down to a swampy area, and then the other work up top will prevent further erosion. The excavator mentioned above was used to dig in the tile line. The work was inspected and approved Wednesday morning and I got it seeded down Wednesday afternoon. Just needs a little more rain than the .2” we’ve been getting. I also seeded down another area. It’s a long slope and I’m having a grass headland area created, with two small berms to help direct the water off to the side. Hard to get a good picture of the work done, but Humprhey approves.
Wednesday night Padawan and I went to the opera movie. I can’t tell you what it was called because I can’t pronounce it because it was all in Spanish. But it was about the day of the dead and the artist Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. I was gonna go with Kelly and then she ended up with a work thing, so Padawan said he’d come with me. I let him leave at intermission. Which was longer than I expected him to last.
Thursday I spent a chunk of the day navigating one of the chloride trucks applying chloride oil as dust control on the township roads. It’s an annual thing.
Friday Padawan and I returned some left over seed, picked up some parts, and got a ton of egg layer ration. At the feed store, I saw a 50 pound bag of ‘Garlic Salt’. For cattle. They say it helps deter biting insects. It’s a natural way of stopping horn flies or face flies. HUH!
We also stopped at DQ.
Then when home, we went out in a corn field and measured out 175’, which is 1/100th of an acre. Other years I’ve talked about measuring 17.5’ , 1/1000th of an acre, and counting the plants, which gives us a ‘final stand’ count. A colleague told me yesterday, measuring 175’ is a much more accurate count. As I was riding around the township in the chloride truck, doing 2 mph up the road, I was looking at the corn “singulation”. That’s how well the planter does placing ONE kernel of corn EXACTLY where it should be. Not TWO kernels, or not SKIPPING a kernel, but ONE KERNEL ONLY EXACTLY THERE. My corn planter does a lousy job of singulation and it shows up in the rows now that it has emerged. They look terrible; lots of skips and doubles. Newer planters do better. But even at 99% singulation, when you look at a seed every six inches, and moving at ten MPH, it’s still gonna miss one every now and then. So I planted at a rate of 32,000 seeds / acre. Final stand count is between 28,200 and 30,500. Obviously, the better final stand count, the better crop.
I put some of the new purple LED lamps in the planter monitor.
I replaced some bearings in the corn planter gauge wheels. The bearing presses into a hub. I put the bearings in the freezer in the shop, to shrink them a bit, then press them into the hub.
I heard a YouTube farmer say, “You can fill one hole with two gates, but you can’t fill two holes with one gate.” And as obvious as that sounds, anyone who has dealt with cattle knew exactly what he meant. We’ve probably all been in that situation.
I was sweeping out the feed shed before putting in the new pallet of egg layer. I have this broom in there.
I had to laugh. I must have a handle I could put on this. But the building is only 8’ x 12’. And I only sweep it out once or twice a year.
Are you ‘Making Do’?
Trail Baboon 
I’m just going to change the whole house filter and call it a day.
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I take it that Padawan hasn’t returned to his other job?
The realization came to me this week while YA was out of town that I’m still a little down from the losses we had in March. Still getting my stuff done but just not as joyful as usual. Guess I’m making due as time gently works me through.
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Pet loss is hard and they’re each individuals. You can get another pet but it’s not a replacement for that unique personality.
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Yes, you had so much loss in March. You made it through your Mom’s house cleaning and memorial valiantly. And now here you are without a puppy to cuddle. We can loan out McGee again. This guy is a world-class cuddler.
However, last night husband removed his dental plate and did not pay attention to where he put it. McGee got it and chewed it up. Phoebe did this to the first one. This will be the second replacement for McGee. Phoebe-1, McGee-2.
I am about to walk McGee. I will have my poop bag at the ready and will be looking for the three plastic teeth he ate. Really? This is my life?
But he is a world-class cuddler.
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ANd Maggie O’Farrell has a new book out. Land is the name. Can’t wait. Should give you some hope and joy that a good read awaits.
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I have it on hold already at the library. And what I always think of is a funny turn of events, the audiobook is already available although there are a lot of people in line, but the book itself is still on order.
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It’s funny how often something said on the Trail links to something I happen to be just then reading. This passage quoted from Sarah Orne Jewett just popped up in a biography of her:
“I know that the latter loneliness is harder to bear than the despair that comes at first. It clings to one so, and lies so heavily on one’s heart and such sorrow is the thing that says good morning and good night and follows one all day long.”
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In response to the earlier question about graduation pictures, I an reminded that back in about 1998 when my younger daughter was graduating I took her and a companion to a commercial photographer friend of mine. There he produced a series of photos to our specification. In one photo the companion was holding a marshmallow on a skewer over her head. Later in Photoshop I made it appear her hair was on fire. In another photo the photographer stood on a ladder to get a foreshortened view of the two with their arms spread. Later I made it appear they were soaring happily over the countryside.
Just recently, that daughter ran into an old schoolmate who has since become a professional photographer. She told my daughter she was inspired in her pursuit by those graduation pictures.
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My senior picture included by Irish Setter. It took quite a bit of work to get my mother to agree to let me do this – it certainly was not customary at the time. All my friends thought it was a bit odd, but not out of sync with my normal character.
For YA’s senior photos I hired a photographer (as was the trend at the time) and the photo session was outdoors down near the Stone Arch Bridge. It was a lovely day and I thought the pictures were gorgeous. YA informed me, just a couple of months ago, that she didn’t like the photographer and she’s not crazy about the photo she choose. Oh well…..
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The s&h submitted a picture of him winning a race in high school. He had no interest in the whole yearbook thing. I’m glad he didn’t have to do it.
I hated everything about the experience when I was that age. Didn’t help that I knew my braces weren’t coming off for another year and my hair was never going to do the Farrah Fawcett thing.
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
Yesterday I do not think I was making do. Right away in the morning I learned that my cousin Curt died. It makes me so sad. This was not unexpected because he had, at age 79 years, ceased his kidney dialysis. He was a nice, interesting guy who was a skilled college wrestler when I was a child. He came within one match of making the Olympics in 1966 (I think that was the year). He was a romantic figure who was a kind older cousin. About 12-13 years ago when I was doing some geneology he called to share what he had done. He then proceeded to tell me about his near death experience in which he met 400 of our ancestors! Wow. I hardly knew what to say.
I was so frustrated with financial systems that do not work as needed. Do not even get me started on QR codes that take you nowhere. I was trying to pay some bills, get the city dog license, and get our PetSafe dog fence up and running so I can start training McGee to it. None of it worked. The credit union’s app was malfunctioning. I had been trying to pay the $10 city dog license fee for 3 days, but the QRcode takes you to a blank screen and I could not pay with a card unless I completed the forms on line via the QR code system. THe city clerk gave me paper forms, but then would not take them. I had $7 cash so I could not pay that way. I wrote a frustrated email to the entire city council and mayor. How hard can they make a $10 fee?. I did not get the fence working. The credit union’s app never did work although the online site did.
So we went out for supper and I had a delicious Moscow Mule to console myself. We came home when husband removed his dental plate and you read the rest above. Those cost $1200 to replace. When I walked the dog this morning there were no plastic teeth in the poop. I hope they do not bite him from the inside. This morning I weeded the front flower garden which now looks tended and pretty. I name each weed for someone in the Federal Administration and yank it out by the roots. Hegseth, Rubio, and Miller have to be dug out because they want to stay in the garden.
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PS, I had a senior picture of the posed, studio variety. Very boring. I like the ones they do now much better.
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Try getting a fish license.
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Indeed there is a Monte Python sketch for everything.
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Ben, when I read the phrase about the oats: “and it should be heading out I’d say in a week”, my first thought was “where are the oats heading out TO?” : ) Then I remembered what “heading out” is in farm-speak.
Oh man, I wish there was a way we could all see each other’s Senior pictures! (I mean a way that was easy and practical…) Mine was the posed studio kind..
Making do – seems there’s something like that everywhere I look … I throw a lot of things together temporarily that end up being permanent. An example is our spinner clothesline, stuck in the ground without another center post, so the line is only about shoulder height… never have fixed it.
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I don’t know about senior photos. I had the usual posed photo taken in a local studio by a local photographer. It’s very boring. I insisted on taking my glasses off for the photo, which was silly because nobody recognized me without my glasses. I guess it’s their photo – they should present themselves any way they want to – but it just seems like they might want to wear nice clothes at the very least.
I made do with a nice neighbor watering my plants for me last week while I was up north. She must have waved a magic wand at them or something – they grew about a foot. I can see that I might have been overly enthusiastic about a zucchini plant and seven tomato plants. They’re thirsty all the time now, and getting bigger, so they suck up all the water they’re given and need more water the next day. Shirley was so helpful! She’s a nice neighbor. We sat and chatted this morning. I’m so grateful that I have nice people nearby.
I’m also making do with Maggie’s food choices. She got sick at daycare a couple of weeks ago, and threw up her breakfast. She’s always been a good eater, but I still haven’t settled on what food works best for her. Since she got sick that day, her appetite has disappeared. She’s only eating about a third of what she was eating two weeks ago. I’ve tried a couple different kinds of food – which you aren’t supposed to do – but I need her to eat. She’s fine in all other ways, playful, energetic, usually happy, but often anxious and fearful, all normal for her. I hope I don’t have to put her back on that expensive hydrolyzed protein diet. I might have to if one of the two kinds of food I bought for her doesn’t work.
I’m making do with watering plants since it doesn’t seem to want to rain here at all.
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Might have to wait for it.
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Thanks, Linda. Jesse Winchester had such deep lyrics.
“Why feel sorry for the blind man?
His soul is a bird on a wing
Why you might have eyes like an eagle
And never see one blessed thing?
Why feel sorry for the lame man?
And fret that he may be fall down?
Why you might have legs like a race horse
And never get feet on the ground?
He’s alright, makin’ do
Doing fine, how ’bout you?
Save your tears all for someone
Who’s lost but he won’t call out
Why he might have a voice like an angel
And nothing to sing about
He’s alright, makin’ do
Doing fine, how ’bout you?
He’s alright, makin’ do
Doing fine, how ’bout you?”
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loved jessie
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senior picturesi took a buddies who was a year older sepia tone with trees as the background came out nice. i tried my own senior year but didnt get em done soon enough to submit to the yearbook. i loved photography at that time and had my own darkroom but those were different photography times.
ben cant you find something non toxic to spray the roards down with. gotta be something, canola oil? rv anti freeze base?
im making do way too often … dont remind me
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