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This week in our little corner-

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This week’s farming update from Ben

The rain predicted for Wednesday morning evaporated before it got here. We just got sprinkles. And it’s still rather cool. A bit under normal temps. Growing degree units are still above normal, thanks to the early spring. Corn is already knee high, so that’s good. It’s almost canopied meaning that will keep the weeds down. The soybeans are maybe 6″ tall. Long ways to go for canopy for them. The co-op sprayed the soybeans for weeds this week. 

One of Kelly’s co-workers was in a bicycle accident and has broken her clavicle. Her collar bone. And you all know there’s not much to do about that. Strap it to your chest and go about your day. This woman was back at work two days later. Typing with one hand. She’s a very busy person in the first place, and she said she was home staring at the walls, so she may as well be at work. With one hand. Been there, done that. 

I was at a business the other day, and the clerk was typing with her two pointer fingers. And I thought again, thank goodness for 11th grade typing class. And I chose that myself; Mom and Dad didn’t even push it on me. And back in the 1980’s I don’t know why I would have thought that? But good for me. Glad I did. I’m still trying to learn the numeric keyboard without looking at it. 559096 3940 175 5607259357028593164 That was me trying to type out some familiar numbers without looking. It’s 85% accurate… Not quite good enough for my accounting though. 

My brother-in-law is missing his left pinky finger. He says the Q and Z aren’t a big deal, but he sure misses the A.

I had election judge training this week; regular and head judge. And since I’ve been doing this for 20 some years, there’s not much to keep it interesting. So I turned it into a game of judging their grammar. They talked about when your vote has been “casted“ really? Casted? And at one point she said something was done “correctionally”. I spent a long time thinking about that. Is correctionally a word? I wanted to look around the room and say ‘did you all hear that? Is that what she said’? One guy talked about the “Safe At Home” program, but it sure sounded like he was saying “Save At Home”. Hmmm… Call me judgemental.

The farm this week has been odds and ends. I threw out a bunch of wildflower seed expecting rain. So now I’m out there with the water tank in the back of the gator getting that watered– fingers crossed. I figured if I didn’t water, it wouldn’t rain, and if I did water it would, so I watered. And it worked! We got just over half an inch on Wednesday afternoon. 

Monday evening the dogs were barking at something down in the feedroom. Kelly had gone down and opened the door but didn’t see anything. At one point, Luna came and literally got Kelly. Clearly indicating she needed to come back down there. I went down to get some corn and when I turned on the auger to load more feed into the wall bin, a raccoon climbed out the top of the bin. She bounced off my shoulder and tried to make a get away. And there was the dogs and this raccoon at my feet. I have had my close encounters with raccoons before and didn’t really need another. At least I didn’t scream like a little girl this time, I just tried to get out of the way. Corn auger is still running, corn is spilling on the floor. It was a whole big thing.

Padawan is at a(nother) new job, so Padawan 2 is coming out to help. He’s been around before and he’s a good kid, too. I took the mower off the lawn tractor, sharpened the blades, replaced a spindle, (the bearing supporting a blade), changed the oil in the tractor and cut more grass. P2 replaced a carburetor on our secondary lawn mower, and we worked together replacing a fuel line between the tank and the fuel pump. Although it’s still not running. Hmmm….  While he was doing the carburetor I replaced the sediment bowl on Kelly’s C tractor. And that still leaks too. Geez, batting zero on these projects. P2 had success replacing a door latch and gas strut on a tractor door. We moved stuff around in the shed and got the corn planter and grain drill parked away until next spring.

We spotted this big moth on a tree. 

What is this? It was about 3 inches tall. Six legs, furry antenna. Maybe a Cecropia?

The summer festival season has kicked off. It was the 152 Annual Viola Gopher count on Wednesday and Thursday with a parade and fireworks and a street dance. Daughter’s group usually goes to the parade, but she wasn’t really interested. She told me only lazy people go to parades. I tried to explain I didn’t think that was exactly true, but I had trouble not giggling and she’s not interested in rational explanations anyway. She likes to move, not sit and watch a parade. We let her stay home. 

It’s also Elgin Cheese Days Thursday – Sunday this week. Carnival rides, food trucks, and more dancing. I drove through Elgin on Thursday, on my way home from getting more parts in Plainview. There were a lot of garage sales, and two little girls selling earrings on a boulevard. And the local strawberry farm has fresh strawberries. Oh My Goodness they’re good. They make my knee’s buckle they’re so good.

Peas are being harvested and guys are planting soybeans following the peas. 

I needed a few new farm shirts, so I dug to the back of the closet, found a couple with long sleeves I haven’t worn in years. Cut the sleeves off and they’re having a new life.

Driving home from Plainview, I heard Spike Jones singing “Chloe”. If the title doesn’t ring a bell for you, allow me: A phone rings, he answers, he says, “You don’t say. You DON’T say. You don’t say.” Hang’s up. The band says, “Who was it?” Spike replies, “He didn’t say.” Then later, phone rings again, same bit. Again they say “Who was it?” “Same guy.” Makes me laugh every time. I looked up the song on YouTube. Following Spike Jones was Cab Calloway and the Nicolas Brothers. Now those guys could dance!

Kelly is hosting a ‘movie on the farm’ night for her work people. The Residents and Fellows in the Pathology program come out and we do a bonfire and show a movie on the side of the crib. This will be the fourth year. First year got rained out. Second year was sparsely attended. Third year was in September and it was so cold and rainy we moved it into the shop and machine shed and showed the movie on the shop door. It was a good crowd and they all had a good time. This year looks like sunny but cool weather. She gave them a choice of movie and I haven’t heard what it will be yet. They do a popcorn machine, a root beer keg, they got vanilla ice cream, and the fixings for S’mores. P2 and I got out some tables, and straw bales for seating, cleaned out the garage, and he cut grass.  

And then Sunday is Father’s Day. 

Happy Fathers Day Dad’s!

ARE YOU JUDGEMENTALLYIST?

WHAT MOVIE IS GOOD FOR OUTSIDE?

46 thoughts on “This week in our little corner-”

  1. Of course I’m judgmental but by my own standards and I try to keep it to myself unless provoked.

    I think you’re right about the cecropia moth. It was either that or polyphemus, another large brown moth, but I compared pictures.

    We all have grammatical or style quirks we have to monitor. Correctionally is not properly a word but it basically communicates the idea. There would be better and less officious ways of expressing it. I’m conscious that I tend to use too many commas and have to resist. You, on the other hand, could eliminate many of your apostrophes.

    I heard a story once about the Viola Gopher Count. It’s likely apocryphal and I’ve never been to the Count so I can’t confirm or deny but I like the story. It goes like this:

    The Gopher Count, (for the uninitiated, Viola had a bounty on gophers and the bounty hunters documented their catch by presenting the tails) evolved into an annual town celebration and party which included a parade. The parade route was oriented so that one side of the street was in full sun and the other was in the shade. Gradually, the parade viewers all migrated to the shady side, leaving the sunny side empty. After a couple of years of this the decorators of the parade floats began decorating only the side that presented to the shady half of the street, leaving the sunny side undecorated.
    Any truth to this?

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      1. Some years a few would emerge on the south side of the apartment building in Mankato.
        My son had a tooth pulled this week. One root had grown into his sinus cavity. The end broke off. He had to go to an oral surgeon, who removed the piece and plugged the hole.
        Clyde. A one-finger typist on my iPad.

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        1. Nice to hear from you Clyde.! I had that happen with a tooth root. It is a very weird sensation and the source of some of my sinus infections. Glad to hear your son is through this.

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    2. Well, now I’m self conscious of my apostrophes…

      Gopher count: I haven’t heard about presenting the tails. These days it’s the front feet. (because they have the claws used for digging). The bounty paid for the feet is about $3.50 / pair now, but each township that provides a bounty has to set that at the annual meeting. It is usually the last item of business at our annual meeting. The gopher mounds are a real problem in the fields. I just saw a few mounds in the new area where I had the waterway created. In the fields, hitting those large mounds is hard on machinery, and the dirt plugs up cutter bars.

      If someone brings in feet, our clerk used to take them outside and count them. (Hopefully, the client had dried them or frozen them). Collections of 50 or 60 pairs was common. Once in a while someone will show up with 150. We get a claim about once / year these days. It used to be more. I’m not sure how many actually take them to Viola. We joke for us take them, they have to have the Haverhill Twp brand on the feet.
      When our clerk retired, we’d have the new guy count the feet. Now we just take their word for it and tell them to dump them out off in the field. Again, just our township. Viola probably does count them.

      I’ve been crowds on both sides of the parade route.

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      1. You are no doubt correct about feet versus tails. It’s all hearsay to me.
        You’re the one that brought up grammar. Plurals don’t require apostrophes.

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        1. Oh. I guess I didn’t know that. That’s why I should type this into Word before I put it into the Blog.
          Thanks Bill.

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        2. You do an impressive, remarkable job weekly with your farm reports. With all you have going on I don’t know how you find the time.

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        3. There are cases of plurals that require apostrophes, but they aren’t all that common. Plurals of numbers, letters, or certain words can have apostrophes – such as “mind your P’s and Q’s”, “popular in the 50’s and 60’s”, “dot your i’s and cross your t’s”. Most ordinary nouns, though, get an s or maybe an es to make them plural.

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        4. I haven’t consulted any sort of guide but I express the numbers you use as examples as ‘50s and ‘60s, where the apostrophe actually stands in for the missing “19”. Inserting an apostrophe where you suggest seems unnecessarily arbitrary.

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  3. Glad to hear about the shirts you found, and about Padawan 2…

    I like to think I’m nonjudgmental, but I realize I form judgements all the time – I just don’t voice them as often as I used to. So I don’t know if that makes me a judgmentallyst ?

    I think it’s so cool that you guys do this movie night – sounds like a lot of work though! When you say “They do a popcorn machine”, etc… who is the They?

    Movie? Something funny… Mrs. Doubtfire?

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I can be real “Judgmentally” but I try to catch it and back off. It usually means I am not behaving the way I want to behave. However, regarding your use of being judgmental to get through your boring training: I am OK with that. You have to find some way to get through the day without self-destructing. Sometimes I take my knitting to those kinds of experiences.

    I remember going to drive in movies as a kid–a form of outdoor projection. When our family did that we did not have to get my dad in and out of his wheelchair, then navigate through the theater. We saw “Born Free” about Elsa the lion, and “A Little Patch of Blue” with Sidney Poitier through a dirty, bug-splattered front window and scratchy speakers that faded in and out. I usually slept through the end in a pile children with my siblings and cousins. Can you reproduce that experience, Ben? It sounds fun! It must be your own Solstice Celebration.

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    1. Completely OT. A little bit of rain this morning so no cheetah run. But they did bring cheetahs out and do some training so that was pretty.

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  7. As a teacher I was of course judgmental. But I ignore whatever people say or write otherwise. I am sad when anything official has glaring errors. These days if I can read it, I am content. My new medical place had me answer all sorts of questions online in tiny print. I used a magnifying glass, which took me hours. My eyes just shifted into double vision. Bye

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    1. Peas are grown for the canning companies. I’ve just never pursued that. And I may be too far away from them, they may not take my farm.

      Plus soybeans planted later have reduced yield due to less growing time. So it just depends if you make money or not. Factor in the pea income, more fuel and time to plant the second crop, reduced yield… it just depends.

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  9. i used to be judgmental now i am just observant and file away my observations. i used to get upset with idiots and a-holes now i smile and breathe a sigh of relief that i only have be around them for 1 minute. think of the poor unfortunate who has to live with them. poor malania…
    snow white is great outdoors princess bride too
    saving private ryan for guys night out. or kellys heros

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  11. I get judgmentallyst when I encounter certain verbal misuses.

    It always bothers me when people say something like “the problem is is that…” or “the reality is is that…”

    One “is” will do. Please. Tim Walz does this all the time. Many other people do this, too, so Tim Walz is not alone. And I LIKE Tim Walz. He just drives me crazy when he does that.

    Other verbal things…people used to say “of late” or “as yet”. Now I am hearing “as of late” and “as of yet” and I would like to remove the extraneous “as” and “of”, with my mental red pencil.

    Also, there is the expression “sooner rather than later”, which is now frequently getting shortened to “sooner than later”. The word “rather”, to me, injects a certain seemliness to the phrase. “Sooner than later” doesn’t really mean anything, since whatever is sooner is always sooner than later. My mental red pencil is in peril of running out of ink adding “rather” to the sooner than later crowd.

    Movie for outside: maybe Field of Dreams. If you show it, they will come.

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    2. Bad editing, especially when it’s factual stuff easily checked online, turns me off. A few years ago I was in the emiddle of a book and came across “The University of New York” in the middle of a sentence. The author meant NYU, but he (or his editor) didn’t even check before going to press. I have since avoided anything by that PUBLISHER.

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  15. I saw Gone With the Wind at the drive-in when I was in 7th grade. Maybe Wrath of Khan or A New Hope could top that. I saw Wrath at the old Cooper Theayre up on Hwy 12 and that opening sequence of stars in space was breathtaking.

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  16. an historic event
    joe bidens “look”
    often with t pronounced
    sword with w pronounced
    when people say “in my opinion” who else’s would it be?

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    1. Before we had children (and our eldest is now 41), we read aloud to each other. That included all of the Lord of the Rings books, which are rife with dwarves and swords. Just to mix things up, I began leaving the w out of the first, and pronouncing it in the second. It was amusing for a day or two.
      Then I was the scripture reader at church, and the Old Testament lesson included the word “sword”, which almost got the Tolkein treatment. After that, I didn’t mess around at home any more.

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