2026, Family, Farming Update, Kids, Seasons

Second Summer

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This week’s farming update from Ben

Sure has been beautiful weather. I’ve seen just a couple fields of soybeans standing yet, a lot of corn has gone out. The dry weather has been perfect for the farmers with cattle on that make round bales out of the corn stalks. It’s been dry and they haven’t had a rain threat and it’s really been nice for that work. 

On Wednesday we had two groups from possibilities out for hayrides. It was much nicer weather than the previous week but some of the clients still expected hot chocolate and while I am out doing the ride, Kelly is making hot chocolate. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it. Tuesday morning daughter and I saw a bald eagle as we were headed in, and then Wednesday on the hayride, they got to see another bald eagle.

Friday morning we did another group, a little windy but certainly warmer than they would’ve had last Friday. It can’t last forever, but it sure is nice while it does. This group also had hot chocolate.

After the hayride, I loaded up some scrap metal on a trailer and hauled that in. Finally got one thing off my list. Then I picked up the fence scrap that I tore out last weekend, the cattle panels, and an old bulk tank that had been used as a water tank, loaded that on the trailer and will get that delivered at some point.

Going to the scrapyard, I followed a combine and a big tractor about 2 miles on a busy county road. It was quite a line going at 20 mph. Corn heads come in different widths, and a six row corn head, at 30 inch rows, is about 15 feet wide. That’s pretty much a full lane of traffic. Anything bigger than that and they take the head off before driving on the road. Many farmers have 12 row corn heads. There’s a few 16’s and 18’s. But that’s a lot of weight, and a lot of corn coming in, and you need a pretty big machine that can handle all that. The big thing now is folding corn heads. So on a 12 row head, three outside rows on each side fold up over the middle making it about as wide as the machine itself and then they don’t have to take it off to travel on the roads. They’re very popular for the convenience factor. Seems like they’re also very expensive. Google tells me a slightly used 16 row folding head is listed at $254,500. Honestly, when you think about the engineering involved to make it fold, it’s pretty impressive.

Photo courtesy John Deere
FB image. Head folded and traveling. They do seem to obstruct vision a bit.

After the Wednesday hayride, I needed to put the wagon back in the shed. Because of where other machinery was parked, I had to make an S curve backing into the shed. If you look at this photo, the purple line was my intended route. And the green line is how it really went. 

I do like to challenge myself…
There’s a big difference between backing a 2 wheel trailer vs a 4 wheel wagon. Two wheels are easier. 
When I was a kid, there was a tractor rodeo at the fair. It involved backing things up, two and four wheels. Around corners, and into spaces and Dad really wanted me to do it. I refused. Eventually I got pretty good at backing things up, but it takes practice and I didn’t have it at 14. I’ve never like competitions.
And judging by the green lines, I’m out of practice again. After Friday’s ride I put the wagon back in the shed. I did better. Practice makes perfect.

I’ve kinda run out of music in the theater shop lately. I just can’t find anything really interesting to me. Nothing turning my crank. 
I did some Latin Jazz, I did Rush, I tried Johnny Cash and nothing is really floating my boat this week. I’m saving the soundtrack of All That Jazz for next week. That will be tech week. “Nothing is personal during tech week.”

HOW ARE YOU AT BACKING UP?

WHAT SHOULD WE FOLD?

34 thoughts on “Second Summer”

  1. Oh glory an I bad at backing up! Looking back and forth makes me sick, and judging things that big is just not in my wheelhouse. Much better at small scale. I applaud you, Ben!

    We did a hay ride for my birthday as a child. Happy days! The weather has been great for it, but I’m afraid that is coming to and end.

    The physical world just keeps becoming less and less relevant to many people. I fear folding is becoming lost art.

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  2. I am just fine with backing up the Prius, where I have that wonderful back-up camera – I know how many inches I still have when parallel parking. And we’ve talked recently about backing up in parking lots..

    I do remember my dad struggling to back up our car with our 16-foot trailer hooked up behind… that took plenty of practice.

    We should fold laundry, preferably as we take it off the line, so that we don’t have to iron it.

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  3. When I was a young lad of 18, in Vietnam, I had little trouble backing up the equipment I used there, an articulated frame tractor pulling a large road scraper. Look it up (because I fail at attaching the picture) Clark 290m Wheeled Tractor. Alas, I am no longer that young, and I now hesitate to back up anything

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  5. My initial thought was that I hate backing up and am not good at it, but then I realized that I back down my long driveway (on a hill) every time I go any place in my car. I have even backed up my driveway a few times when I needed to. Ben can tell you how much fun that is… and he backs up with his pickup when he delivers the bales every spring!

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  6. Just barely on topic: Among my parent’s things I found a snapshot of what appears to be most of the couples on our block together for a hayride. Examining the photo, I would guess this took place in the mid-50s, since some of the participants were ones that replaced earlier ones who had moved away. All of these people are gone now, since the youngest among them would be over 100. Some of them are couples I never thought of as joining frivolous social activities like that. Since everyone at the hayride had kids, I wonder where they found all the babysitters?

    Besides myself, I suppose a few of my peers might be able to identify by sight all the couples in the photo but they are on the brink of becoming anonymous.

    I am OK at backing up normally, but my Rav4 has poor visibility when looking over my shoulder, so I have to rely in part on the back-up camera.

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    2. Actually there are prayer services on Monday, Nov 2 for the election: safety, fairness, equity. There is also a group of ministers featured in the StarTrib for being election observers.

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  9. I think my skill in backing up came with practice. I used to back into the garage when I lived in Waterville. It was tricky if there were two vehicles in the garage. I find I need to focus on backing up and ignore all other distractions. I have a backup camera now, and I really like it.

    There was a technician who worked for DNR Fisheries who made backing trailers up look like an art form. I’ve never seen anyone backup trailers the way he did – smoothly and efficiently. He could put all seven boats away, packing them tightly in the tin shed, in fifteen minutes- including the time it took him to connect and disconnect each trailer as he went. I guess he knew it was time to go home for the day.

    I’ll be folding bath towels soon. I just got done folding a couple pairs of jeans. I’d really like to learn how to fold origami cranes.

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      3. After mastering cranes, if you want to pursue more origami, there’s this website:
        origamimaniacs.blogspot.com/2011/11/origami-bascetta-star-by-paolo-bascetta.html

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  10. Please expand on your hayrides. My family has been talking about the ones we did as kids with church or 4H.
    Flat wagons, covered in straw, and then off through the fields, IN THE DARK!
    Usually two wagons becaus then we ran from one to the other and pushed and pulled everyone off. What could go wrong??

    So was that your hayrides?

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    1. My parent’s hayride, not mine, but now that you mention it I remember hearing that one of the men ended up breaking his arm. I’m looking at those couples, who I knew as my friends’ parents and therefore ancient and realizing they are all in their thirties—way younger than my own kids.

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    2. I went on a few church youth group hay rides. I thought they were really fun when I was a young teen. Yes, I remember a flat bed wagon, piled with straw bales. We were taken on field roads at somebody’s farm – way back in a hay field along a woods so it was spooky and dark. I don’t remember anyone jumping off. After the ride, there was a bonfire and hot chocolate.

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  12. I admire cloth napkins folded to create a pocket for the cutlery. Or folded to fan out from a napkin ring. I think I have a little book of folding techniques somewhere….but these days you can find plenty of instructions online.

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  13. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I was away yesterday at a Master Gardener event, then came home to discover my keyboard was missing. Hmmm. I found it this morning so now I can weigh in on hayrides.

    The way hayrides were executed in the late 60s-early 70s was a lot like the incident Ben describes with a family member. The hosts used flat hay wagons with no side rails. The hay bales were stacked along the edges where participants sat and dangled their feet. There was usually a high stack of bales where some fool would try to stand while bumping across the corn fields. Which leads me to corn field conditions. Corn fields are very bumpy (more than soy bean or oat/grain fields) due to the rows and the large roots. The tractor driver would head across the field perpendicular to the corn rows for maximum bumpiness. It was a lot like riding across Lake Superior on a windy day–nauseating. Later on in the ride someone would grab a handful of hay and stick in down the shirt of another rider. Then the itching began. Someone, usually Tom T, if it was a church youth group hay ride, would jump off, then climb back on.

    The only thing more dangerous than what I describe above was the college age hay rides that included beer and getting drunk. I stopped going to those. A drunk driving a tractor with a hay wagon attached was too much for me.

    Re: folding

    1. I will fold laundry later today
    2. I am entirely ready for this felonious presidency to fold up its wings and die on the ground. It does look like that might happen.
    3. I have a crafting friend who folds paper cranes then donates them to nursing homes where they hang them by the 100s from the ceilings. Really fun to look at!

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