All posts by tdben

2021, Farming Update, gardening, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Early May

44 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben.

Mid June. It’s dry, we need some rain. Corn is curling up from the heat. My crops look terrible this year. Corn was planted a little light in the first place, then it didn’t emerge well, and now it’s dry and the deer are eating it… GDU’s: 946 to date, +291 above normal.

Oat’s is just about to head out, in fact it will be by the time you read this, – seems later than some varieties, and this is a new variety for me so… I guess it’s OK; better not to be headed out when it was so hot, the heat just boils the milk out of the heads anyway.

I told Kelly the crops are all in that adolescent stage and they all look terrible. Corn is knee high already, well, some of it.

Soybeans are getting there, look OK when you look down the row, then I look across the field and see all the skips and misses and it looks terrible again.

Back in blogworld, I finished planting soybeans on May 10th. That’s ahead of most years. Some years I’m still working on corn at that point.

When planting any crops, the trick is to have just enough seed to finish, without having too much left over to clean out of the planter. Soybeans are easy because the rows don’t really matter for harvesting, so I can just drive any which way in the field to run out the seed. Remember I had plugged up every two rows? I pulled the tape off and planted at 7” rows just to use up the seed. Once around the outside of one field did it. Oats is the same. I mean I try to figure it so there’s not a lot left in the first place, then just run it empty.

Corn is a little harder as the rows have to line up. I save the left over seed to use next year and the unopened bags can be returned to the dealer.

After planting soybeans, some guys run over them with a large roller, to smooth the field. Soybeans make a pod clear down at the ground, so at harvest, you want to cut as low as possible without picking up rocks or running too much dirt into the combine. Rolling the field pushes down rock and levels out any lumps to make combining easier.

I don’t have a roller. But I have a drag and decided to try that. Haven’t used it in 20 years. And I half expected when I pulled it out of the weeds it would just disintegrate. But no, it held together, and I ran it over all my bean acres. It did help smooth things out.  

Time to clean up machinery.

I feel like I’m making dumb mistakes again. Got the pressure washer out and had a tip plugged up. I’m supposed to remember to check them before I start. But I didn’t. So now it’s all pressurized and I can’t get anything apart. I should have let it sit for a few minutes and the pressure would bleed off and I could get it apart. But I got in a hurry. Using pliers and a hammer I got the ‘quick connector’ apart and the tip shot into the air and it never came down. I put on a different tip (I have three different tips that are different spray widths), I didn’t get this one snapped in right and when I pulled the trigger, it shot it off somewhere over by the feed room and I haven’t found it yet. Sigh.

The third tip was plugged up and I WAS smart enough to let the pressure drain before I took it off and got it to the shop and cleaned out. I’m trying foam wash this year. Also tried ‘Simply Green’ cleaner. Not sure how much they help but it all smells better.

Cleaned out fertilizer wagon, washed the grain drill, and the corn planter. There are lots of nooks and crannies to get into. Made notes of things worn out that will need to be replaced before planting next year. I had a minor leak on a hydraulic hose that was spraying a little oil on the back of the tractor. By the time I finished planting, the back of the tractor was covered with oily dirt.

The next day I had some township stuff in the morning. Paul, one of the other township supervisors, and I picked up garbage someone had dumped in a ditch, and we looked at some culverts. Paul works for crop insurance and we talked about how some guys were using a rotary hoe on their corn. A ‘rotary Hoe’ is one of those tools you only need to use about once every 10 years. This would have been the year to have one. I have a really old one; it doesn’t actually help much. And I was afraid the corn was already too tall.  

Saw Orioles one day; Put the oriole feeder and hummingbird feeder out. Haven’t seen the Orioles again. But we have two Hummingbirds that are often at the feeder. Maybe there’s more than two, but I have seen two at the same time.

At the front door we have a pair of barn swallows. We really enjoy them and their chirps and their flight patterns. They have a nest to the left of the front door. Now they have a nest to the right of the door, too. And both nests are occupied. I wonder if it’s parents and kids??

They do make a poopy mess, but we put cardboard down and they’re pretty tolerant of us coming and going.

Finally got .22 inches of rain on the 19th. And from then until May 29th we had 2.5”. And since then, hot and dry. No wonder the corn looks so rough. It sure looked bad after that frost. And the uneven emergence didn’t help anything.

Finally cleaned out the tractor cab too. By this time, there’s quite a collection of ‘Nutty Bar’ wrappers, and dirty paper towels. And some tools, and golf balls, and whatever else I’ve picked up in the fields.

I carry a little whisk broom (a trick I learned from a youtube farmer) Millennial Farmer, Zach Johnson,

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp0rRUsMDlJ1meYAQ6_37Dw

Next week I’ll do an up to date crop report.

Do you have any cleaning tricks? How bad do you let things go before you clean?

Food, The Baboon Congress

Taco Confundo

146 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben Hain.

I don’t understand the popularity of late night Taco Bell. I mean I’m right there in line too, Just why is everybody else here??
What is the appeal of Taco Bell late at night??

It can’t be just the food is it?

Dairy Queen is open right next door and I should’ve gone there! But I thought I needed something a little more nutritious than ice cream. So it’s 10 o’clock on a Thursday night and I am the ninth car in line. We’ve been here at 11:30 at night and been the 12th car in line. And the parking lot is full of cars too. I don’t understand –what is the appeal?

And why hasn’t the local franchise owner opened another one of these restaurants?

Rochester, a town of 100,000 people, has two Taco Bell’s; One out north and one downtown. One night Kelly got so fed up with the line at this one she went to the north one.

And there was a line there too!

I drove by Snappy Stop, but as I’ve had that a few times lately, well, I guess I was in the mood for Taco Bell. But there wasn’t a line at Snappy Stop. (Anybody know what Snappy Stop is? It’s just a drive-through burger place in a little building about 10’ x 20’. Hamburgers and hot dogs is all they do. Oh, and ice cream sandwiches. And their hamburgers are really good. Like Five Guys good.)

I dictated this while waiting in line. I’m still the seventh car in line at Taco Bell… Shoulda gone to Snappy Stop. Or Dairy Queen.

Seventeen minutes later I have my food. I could have gone home. But this chicken quesarito was really good.

I don’t understand.

What don’t you understand?

The Baboon Congress

Adventures in Poo

87 Comments

Today’s post comes from Ben.

When we first had children Kelly and I made an agreement: She’d take care of the poop and I’d take care of the vomit.

Course that doesn’t always work, but when it does it was great. She didn’t like vomit and I didn’t like poop.

Driving to Plainview today I saw this:

Poo smiley face

If you can’t tell, it’s made with manure. And it’s harder than you think to make that. (The face, not the manure).

I think he had to make the mouth and eyes first and then go around the outside making the circle. Otherwise there’d be tracks back out.

So is this art? Yeah, I think so.

And it got me thinking about my dealings with manure.

Any time you work with large animals you are going to be splattered, smacked and smeared with poop at some point in time.

I’ve been hit in with face with poopy tails. I’ve had my hands in it to fix things.

In the winter with the cows in the barn most of the day, we had to clean the gutters every morning. Dad did it by hand using a wheelbarrow and running up a 2” x 12” ramp to dump it in the manure spreader. If it was raining, It was slippery and you had to be more careful. I wasn’t always.

I was just getting old enough to handle the wheelbarrow when he put a barn cleaner in. So now It was easy. As long as it worked.

In the winter we always checked to be sure the chain wasn’t frozen down before starting it up. Because fixing a broken link involved forking out a lot of manure to get the chain back together. And hopefully I HAD the replacement link.

Being cold, it was a good idea to check the apron of the manure spreader before

you loaded it up with manure. Because fixing that was a hassle too.

One of our family stories is the year my dad had bunions cut off both feet. He had this done in the middle of winter figuring it was the best time to do it. Yeah, for HIM. Not for us doing chores. We had arranged for a guy to do the milking and chores while Dad was recuperating in the wheel chair.

The guy didn’t last long however and his last day was a cold dark day and he broke the manure spreader apron chain with the spreader still half full and he simply parked the spreader back in the shed and went home.

Mom and I had to fork off the rest of the load and then we lay under the spreader trying to fix the chain while dad yelled instructions to us from the Living room window.

However many weeks into recovery dad was, he was back in the barn the next day with bread bags slipped over the casts on his feet.

Below zero days I had a few simple goals; no broken water pipes, the silo unloaders worked, the tractor started and I got the barn cleaned and the spreader unloaded without issues. If that all worked it was a good day.

As for home and kids and poop and vomit… I don’t remember so much about that. I know there were messy diapers. I know there was vomit. I remember trying to catch it in my hands once or twice…

I myself remember throwing up in 5th grade. Went to the teachers desk and said ‘I don’t feel good; can I go to the nurse?’ and puking into his wastebasket right there. He jumped up, the class recoiled and I recall him saying ‘Go! Just Go!’

Team Vomit or Team Poo.  Which side are you on? 

 

The Baboon Congress

The Gripper

108 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Ben.

I was at the Farm Service Agency doing some paperwork and while waiting was talking with another farmer. (He was wearing a ‘Dekalb’ seed cap while I was wearing a ‘Meyer Seeds’ cap. Neighbor Tom was wearing a ‘John Deere’ cap.)

As Dekalb left we shook hands and as the shake finished, I distinctly felt my fingers slipping away from his. And I felt rather chagrined about that; like I let down the farmer brotherhood and he’ll be saying ‘He was a nice guy but he didn’t have a very good handshake...’

I’ve noticed before that I release my grip before the other party does.

I need to work on that.

Now I’m not talking about the smoozy, glad-handing kind of shake—I know that guy and I don’t want to be him. I just mean a good firm run of the mill handshake.

Google gives me a nice article from Esquire magazine on how a man with a good handshake can do any thing he wants.

It also gave me ‘Alastair Galpin, the 2nd biggest Guinness World Record breaker of the decade 2000-2009 with 85 records broken. (Ashrita Furman, the top record holder has broken 551 Guinness records.) Alastair and Don Purdon set a new record for longest hand-shake at 33 hours and 3 minutes.

The-correct-handshake

Archaeological ruins show handshaking was practiced as far back as the 5th century BC. It’s possible the handshake originated as a gesture of peace to show that the hands held no weapons.

But there are many different ways of shaking hands or offering a greeting depending on the region or local custom.

Not to mention the possibility of spreading germs which has promoted the organization of Stophandshaking.com and various alternate methods of greeting such as the fist bump, bow, nod or ‘peace symbol’ among others.

There is that one handshake with a finger slipped inside to tickle the others palm while shaking hands. But I save that one for testing the mettle of college students in the shop.

I still believe in a good firm handshake and I’ll save the ‘fist bump’ for more casual greetings.

I just need to learn to hold it a beat longer.

When have you been glad-handed?