The holidays brought me a nice cache of giftcards so yesterday I had a “gift card day”. Dunkin for breakfast on the way to knee therapy. Blicks Art Supply. Barnes & Noble. Taco Bell. A great day.
I spent about an hour wandering around Barnes & Noble. As a dedicated library patron, I have to admit that I haven’t been inside a bookstore since last year when Jacque’s sister was signing her latest book at Once Upon a Crime. Nothing against bookstores but my pocketbook prefers the library system.
Anyway… as I was checking everything out, I found two tables that had various history books piled up. I’m assuming that B&N stores get table recommendations from headquarters with a few title suggestions but that most of the books are picked for display by store employees. (That’s how it was back in my day in the bookstore.) The history tables had the look of employees having a bunch of fun. History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, History of America in Ten Expeditions, History of the World in Six Glasses. Clearly this is a trend and it reminded me of a couple of titles I’ve read – A History of the World in 100 Objects and Orchid Muse: History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers. 100 Objects started as a BBC radio series – I stumbled upon in once it was published in book form. It looks at objects from all over the world, from as long ago as 2 million years. It was absolutely fascinating. Orchid Muse was a book I read last year as part of my Rivers & Ridges Book Festival experience. The author was at the festival so I got to hear her speak – a lot of extra little details that weren’t in the book.
I didn’t realize that history in a set number of lessons was a thing but if you do a quick internet search, you can find a glut of these books. 47 Borders, 50 Books, 50 Failures, 12 Maps, 500 Walks, 50 Lies. I could go on but this is enough and it makes me wonder if authors are starting out to do a “number of things” or if they have an area of interest and publishers/agents push them in that direction?
Any other suggestions for “History of the World in”…….?
I can’t say I regret the end of 2025. This has been the most disturbing and disruptive year in my memory.
Moving and politics have taken their toll. We are very happy where we are in terms of location. I have hopes the political situation will improve.
Our goals are modest. We want to install raised vegetable beds in the back yard. We want to plant Boyne raspberries. Husband wants to improve his guitar skills. We are not traveling.
We plan to have best friend relocate here in the spring, and get a Cesky sibling for our pup. All these things are potentially exhausting, but change that is in our control is far more manageable than unexpected change.
What are your goals for the new year? Garden and travel plans?
DIL texted me on Sunday to report they had arrived safely in Brookings from Mankato the evening before and were spending the blustery day playing board games and reading books.
She said that 7 year old Grandson was reading his favorite DogMan books in a blanket fort made up of sofa pillows and his infant sister’s bouncy chair. Any fort in a storm!
I loved blanket forts as a child. The sofa cushions made great walls. My farming cousins and I tried to erect forts in trees in the groves, in the granary, anywhere we could find. It sure kept us busy. Perhaps this explains the allure of tents.
I was always so happy when we had snow days from school, as that was the only time my mom made waffles. We still call them Blizzard Waffles. Husband says he has sourdough discard and we can have waffles on New Year’s Day!
What were your favorite ways of making forts? How do you spend stormy days at home?
Husband came down with a head cold late last week. He really suffers when he has a cold. His allergies seem to make cold symptoms worse than normal. He spent the weekend doing nasal irrigation and concocting soup to ease his symptoms. We had quite a bit of the turkey brodo I make from The Splendid Table cookbook, and he doctored it up with lemon juice, poached chicken, turmeric, hot peppers, and Penzey’s Bangkok seasoning. He said it helped, and he feels he is on the mend.
My mother never did much when we had colds. They were just things you suffered through without much fuss. A fever might warrent some aspirin, but there was rarely any Vapor Rub or other over the counter cold medication in the house. My father took a different approach. In the fall and winter he always had a bottle of peppermint schnapps in the freezer. If I had a particularly bad cold he would slip me a shot of the icy schnapps at bedtime. It was really aromatic and put me into a restful sleep
I still tend to ignore cold symptoms and don’t use cold medications. I don’t use schnapps, either, although a hot toddy can be nice at times when the symptoms are bad. I rarely get colds, though, having become immune to many cold strains through 30 years exposure to drippy-nosed preschoolers in the play therapy room.
How did your family deal with colds and flu? Got any good home remedies?
I took a walk on Christmas morning. Me and the dogs, out through the fields. Saw a bunch of pheasants, tree’s I need to cut down, and lots of deer tracks. The header photo is from our walk.
Weatherman Mark Seeley has a weather forecast and article on the back page of The Farmer magazine. In the last issue, he talked about January of 2006 being the warmest January in MN weather history. “January 2006 started a remarkable trend of warmth in Minnesota. Fifteen of the 19 Januarys since that time have brought warmer-than-normal temperatures to the state. Of further note, seven Januarys since that of 2006 also rank among the warmest 20 in state history.” — https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-life/january-2006-started-warm-and-never-wavered
There are many reasons to be appreciative of the deep-freeze cold we normally get in winter. It kills off harmful bugs, it helps breakdown the soil for better working conditions in the spring, helps break up compaction layers in the soil, it helps keep stored grain in condition, to name just a few benefits. The worst thing is repeated cycles of freezing and thawing. That’s hard on certain crops, like alfalfa. Ice sheeting, and the repeated freeze thaw or a lack of snow cause winter kill. I bet you master gardeners have examples of the problems repeated freezing and thawing can cause in the gardens. Not to mention how tough the warmer temperatures are on cattle that have a winter coat and are prepared for cold. Respiratory issues can really become rampant.
We’ve had this one chicken living in the garage all winter. During the day she has taken to perching on the bottom rung of a sawhorse and looking at herself in a mirror.
Mirror Mirror…
And then the other night, there were 5 chickens in the garage! OK, seriously, the poop from the one chicken is gonna be bad enough come spring, and at least she’s over in a corner. Having five of them: one in the rafters, two more on recycling containers, and one on the dogwash wall are too much.
An unneeded bonus chicken in the garage
The next day I kept the garage door closed. I figured they’d just go back down to the coop. Three spent the night around the corner perched on the bird seed containers. Why have they moved up here in the first place? I don’t know what their problem is. I’ve got several spending the night in the nest boxes where they lay their eggs. They’re not supposed to do that either. They’re not too crowded as some are in the right side space, some are in the left side space (and they all pile up on top of each other for some reason), some are up in the rafters, and the rest are in the main coop area. I did add another board in there if they need another place to perch. Is it too many roosters? I think we have 5 roosters these days. And maybe 55 hens? I don’t know exactly how many, they are too hard to count. Really 2 roosters would be a good number. There’s a couple that seem extra ornery to the chickens. How come they never get picked off by coyotes?
Christmas day late afternoon I forgot to shut the garage door in time and had to chase out 3 chickens. Yeah, even being Christmas, I chased them out. I had given them extra corn and layer ration in the morning. They’re fine. The one in the corner, she’s earned it, she can stay.
Out in the shop, I added a metal top to the work bench. Dad built this work bench after the shed was built, so maybe in 1982 or 1983. When I started on the shop project two years ago, the guy doing the insulation wanted me to pull the bench off to redo the insulation behind it. I said no. Dad had put styrofoam and fiberglass insulation on that wall before he added the bench. I tore the top four feet off the wall as part of the shop project. The old insulation was pretty bad. Yeah, I probably should have redone the bottom four feet too, but I was already in over my head on this project and didn’t think I could handle any more. Hindsight you know. The bench is pretty well built, and the top is 2×8 boards with a gap between them. Stuff is always falling into that gap. Maybe it was Dad’s way of cleaning off the bench, to sweep the dirt and dust into the gap. Which then ended up in the bolt storage he had underneath. A couple weeks ago, I lost a screw down that gap and I decided that was it! I am covering this! I bought two sheets of 16 gauge steel (about 1/16th inch thick) 2′ x 4′ from a big box store. ($70 each! Jeepers!) Thanks Obama! (That’s a joke you know) And I rounded over the front edge. I need to get some different screws to hold it all in place, but it looks real professional. I’m glad I did that.
Kelly helped me get the last screen back in the 630 grill and I have that all reassembled.
Reassembled 630. Runs and sounds Great!
Needs an oil change yet and it will be ready for next summer’s work and projects. Next summer’s project I think will be rebuilding the belt pulley assembly. Clyde probably knows what a belt pulley is. You’ve seen pictures of back in earlier days, a long canvas belt ran between the tractor and an implement to provide power before the advent of power-take-off on the rear of a machine. That’s the belt pulley.
On the 630, that belt pulley is also the hand clutch assembly. And it rattles like some of the plates inside there are broken. I remember Dad adjusting it once in a while, but I don’t recall him ever pulling it all apart. The tractor also hasn’t had a working tachometer / speedometer / hourmeter for as long as I can remember. A few hundred dollars will get me a new gauge, new cable, and I don’t know yet if I’ll need a new gear inside the governor assembly or not. It’s all only money.
I’ve done my crop rotation maps for next year and got the acres figured out. Talked with Nate at Meyer’s Seeds and I’ve got until January 16th to lock in the early order discount pricing on oats, corn and soybean seed. I was approved for $43,000 in loans for chemicals and fertilizer from the Co-op. That doesn’t include the loan for seed. I’m really hoping I don’t need all of that loan as the crop prices aren’t that good. The first few years I farmed I stressed out a bit more about the crop loans. Of course 35 years ago I probably spent $10,000 on everything and it was still big money. Now days it’s just part of the deal. I don’t stress over it so much.
I thought for sure Kelly and I were gonna win the lottery the other night. And what would we do with all that money? As the old joke goes, keep farming until it is gone!
EVER BEEN THROWN OUT? TOLD TO LEAVE? EVER THROWN SOMEONE OUT?
Happy Boxing Day, Baboons! Today is also St Stephen’s Day. I have been thinking all week of this song from the Chieftains and Elvis Costello. We appreciated Boxing Day as a great day off when we lived in Winnipeg.
It has had good company with any number of earworms that have plagued me for a while.
O Canada seems to always be playing in my mind. I also have been hearing Ode to Joy and the hymn Earth and All Stars which has pretty wild lyrics and which I haven’t heard in church for a couple of years. I seem to hear these songs when I wake up in the middle of the night.
For some really strange reason I woke up earlier this week with this playing in my head:
I have no idea where this came from. Why on earth would I dredge this from my memory the week of Christmas?
How do you think we ought to celebrate Boxing Day as a holiday? Any earworms lately? What is your favorite production of Guys and Dolls?
When I was growing up, there were only two holiday celebrations – both on Christmas Day. In the morning it was just me, my sister and my folks opening gifts. We opened one at a time, in order of age. The next person couldn’t open anything until we had all sufficiently ooohhed and aaahhed over the current gift. Then later in the afternoon, my mom would host Christmas dinner. This was a potluck; Nonny did not like to cook, so hosting a dinner in which she cooked many dishes was not an option. The attendees were different every year, depending on who was in town for the holidays. I have 11 cousins but it was a rare Christmas when there were more than three of them joining us. Quiet. Christmas for me was quiet growing up.
Fast forward. YA and I have been celebrating on Christmas Eve with some of my oldest friends (Alan and Julie) for 25+ years. Back then there were Julie, Alan, their 3 girls, me, YA and usually a couple of Alan’s sisters and a few cousins. As the kids got older, Alan’s sisters moved away but were replaced in number by boyfriends who then became fiancés who then became husbands. Then the grandkids joined the fray. 14 of them. No, not a typo. The kids range in age from 1½ to 17.
This year Christmas Eve started out with about half of the kids snowmobiling/snowboarding; I thought it would tire them out, but I think it just revved them up. Stockings first – Julie does those and they are low-key affairs: a mandarin orange, little pack of Kleenex, a candy cane and this year, each kid got a placement that Julie quilted for them with fabric chosen for each grandchild. Gifts were next and that’s when it got a little wild.
We always start out going by youngest to oldest, but that breaks down pretty quickly, especially when someone chooses their Ukrainian egg box or their ornament box (I always wrap these in take-away boxes – perfect size). Then everybody opens theirs at the same time and then the order of gift opening usually goes awry from there. One of the sons-in-law is a bit of a neatnik so every gift that is opened, he supervises where the wrapping and ribbon and tissue went so he can scoop it up. Once we’re all opening packages willy-nilly, this gets a little stressful for him but we can’t convince him to relax about it.
A couple of the older kids started the “it’s a box” joke when taking off wrapping paper. Then the younger kids took the joke and ran with it. For the rest of the evening, every box was met with a chorus of “it’s a box”. The teenagers had tired of the joke at this point so there was a lot of sighing and eye-rolling by a couple of them.
Several of the kids received stuffed animals and Howie, who is 9, got a capybara. I guess they’re popular right now and Howie was smitten with it. Its little legs were just the right size that it could sit right on top of Howie’s head, where it stayed for at least an hour, even when the unwrapping was done and the kids were split into various groups, playing some of the games they had received.
The noise levels are so far beyond what I either experienced as a kid, or am used to these days that I find myself just sitting back in wonder. When YA and I carried our stuff to the car and headed home, my ears almost rang from the silence. And when we got home, it felt so chaos-free (even with the dog excited that we were home) that I breathed a little sigh of relief. I love them all but glad the chaos doesn’t follow me home!
As you can see from the photos below, our cat has claimed the Christmas tree for her own. Ever since we put it up she has been sleeping under it and drinking the tasty water in the tree holder. She walks around it as though she owns it.
This is first Christmas tree we have had for about three years. Other years we were traveling to Brookings and didn’t want to have a fully decorated tree sitting around unattended for days. Luna the tabby has been known to to climb the tree and/or knock down and play with ornaments. She also chewed the straw beards off the Julebukke. I am happy to report that the dog has ignored the tree entirely. Our previous Welsh Terriers were famous for unwrapping presents and stealing ornaments.
We bought the current Frasier fir at the local farm store. It is fairly small. We put a string of lights on it, and plan to decorate it today. We shall see if Kyrill can resist plucking ornaments off the tree. This is a pretty low key holiday for us even with the tree. Best friend is coming down. This is the first Christmas in decades we aren’t doing any Christmas music in church. We will celebrate with our son and his family January 3rd. His cat and dog leave their tree alone. Luna will probably give us heck for taking down the tree after Christmas. It is her tree, after all.
How have your pets treated your Christmas tree, decorations, and presents? Do your pets have Christmas stockings?
Husband and I made a trip to the Rock County Historical Society last week to look around and see what they had in the gift shop. I was delighted to find 8 oz bags of Old Mag Seasoning, an all purpose spice mixture for meat, eggs, and veggies developed by the rather rascally proprietor of the now defunct Magnolia Steak House and Bar in Magnolia, a little town about 6 miles east of Luverne. It was famous for decades as the place to go for the best steaks. I am really looking forward to putting it on our food at home. It smells wonderful. I have fond memories of the wonderful food I ate at the Magnolia Steak House when I was a kid.
AC Dispanet was ftom Estherville, IA, and opened the Steak House in 1938. He went by Ace or Claire. My dad grew up near Magnolia and graduated from High School there. For a while in the 1950’s he worked at the steak house as a bar tender. He got to know Claire pretty well. Claire worked for Al Capone in the 1920’s driving a beer truck on the North Shore. He quit and left the area after he had to phone Chicago to report one of the trucks was stolen and two guys he knew who had driven the truck were sumnarily executed by Capone. He started his own bootlegging business after that, and was arrested and put in Leavenworth Penitentiary for a few years. He lost his US citizenship due to that, and didn’t get it back until the 1950’s with the help of Hubert Humphrey.
My dad’s brother farmed near Magnolia and liked the clearly illegal high stakes poker games Claire allowed to operate after hours. My aunt got so mad at my uncle for spending so many nights away from home gambling that she threw a chair through a glass door at the bar when the door was locked and they wouldn’t open it to let her in. He stayed home more after that.
Claire’s wife was a very devout Roman Catholic. Claire was not. When he died in 1972 his wife had him buried in the Catholic Cemetery in Luverne as close to the grave of the former parish priest as she could arrange. My dad said she hoped Claire could grab onto the priests robes and get transported to heaven in the Resurrection.
In 2010 I wrote a post about the Steak House, so feel free to read that, too. I can’t believe it has been 15 years!
Tell about some noted rascals you knew or knew of. What are some of your favorite spice mixtures.
One disadvantage of our subscription to the NYT cooking app is that we end up cooking things we hadn’t initially planned to cook. Some of those recipes are hard to resist.
We start the week out with a good plan for meals. Last week, for example, Husband decided to make chili ala Penzeys, and I thought that the chili and a North German fischgulash would take us through all week and weekend, and we made both. Then I saw a NYT recipe for braised pork shoulder. We told each other that would have to wait until the following week. We had all the ingredients for all three dishes except two large leeks for the pork shoulder. Wouldn’t you know, I spied two large and beautiful leeks in our local grocery store on Saturday. They rarely have such lovely leeks there. Well, of course I had to buy them, and I spent yesterday making the pork shoulder, since we couldn’t let those lovely leeks get funky in the fridge. Husband justified the purchase by conceding there was pork shoulder in the freezer that just had to be used up.
This is sort of a family problem. Daughter lamented her inability to resist the urge for buying things she doesn’t need from young children at markets and booths. Saturday she ended up with earrings, a knitted hat, bracelets, and origami. She said “How do you resist buying a hat from a 7 year old boy who loves to knit?”
What are you finding hard to resist these days? What kind of excuses do you make for giving in?
Trail Baboon 