I live about 40 miles from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. It is situated in the North Dakota Badlands. Teddy had a ranch there, and there still are lots of ranches that surround the park. It is home to bison, coyotes, deer, mountain lions, pronghorn, prairie dogs, and big horn sheep. And horses.
For decades before the park was formally established in 1947, ranchers would turn out horses on the open range to live and breed, and just round up horses when they needed them. That ended after the park was fenced in 1954. After the fences went up, horses remained in the park, overbreeding. Every few years the Park Service would round up what horses they could and sell them at auction. They even tried horse contraception to reduce the herds.
The Park Service decided recently to change policy and remove all non-native animal species from the park, specifically the horses. This led to a very emotional reaction from locals who have a very romantic notion of the horses and believe they should stay. The Legislature passed a bill to maintain livestock in the park. It is ultimately up to the Secretary of the Interior to decide what happens next.
What is your favorite National Park? Would wild horses be a draw for you? What animals do you get emotional about?
Have you heard the phrase “If you want something done, ask a busy person”. That’s been in my head lately. I heard it a long time ago and I think it’s true. The reasoning behind that must be that a busy person will fit something else into their schedule. Good time management I guess… when it matters anyway, maybe not so much when it doesn’t (as evidenced by how much time I spend watching YouTube.)
I found out on Monday, that the two slabs of concrete I am expecting this summer, the indoor slab will be coming Friday. Uh…. Crap! I mean GREAT! I spent Tuesday moving machinery out of the shed. I pulled out the fertilizer wagon and that will have to sit outside for a while. I condensed the 5 boxes of crap my dad put in the shed when they moved out of their house, into one small tote worth saving and the rest went to metal recycling or garbage. Sorry Dad. I put some pallets out and sorted lumber into nice piles, and I moved some down to the barn where there’s another pile of 6×6 posts and left over Trex Decking.
I moved all the machinery out, moved the two smaller tractors out, moved the lawn mowers out, moved the 100 gallon oil totes, then started replacing machinery in such a way I can still get to the seed wagon, and have room for the corn planter and soybean drill and still be able to get them out, while keeping the North end of the shed clear and open.
There was a lot of smaller stuff to move yet. Wednesday I moved Ladders, storage racks, jacks, wood blocks, the old oil barrel stand, and cut 4’ off the end of the work bench.
FYI, I have a LOT of wood blocks.
It’s always surprising to me how many wood blocks I have. They are one of those things you just never know which one you’ll need, or how many of what size, so we have lots. It might be out in the field and the ground is soft, so I need multiple long blocks to make a base, then a few to support the jacks. It might be blocks to support four corners of a wagon box while I change the running gear under it. Sometimes that’s a 6×6, sometimes it’s a 4×4, and sometimes it’s just a 2×4 to block a tire. It’s crazy that I have this many blocks. Perhaps I won’t put them all back. Bet I will.
As the day went on, I found myself spending more time sitting in the tractor, ‘thinking’, when I moved to the next job…I’d sit there for several minute before I could get myself out and moving.
Keith, the man who was Best Man at our wedding in 1990, stopped to visit. He lives out in Stamford New York now, but had a business meeting in Minneapolis, so he spent an extra day and came down. We hadn’t seen each other since about 1995. It was really nice to see him. And he helped me move some of that extra stuff.
Circa about 1990 and 2023.
As the day went on, there was less ‘sorting and stacking’ and more just tossing it out of the way. Like any home remodeling project, I won’t be able to find what I want for the next month…
There’s been a pheasant strutting through the yard like he owns the place. The dogs lie behind my car and watch him. We hear a lot of pheasants calling not too far away. They don’t come out for corn anymore like they do in winter. And I’ve seen some out in the fields that don’t seem to be too scared of me or the tractor. But this one in the yard, he’s strutting his stuff and he doesn’t seem to care who sees him.
Saw a couple Sandhill Cranes in a field. Saw the Northern Lights on Sunday night. Happen to look down between the back door and the deck and discovered 30 or 40 chicken eggs.
Shoot. Someone is gonna have to shimmy under there and get them. Come July, I don’t see this being a good situation. I blocked the hole on the side of the deck that I suspect is where the chicken(s) was getting in. Maybe that also explains why Bailey hasn’t eaten her food in 3 days and I found an eggshell in the front yard.
I got the road graded using all three hydraulic options on the blade and it was very nice. Tilt, angle, shift. I cut down the edges so rain water will run off the road, pulled in gravel from the winter, and I unintentionally pulled in a lot of dirt too. Left it all on the edge of the road to settle for a few weeks, then will grade it all back onto the road.
One of my former work study students from the college stopped to visit with her 2.5 month old baby girl. That was a nice visit. And Krista made the egg run and it was good to see her.
Last of the college shows this weekend. Music concert at the college next Thursday with Choir, Band, World Drum Ensemble, and a new Chamber Group. And then it’s onto Commencement. I’ve been coordinating, scheduling, and doing paperwork for that. We’ll hang a few lights next week before the stage is placed.
I don’t know about farming this week or next. We shall see what we shall see.
The word on the streets of New York is that there is a new “rat mitigator”; the headlines are screaming “A NEW RAT CZAR”. Her actual title is City Director of Rat Mitigation but it hasn’t taken long for the czar moniker to have grabbed ahold of everyone’s attention.
I know that czar gets added to a lot of titles – Bird Flu Czar, Climate Czar, Energy Czar. My favorite is Elliott Abrams title of Democracy Czar during the GW Bush administration. Czar and democracy seem like odd bed-fellows to me.
I feel a little sorry for the new Rat Czar; it can’t be an easy job and it’s hard to imagine that in a contest between rats and humans, that the rats don’t hold most of the cards. But you never know!
Man, this week. Or this month. Or this year. Or maybe this Spring. Whoosh. There it goes…
I had that equipment up at the online auction that ended on Tuesday. But the corn head for the chopper (the part used when chopping up corn. Just like it sounds I guess) was in a part of the old shed that I never try to get into until June. It was quite the deal getting the corn head out on Sunday evening. (Saw Hamilton Sunday afternoon. Yes, it was as fantastic as I expected).
There was still ice and snow back on Sunday. Remember that? I chopped and dug and eventually cut 6” off the bottom of one door before I got them open. Then moved the hay rake, and thank goodness the swather started, and I had to chop out more ice because the swather has no traction. Then moved some other junk, THEN was able to get to the corn head out and load it on the trailer. It was kind of a process.
Hauled that to the auction lot on Monday, went to the vet’s office across the street and spent too much money on tick prevention and heartworm pills for the dogs. Talked to the agronomist about getting fertilizer spread for the oats, ordered diesel fuel, and picked up oats seed. Had a township ‘Board of Appeals’ meeting regarding property taxes in the afternoon.
After the meeting, Daughter and I picked up driveway markers, I moved the snowblower out of the shed, and Kelly and I cut some brush behind the shed. It was a good day.
The auction. My stuff didn’t sell as good as I wanted it too. But the chopper was 40 years old and been in the shed unused for the last 20 years, so at least it’s gone. The rear blade sold pretty well. And the old tools of dads went for a couple bucks.
The ‘vintage’ item I had were old cultivator shields. Sold for $2. Scrap price might have been $3 or $4…I thought someone might have a unique use for them. No one would use them as cultivator shields anymore. And I bought a rock “grapple” bucket for my loader. It’s like ‘fingers’ to grab trees and rocks and “stuff”. Always wanted one. I’ll need to add some more hydraulics line to run it… you remember how the last hydraulic project went. I will pay more attention to this one.
The killdeer have returned. The Sandhill Cranes are back (Hi Steve!) and Kelly has been listening to them call during the day since she has the windows open in this warm weather. The chives are coming and Kelly found a deer shed on one of her walks.
I haven’t seen the female duck lately, and there’s two males here. I’m hoping she’s sitting on a nest. I saw eggs in the pond and when I googled “Why are there duck eggs in my pond”, the thought is ducks are lousy moms. Eggs just sort of ‘pop out’ where-ever they are. Like the pond apparently. Google also said not to eat them.
When the diesel fuel was delivered, I was talking with the driver that the gauge has been broken since I got this tank and I couldn’t get the old one out. He said it shouldn’t be that hard; “get a hammer and chisel.” And those, along with an 18” pipe wrench and a pipe extension handle, we did get the old one out. The new gauge is nice.
Been hanging lights and started programming lights for the musical ‘Spring Awakening’ at the Rep theater, and finishing up set stuff for ‘Boy Gets Girl’ at the college. Both open next Thursday and luckily college rehearsals are afternoon and the Rep’s are evening.
And I farm between things.
Started planting oats Thursday night! Hope to finish on Friday. It’s even a little dusty. I keep forgetting the thermometer to check the soil temperature, but I know it’s warmed up.
I was sitting at the computer at home Friday afternoon when I heard a loud crash outside. Some investigation led to the discovery that a very large chunk of ice had fallen onto the deck from the pergola atop the deck where there are lots of grape vines.
One of our snowstorms deposited more than two feet of snow on the deck and west roof of the house. The warmer weather over the past couple of weeks had melted the snow which turned into solid ice, which now was falling through the open spaces on the pergola.
The ice chunk that fell could have injured us or the dog. There were lots remaining atop the pergola, so I stood in the doorway and poked the ice through the pergola with a broom handle until it all fell down .
I have always loved doing things like this. It was so oddly satisfying, poking those ice chunks so they crashed onto the deck, comparable to clearing blocked channels of water and unstopping clogged surface storm sewer grates. Odd, I know, but there it is. I would probably love doing demolition work. I also love shooting off fireworks. Perhaps they are related.
What do you find oddly satisfying? Ever been in an avalanch or had a concussion?
Another sign of pending spring is the ice at my machine shed walk-in door finally melted enough I could get the door shut again. It’s works all winter, but then, due to some poorly executed land grading that I did without forethought, as the snow starts to melt it runs into the shop and the door freezes shut. I used to play a guessing game on when all the doors would freeze shut and try to get them opened the day before. There were a few times I missed that day, and it took a lot of chopping ice with an axe to get the door open enough I could get in. And, more importantly, out.
Three years ago, I added an overhang that solved the ice problem at the big doors. This summer we will regrade the driveway and that will fix the water running through the walk-in door.
We had a Thunderstorm and some hail on Monday.
The drain tile down by the barn that fills the duck pond is running heavy. It doesn’t run this heavy very often. Usually that means the frost is out. The tile is a good thing as all this water would be coming out on top of the ground otherwise and it would be all spongey down there. I’ve had that other years prior to the tile.
Kelly and the dogs took a long walk around the pastures and fields on a warm day. The dogs found a hole they were VERY interested in, and they’ve gone back the last couple days to dig more.
Humphrey got a shower after this. He doesn’t like them. But he doesn’t figure out he should stay clean either.
For some reason, I’ve got a chicken laying smaller eggs. They look like beginner eggs. Shouldn’t be any beginner chickens at this point in time but maybe we’ve got a late bloomer. I know I’ve mentioned before how they seem to like groups of three. More often than not, I find a clutch of eggs in batches divisible by 3.
(Photos this week all from Kelly)
WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER?
DOES BRIGHT SUNLIGHT MAKE YOU SNEEZE? WHY IS THAT?
I am waiting for a blizzard to hit while I write this. We are expecting up to 6 inches of snow to add the the 96 inches we have had thus far this winter. We are told that after this it will warm up, with highs possibly in the 70’s next week. I will believe it when I see it, but I will try to be hopeful.
If it warms up quickly it will be a muddy, mucky mess for a while. Our daughter in law sent a video of our grandson riding his bike gleefully through large puddles that had accumulated in their street. Kids on bikes in puddles are sure signs of spring. There are also dismal looking lawn and Christmas ornaments that are emerging from under the snow piles, which I suppose could also be signs of impending spring.
I have a third cousin who a couple of Baboons also know who is an expert about snakes and amphibians. He is excited about finding garter snakes coming out of hibernation already this year, signs of spring for him. I have yet to see robins or other migratory birds, but Husband saw hawks on his drive back from Bismarck on Monday, more signs that winter is losing its grip. Here is a favorite Canadian folk singer from Saskatchewan who understands about spring.
What signs of spring are you noticing? What are your favorite and least favorite aspects of April? Know any good poems or songs about spring?
The snow has been melting slow enough we haven’t had the big spring rush of water coming down our valley. And that’s OK. Not that we have damaging floods, but most years we have the usual snowmelt rush. This year it’s just a nice little stream. Plus still got piles of snow in the shadows and on the north sides.
Ground is still cold, in fact, I Just ordered some soil thermometers, mostly because this new oat venture I’m trying, they want oats in the ground as soon as it’s possible. Oats can survive down to 20-degree air temps. And guys using ‘no-till’ equipment can get in sooner than I can. Using traditional equipment I need the ground to warm up and dry enough I can work it, then get it planted. But I do want to try and push it a little more this year than I have other years. Pending two shows I’m lighting and college commencement. (I usually try not to do a show outside of the college in April, but… life happens). Commencement is May 10th. Oats should be in for 3 or 4 weeks by then. By the way, soil temps yesterday were about 35-degrees.
This week on the farm I hauled scrap iron to the scrap iron recycling place. Forgot to take a picture of the first load, which was some junk from a theater in town, plus my scrap metal tote at home. The tote is a 4’x 4’x 4’ box and I throw all the misc. scrap iron in there. Old, worn out disc blades, pieces of pipe, or broken bits of things. Old ceiling fans, old electrical conduit… just… junk. Bolts, empty propane bottles, I don’t know… just … stuff. But it does accumulate over time.
I also had the front of an old chopper box I had cut up several years ago. I use the tractor loader and put it on the trailer. That load of scrap was 2200 lbs.
There’s a pile of scrap machinery behind the shed I need to get hauled in. Accumulation of many years.
The next load was two old rotary hoes, an old snowmobile I last rode in about 1987. (Took Kelly for a ride. It was a John Deere 400. Dad bought it back in the late 1970’s. My high school friend Pete and I rode a lot. But then I got interested in theater. And Girls. And there wasn’t time for the snowmobile anymore.) It sat outside behind the shed for a lot of years. Weeds and trees grew around it and through it and I ran into it with a tractor once or twice. Finally added it to the junk pile when I was cleaning up back there.
Also in the junk pile was a mower I didn’t even remember. Dad must have bought it and I don’t even recall it, so it must not have worked very well. Before I started buying the rear mounted ‘Brush Hog’ type mowers, Dad had a side mounted sickle mower. It was good for mowing because it was off to the side in front of you and easy to watch. Dad cut a lot of hay with this back in the day. (When he also pulled a ‘crimper’ behind him. Clyde knows what I’m talking about. Nowadays those jobs are combined into one machine called a ‘mower-conditioner and can be pull type ((like mine)) or self-propelled. Or the big guys mount three units to the tractor: one on the front and two on the back and cut 30 feet at a time.)
When that side mower wore out, Dad found some other old, used, sickle mowers. I even bought one too. They all sucked. Brush mowers work great, but behind me, it’s more cumbersome to operate.
The mower had been back there so long I had to cut a 12’ tree out of it before I put it on the trailer.
(The spikey things are the rotary hoe.)
This load was 3300lbs. Back in December I talked about hauling some scrap in and it was $50 / ton, a low low price. Tuesday it was up significantly to $195 / ton.
You know, it’s interesting how many things used to mount right onto the tractor, rather than hooking on behind as we do now. I have a lot of memories of helping Dad mount the brackets on the side of the tractor, and some pieces under the axle, and then hooking the mower to those. Or the corn picker that had a real heavy frame that bolted to the sides, and more heavy frames over the wheels, and then the elevator mounted to the back, and we’d drive the tractor into the picker to mount it. Or the cultivator; that had two small brackets bolted to the front of the tractor, then drive into it and muscle the two sides over into place and bolt it on, and a couple rods connected to the ‘rocker arms’ to raise it.
These days, everything hooks on behind. It’s easier to hook up or unhook, but not so easy to watch what we’re doing. I wonder why that changed. Convenience? Tractor size? (probably size; and cabs made all that stuff impossible to attach, which means it was comfort), and just the size of farms and efficiency. Farming was a lot more manual labor back then. Over in Europe there are more front mounted implements. Which is becoming more of a thing here, again. More tractors have front mounted hitches in addition to the rear.
We’ll try to avoid the Thunderstorms and blizzard this weekend. Still double checking my bookwork from 2022 and meet the accountant mid-April for taxes. And busy with the show at the college. It’s called ‘Boy Gets Girl’ by Rebecca Gilman, and it’s about a stalker. Well written… hard to ‘enjoy’ but it’s a good show. We’re doing it ‘in-the-round’ with the stage in the middle and the audience sitting right around the actors.
The critters are good, although I hadn’t seen the ducks in a few days, but they showed up yesterday. They must hang out back in the swamp or maybe they just need to ‘get away’ occasionally. Got one black hen that has gotten ‘broody’, meaning she’s trying to sit on some eggs. Course I gather the eggs every night, but that doesn’t dissuade her.
It has been a busy week. Monday, I hauled some equipment to Plainview for an online auction, made two trips, the first hauling our old rear blade, a fertilizer auger, and some smaller stuff. And a second with the forage chopper, and other stuff that I think, if they market it as ‘vintage,’ it could do well. The auctioneer wasn’t even sure they had ever sold any before, but he finally agreed to put it on a pallet and see what happens. (Details after the auction in April). Tuesday I had one more clinic appointment: I have now been dismissed by the shoulder doctor, the knee doctor, the toe doctor, and the foot doctor. It’s a pretty good feeling.
I also had a meeting in the Cities on Tuesday. Plus the week was busy at the college working on a set.
I have the song, ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’ by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in my iTunes, and in the opening, Cannonball says, “You know, sometimes we are not prepared for adversity. When it happens, sometimes, we’re caught short; We don’t know exactly how to handle it when it comes up. Sometimes we don’t know just what to do when adversity takes over. And I have advice for all of us. I got it from my pianist, Joe Zawinul, who wrote this tune, and it sounds like what you’re supposed to say when you have that kinda problem. It’s called, “Mercy Mercy Mercy”.
I think that’s true. We talk a lot about how we don’t know how to deal with conflict and how it is hard to learn that a little conflict can be OK — when you know how to handle it. I started to learn that 40 years ago at one of the theaters, and the founders would get into some pretty big arguments behind the closed- but not soundproof door- And then they would come back out, and we are all shuffling our feet and looking at the floor. ‘Conflict is OK’, they would say, ‘You gotta learn to work things out’. I also have the Buddy Rich Big Band doing a version of ‘Mercy Mercy Mercy’. They are both good.
I have three versions of the song ‘Jessica’; The original, plus two bluegrass versions. I have two versions of ‘Layla’ (the original and the unplugged), ‘As Time Goes’ by Maynard Ferguson and Tony Bennett, ‘El Paso’ by the Grateful Dead and Marty Robbins. Again, so different and both so good. ‘Eli’s Coming’ by Three Dog Night and Maynard Ferguson, ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly’ theme, the original and a version by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. ‘Limehouse Blues’ by Jerry Reed & Chet Atkins and also by The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain; they are strikingly different versions. ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come’ by Three Dog Night and Randy Newman. Two versions of ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ by Benny Goodman, and James Horner & Orchestra. ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ by Joan Osborne and Bob Dylan (The Joan one is really good. Nothing against the Dylan version either!), a couple versions of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin and Rodrigo y Gabriela. A song called ‘There’ll Be Some Changes Made’ from the movie, ‘All That Jazz’, which I thought was original to the movie, until I heard Gene Krupa doing it on the 40’s station. And then, as I googled it for this blog, realized I have Mark Knopfler and Chet Atkins doing a version that is SO different I didn’t even make the connection it was the same song. Prior to this revelation, I didn’t realize there were other versions of that song.
Chickens and ducks are still fine, but the coyotes are back. Kelly chased one away Wednesday morning. We’re keeping our eyes open. Bailey needs back up; she won’t engage when alone. She’s a lover, not a fighter.
I spread two bales of straw out for the chickens. They enjoy scratching in that, and it covers up some of the mud.
Normally I don’t click on things like “Worst Sitcoms of all Times” or “Hollywood Actors with Surprising Kung Fu Skills”. But for some reason, while waiting for a client call yesterday, I clicked on “Bad Movies We Love Anyway”. I hardly had the site open two minutes but it was enough time to see “VelociPastor”. No that is not a typo.
When I logged off work for the day, I couldn’t resist… found it on Peacock and within a few minutes had it going. It was dreadful. The basic story is that a pastor goes hiking and manages to hike into China (no discussion of WHY he was doing this), runs into a Chinese woman stabbed through the heart who gives him what she says is a “dragon tooth”. He cuts himself badly and apparently is infected with dinosaur DNA. Like Bruce Banner/Hulk, when he gets enraged he turns into a velociraptor. Initially he doesn’t remember these episodes but eventually learns to control it somewhat and becomes a crime fighter – a scaled crusader!
Very bad acting, some of the characters were dubbed, horrible dialog, every stereotype on the planet, unbelievable scenarios (the scumbag who murdered his parents comes to confession and the pastor kills him in the confessional). Of course, all the mayhem never leaves a drop of blood on him once he transforms back to human. Oh and he falls in love with the hooker who witnessed his first transformation and eventually dies in his arms. Half way through the movie, we also get ninjas bent on global domination and I’ll never forget the scene where the pastor and the hooker beat up all the ninjas in their underwear. When they eventually do show the whole transformation, it’s in a rubber dinosaur suit that doesn’t look anything like a velociraptor.
It was so awful it was kinda funny. Wouldn’t you have to TRY to make a movie this bad? Was this a “The Producers” situation, where they wanted to make a bad film so they wouldn’t have to pay investors back. Hard to imagine any other way this movie could have been made. Yet another bad movie that curiosity has driver me to that I will most likely never watch again.
What’s the absolute worst movie you’ve ever seen? And why?
Trail Baboon 