Category Archives: Automotive

2025, Automotive, Business, Farming Update, Kids, Nature, Seasons, Songs, Uncategorized, work

Dirt

32 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I heard a snippet of a blog and they said, “A person will work three jobs so they can go home and farm. You never hear of a person working 3 jobs so they can open a plumbing shop.” Sweeping generalization alert there. I’ve been thinking about that since I heard it. And while I’m in the tractor I think about what it is that makes farming so entrenched for us. What exactly is it that calls us to it? For me, it’s a lot of things: I like the machinery, I like working on the tractor or changing the oil, and learning, and having the skills and tools (and shop!) to work on stuff. A sense of achievement. I like working up a field and watching the soil turn black. Stan Rogers says it best in ‘The Field Behind the Plow‘ “Watch the field behind the plow, turn to straight dark rows. Put another season’s promise in the ground”.

I like being this close to the seasons and the circle of… everything. The growth, a faith in something bigger I guess. It’s deep and it pulls in my chest.

I’ve had a few late nights. Working at the college, then home and it might be 6 or 7:00 before I get out in the tractor and to the field. But it’s my time and I got nothing else at the moment. I feed the chicks, talk with Kelly. Daughter asks me to sit on the deck with her. We play with the dogs. Going out half an hour later doesn’t matter. (unless there’s rain in the forecast)

Daughter, turning 30 chronologically, but maybe 16 developmentally, she gives lots of hugs, but when we say “Love You!” she responds, “yep” or “OK” or maybe just “Bye”. And it makes me chuckle. That is when she doesn’t roll her eyes and simply walk away.

So, I’m in the tractor. One night I listened to Joni Mitchell. I haven’t had her albums or listened to much of her stuff. Just the hits. We saw Ben Folds in Rochester on Wednesday night and I listened to his stuff. I did some classical MPR. On the weekends it’s MPR News and their great programming: Wait Wait, Moth, This American Life, Radio Lab. It’s all so interesting! And some podcasts. In the tractor is the only time I can really do that, when I can listen and pay attention.

Best of all, I found some podcasts of TLGMS!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mpr-skits-from-the-morning-show/id104720092

It has been so fun to hear all these characters again. Cap’n Billy, Bubby Spamden, The Bowzer Bed, Wally’s Sherpa, Dr. B. Marty Barry and his bottomless Well of Wellness, Spin Williams, Congressman Beechly, Genway, and that wonderful cure-all pill, Purplex from Spendy Popper. I cannot get over what an amazingly creative writer Dale is! How he came up with all these ideas! We didn’t know what we had at the time, did we?

Me and Bailey enjoy our tractor time. She’s 7 1/2 years old and I have to boost her up into the tractor. Every few minutes she sits up and put her head against my knee and I scratch her ears and she lays down again.

It was a busy week. Filled the big tractor with fuel. It only needed half a tank.

Ordered more diesel and gasoline for the barrels.

I’m using the boating app again to find my place in the fields. And how can I take the linear distance to make it acres? (13.6 miles x 5280 feet divided by 24′ digger divided by 43,500 sq feet / acre = ? Hmm, that doesn’t come out right. Seems like it should make sense.

Did a lot of math figuring what 18, 50 lb bags of oats, at 32 lbs per bushel and I want 3.5 bushels / acre will do how many acres. And if I ran out at 6 acres, how much did I really apply?

Went back to Meyer Seeds on Wednesday morning and bought 12 more bags. Remember last year when I ran out 1/2 acre short of finishing with rain in the forecast and I said I would order extra seed next year so I didn’t run out?? I DID order extra! But I got a different variety of oat seed and the rate changed so… back for more.

After planting, this year I had time and cooperative weather to go over the oat ground with the drag (harrow) to smooth it out and help cover the seed in the tractor tracks that don’t always get covered.

Got the old 630 running pretty well. And I’ve ordered a new exhaust pipe and muffler for it. I’m looking forward to working on that after the spring rush.

Parked the tractor in the shop and changed oil, engine air filters, (there’s two) and cab air filters. Two tall, narrow ones outside, and two small ones inside the cab.

The new exterior shop lights are great!

Finished planting oats on Friday while my brother was out working up corn ground. The Co-op applied corn fertilizer on Thursday, and I hope to be planting corn on Saturday.

When I’m planting, I’m travelling at about 5 MPH. Faster than that and the seed spacing gets messed up. And seed spacing is really critical in some crops. Corn it’s extremely important. Soybeans it’s moderately, and oats doesn’t matter so much.

Fancy newer ‘high speed’ equipment carries a seed to the ground using a brush belt to gently place the seed in the trench. New planters are capable of 10 MPH. Time is money you know. It’s fascinating how fast some of these parts are moving to drop a seed every 6″ at 10 MPH. There’s some math for you. Bill, how long does it take to go 100′ at 10MPH and how many seeds does it drop if they’re 6″ apart? That mechanism is really moving!  

Getting ready for commencement at the college. Hung some of the fixtures over the stage, before they place the stage. Had the gym to myself and it was pretty nice.

Will look a lot different this time next week.

Got the laptop and ‘Hog’ console set up and doing all that math / prep work. Or trying. Thursday afternoon the laptop didn’t want to play nice. But Friday morning all was well. I have a plan B and C. It will be fine, FINE I tell you!

HOW MANY JOBS HAVE YOU WORKED AT ONCE?

FOR WHAT GOAL?

2025, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons

May

56 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The barn swallows are back.

Often we get one that stops in about this time of the year, just as the scout, and then it’s gone again until about May 6 when they generally return to stay. This year we had one back on April 26. I joked that mom came back as a barn swallow. And a few days later, she brought dad with her. And this pair moved into the usual nest on top of the Windchime next to the front door. They seem to be here to stay.

I’ve been saying I couldn’t remember what day it was for the last month. Heck, throw in a funeral and I’m totally discombobulated now. 

Finished our spring play at the college last weekend, then had a spring concert this past week. Commencement isn’t until the 14th, so this coming week, maybe I can farm a bit between other things. 

It has rained enough I haven’t gotten much fieldwork done or anything planted yet. I think the damp conditions are Gods way of telling me just to relax, it will be OK. Ha! “Relax.” Clearly God isn’t aware of how my mind works.

We moved the chicks to a bigger pen. They’re enjoying that, eating A LOT and growing well. Just starting to get some tail feathers. 

After cutting down all those trees, last week I got them all cleared off the fields. That was more involved than I expected, but it’s done. And I didn’t break anything on the tractor nor hurt myself. 

I did some repairs on something I had bent on one of the tractors last winter, and I graded the road. The chickens sure love a fresh pile of dirt or even if it’s gravel. The first grading of the spring, I’m pulling in rock from the edges, and cutting down the edges so rain water will run off the side and not down the road. It kinda makes a mess for a while. It will get better. Eventually.

I got my final rabies shot got so I got my rabies tag now.

You all know, with any death there is a lot of details. There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Mr. Magorium‘s Wonder Emporium, where one of the characters says he’s just the guy that makes sure all the papers are in order. I kind of feel like that sometimes. I made a lot of phone calls this week. I thought when mom passed away I would be complete blubbering mess. But honestly it was a huge relief. It felt like such a weight off. And I’m lucky that I have such a supportive family and we all get along so well. (Well, there’s that one… we’ve had enough together time for now.)

We laugh together at the meeting at the funeral home, we laugh over stories with the minister during the meeting at the church.

I asked the funeral home director for a tour. He said he couldn’t give me a tour. I told him I didn’t want to see a dead body, I just wanted to see the “backstage” areas, so he did show me the garage. I remember when Dad died, there was a framed picture of Bea Arthur in the casket room. I couldn’t figure out if she was the celebrity spokesperson or what?? Her picture isn’t there anymore. And the guy wouldn’t believe me that it was there before. But I know what I saw!

Mom had requested a private burial and then the service will be in a few weeks because all the grandchildren were already planning a “cousins reunion” and we didn’t want them to make two trips this close together.

So we’re at the cemetery for a quick little service, and I’m looking at dad‘s headstone “over there”, but the casket and hole over here. And somebody else questions that as well. Finally I get the attention of the funeral director. He went pale for a second, and he started to sweat, and then we realized they had moved the headstone in order to dig the hole and get the mechanism in place for the casket. Oh. OK, that makes sense. He teased me I was gonna give him a heart attack.

Kelly and I stayed after and talked with the cemetery crew and watched them lower the casket into the vault. It’s all part of the process.

And the world just keeps on going round.

IS THERE A CELEBRITY SPOKESPERSON YOU’D BELIEVE?

2025, Automotive, Farming Update, Theatre, Uncategorized

Running Smoke

36 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

It was a busy week in the theater again. Shows the last two Saturday’s, but Spring Break next week, that will be a quiet week.

Not much happening on the farm. We survived the “blizzard” on Wednesday. Maybe two inches of snow, and I got a snow day meaning I had time to work in the shop and organize bolts.  I did pull some wagons out last week. See the header photo. The seed wagon has a good flatbed top that I built 25 or 30 years ago. But the wheels and frame under it, technically, that’s the “running gear” are pretty wore out. I have a much newer running gear, with better tires that I reclaimed after disposing of an old chopper box that was junk when dad bought it new in 1980.
So here’s a long boring story about that!

When he first bought the chopper, blower, and wagons, in order to fill the silo’s by ourselves, it was probably the mid 1970’s. My brother helped Dad at first. When I got older, the best job for me, at 15 years old, was to run the chopper, leaving it to Dad to run the smaller tractor and pull the wagons home to unload. You’ll just have to trust me on that. It was actually safer in the big tractor just going around and around the fields, than it was pulling them home, hooking up the power take off (the PTO), unloading by the blower (the machine that blows the crop up the pipe into the silo) and running back out to the field. So, I did that. Dad had two chopper boxes: one being filled in the field, and one home being unloaded. Or on the path somewhere in between.

One box was 14’ long and was a used ‘Kasten’ brand box. The other was 16’ long, and old John Deere box. But it sat taller, and it wobbled more. And I guess I was afraid it was going to tip over, so I’d slow down in the chopper, and then the shear pins would snap off because the machine plugged up. Shear pins are a safety thing to prevent overloading the chopper, but evidently you can break them by driving too slow. I’m sure dad yelled at me to speed up, but I was nervous. Finally, in the interest of his sanity, he traded off the 16’ JD box for a 14’ Papec box. Doing a little internet research, the Papec company started in 1900 and looks like it had a pretty good product at first. But the chopper box they made in 1975 was cheaply made crap. I feel like it was always broken. I bought another used Kasten box in the mid 90’s. And eventually junked the Papec box, and now I have this running gear that was under it.

Chopping was a tough time. Chopping hay needed to be done in a timely manner and the the pipe going up the silo would sometimes plug up (on the hottest, most humid day of summer) and I remember being very angry while trying to get it unplugged. I remember telling Kelly one day there was 18 tires that could go flat while trying to chop. Kelly suggested that might be the wrong attitude. But it was true.

Which brings us back to the seed wagon top, which should be moved to the better running gear, and it will all be a much better ‘wagon’.

I remember dad swapping boxes and running gear. You jack up the box, put a 55-gallon barrel under the corners, pull out one set of wheels, and slip the other set underneath. Nothing too it.

I’m thinking I can lift the back end with the loader and chains, some blocks under the front corners, and Bob’s your uncle! There are two brackets on the front axle, and two on the back that secure the top from sliding around. Typically, we don’t bolt it tight, because it needs to be able to flex a bit, so we wrap a chain around it leaving it a little slack. That way it can flex a bit but not fall off.

I’ve been working on a show, opened this past Friday, called ‘She Kills Monsters’ by Qui Nguyen. It’s a show about the relationship between two sisters. One sister played ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ and the other sister is learning about the game as a way to get closer to her sister. It’s been a lot of fun to work on. It’s a great director, a great cast, an amazing stage manager who can figure out my light cues, and I have lots of smoke and haze and wiggling lights. I think I ended up with 155 light cues. That’s a pretty good number of cues for a 2-hour show. This isn’t even a musical. Many straight shows end up with 40 – 60 cues.

That last photo was me trying to get the smoke machine level adjusted right. This is clearly too much smoke. But isn’t it fun to see all the light beams!!

The bathroom is finally finished!

Almost!

It’s working, just waiting on shower glass yet, but the rest is done. It looks really nice.

Next week I’ll post the pre and post photos.

REMEMBER ROLLING DOWN HILLS AS A KID? WHEN IS THE LAST TIME YOU ROLLED ANYWHERE?

2025, Automotive, Mysteries, Seasons

Redundancies

30 Comments

The first car that I owned was a 1968 Datsun 510.  I bought it used when I lived in Northfield – in 1977 – for a whooping $400.  It had some rust but ran pretty well.  The owner wouldn’t sell it to me until we test drove it; I don’t think he believed I could drive a stick. 

Back then inexpensive cars didn’t do anything special for you.  No pings to tell you that you haven’t turned off the lights, no messages that your oil life is down to 15%, no back-up cameras, no seat warmers, and certainly no notifications that your tire air pressure is getting low.

Even though my current car is 11 years old, I bought it new from a dealership so I can still take it in when the air pressure light goes on, usually after the first cold snap of each fall/winter. They check the tires and fill any that are low.  No charge for this.  A couple of years ago, a new warning blinked at me, on a cold cold morning in January – a TPMS warning.  I looked it up in the manual and online – Tire Pressure Monitoring System.  Didn’t I already have that?

When I had the car’s check-up in April (right before I drove to Indy for the eclipse), I asked the mechanics to look at it – they said they took care of it.  Unfortunately, when the got cold in December, the light came back on.  I ignored it for a couple of weeks, it warmed up and the light turned off.  When I had the oil changed in January, I asked them to look at it again.  Turns out there are FOUR of these sensors and they not only go wonky fairly often but they run on batteries, so eventually the batteries run down.  They had fixed one of these sensors in April, but now there were two more sensors acting up.  The reality is that they are actually a built-in redundancy, a back-up to the main system, which works just fine.  If the light was bothering me, I could cough up $120 each to have them adjusted and get new batteries for them.  If I wait until the next time I need new tires, it will be a lot less.  So, since the warning isn’t even accurate, I decided to ignore it.  Then when it warmed up… the light went off again.  Sigh. 

Hopefully it won’t come on again until it gets really cold again.

Do you have any “back-ups”, just in case…….

2025, animals, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Uncategorized, Weather

A Decent Week for Weather

76 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

On Sunday, Kelly and I did our usual gator farm tour. This week we went down in the pasture and down to the creek, which was still frozen over, walked around down there for a bit.

The next day I took the truck to Plainview, which meant I have the dogs with me, and after we picked up daughter, they all walked home.

Dealing with mud again, which is never my favorite. And it’s gonna get cold, and it’s gonna snow, and then it’s gonna get muddy again, so we’ll have to do this cycle a few times. Just something else to get through.

I took the anhydrous applicator up to an auction in Plainview. It’s an implement I use in the spring to apply nitrogen to the corn ground. Nitrogen in the form of anhydrous ammonia. I pull those white tanks behind it. The last year that I used it was 2021, and since 2022 I’ve had the co-op applying nitrogen in the form of urea, which is a granular product.

When I was working with my dad, the story was he had gotten a heavy whiff of the ammonia quite a few years ago and he never liked it and couldn’t stand being around it anymore. So I’ve been applying the anhydrous probably since I was 18 years old. We used to rent a smaller machine to do it, and then as the tractor‘s got bigger I could rent a little bit bigger applicator bar. And when the co-op stopped renting that equipment and they sold them off, I bought this one. I don’t remember the price anymore, it was probably 10 or 15 years ago.

This is also the machine that I had a little incident with back in 2018.

Anhydrous can be really nasty stuff; it can kill you, it can burn you, it’s gotta be treated with respect and handled carefully. And I have always been careful, making sure I’m parking into the wind, working up wind, wearing heavy gloves, and a face shield.

So this one day the hose was dragging on the ground between the wagon and the applicator.

I stopped, I closed the valves, I started to disconnect the hose, and the valve did not seal properly. I remember that it was very difficult to open, it had been really cranked shut. So it made sense that it was leaking a bit now. There was very little breeze that day, next to nothing, so I couldn’t get up wind of it. I debated what to do. I debated just holding my breath and rushing in there to crank it shut. And finally thought, I just need somebody with a respirator, it’s not an emergency, I just need somebody that can get this closed. So I called the nonemergency number for the fire department and explained the situation. Well, when the first of three firetrucks showed up, and I was still sitting in the tractor waiting for them, they parked a half mile up the road and suited up and a guy in full gear walked down to me. I’m sure they were all bent out of shape that I was still hanging out down there. All they were told was that there was an anhydrous leak.

It turned into a whole big thing. Ambulance, incident command vehicle, and a sheriff deputy, all out on the highway, and the three firetrucks were on our road.

I had to call a chemical spill hotline who thought I had lost the entire tank of 5000 gallons. No, it’s just a few drips and a very minor vapor leak. But, it was good training for the fire department: they went down with a wet towel, sampled the air, wrapped a towel around the valve and was able to get it turned off tight using a pipe wrench so that I could then disconnect the hose. Always glad to help them out, I said. They even gave me a bottle of Gatorade.

I had to attend a safety workshop, and I had to replace the hoses that are only good for 10 years and of course mine were out of date by a few years because it’s expensive and nobody pays any attention to the replacement date. I think it cost me $1500 for new hoses and a valve.

And now it’s 2025, stamped on the hose it says ‘replace before 2025’, and I took it to the auction and it’s not my problem anymore. When I pulled it out of storage, one of the tires was low. Not flat, just low so I pumped it back up. Pulled it the 20 miles to Plainview, and as I walked into the office I could hear a hiss and air leaking from this tire. Well, not my circus, not my monkey anymore.

The dogs all got pup cups at the Dairy Queen and I had a blizzard.

WHATS YOUR FAVORITE CLEANING PRODUCT?  ANY MONKEY STORIES?

2025, Automotive, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Playing Chicken

19 Comments

Most Wednesdays I leave the house very early to hit my favorite donut place.  When I left yesterday, YA said she was going to the gym before work and would probably be gone before I got back. 

I was thinking about that when I pulled into my driveway and saw that she was starting to back out of the garage.  She didn’t notice me right away (I was on the hill part of the driveway so my lights were pointing higher than her car) so she didn’t wait for me to pull into the garage next to her so I just sat and waited.

What you need to know is that YA and I have different strategies for dealing with our long driveway.  I almost always just back all the way down to the street.  YA does several little turns at the top of our driveway so that she is driving out headfirst.  Both techniques have their pluses and minuses.  But it meant that by the time she had turned herself around at the top, there would be room for me to get by and into the garage.

Went exactly as I had expected but while I was waiting it did make me think about “playing chicken”.  I’m not a big playing chicken kind of gal but it does feature in a movie I’ve watched too many times:

Have you ever been in a submarine?  Do you have a favorite submarine movie?

2025, Automotive, Family, Farming Update, Seasons

NOVUS INITIUM

82 Comments

A NEW OR FRESH BEGINNING

The weekend farm report comes to us from Ben.

Asking Google for a Latin translation for a “new beginning” turned into more questions than answers, so it’s something like the title. Or maybe not. One of you will have a better idea. I just didn’t want to give this a tired or cliched heading. I thought of PT Barnum and “This way to the Egress!” but Ingress wasn’t what I wanted. 

I went around on Wednesday morning and recorded the mileage and hours on the cars, truck, tractors, gator, lawn mower, and the pump on the diesel barrel. 

Everything was pretty average. Kelly drives a lot less miles now that she’s working at home of course. We spent 34 hours cutting grass. 140 hours between the two tractors, slightly less than normal for me. No snow to move last winter, and less weeds mowed last summer. I moved 488 dozen eggs, which is pretty impressive. That’s 5856 eggs! Jeepers! Well done girls. Other than December when I got maybe 5 dozen, they were over 40 dozen / month with May being the highest at 63 dozen. 

We are starting 2025 with the bathroom and laundry room remodeling project. Our contractor, Joe, called on Tuesday afternoon and said he could start Thursday if we wanted. Well, with my family Christmas at our house on Saturday, January 4th, and already having the theme of “A YMCA Construction Christmas! Dress as your favorite Village Person”, we figured ‘why not!’ and also, then we don’t need to clean so much. I’ll put a sign on the front door: “Pardon our mess”. 

We spent New Years Day cleaning out the laundry room and bathroom, taking pictures off the walls, and doing laundry. We delivered several boxes to Goodwill, and created a couple bags of trash, and it felt good to purge.

Everything is in disarray and is going to be a pain in the butt for a couple of weeks. They have been starting in the mornings before daughter is awake. We’ve warned them she’ll probably come out and yell at them and slam her door at least a few times. Sure hope it’s worth it. Kelly has been planning this for about a year and she’s still going through the catalogs and watching home remodeling shows. Pretty soon it will be too late to change her mind. SO MANY DETAILS! Tile, finish, walls, flooring, knobs, door styles, lights, hooks, towel racks, shower door, should this be here or here, oh my goodness. It makes my head spin. She’s enjoying herself.  

My 2024 To do list: It’s fun to put it in Excel just to count it up. I had 212 listed items. And some were pretty mundane, such as ‘haul in garbage’ or ‘cut the grass’, but that’s what I needed to do that week, and it’s always satisfying to cross something off. There were 58 items I carried over to 2025. Like having the septic tank emptied (carried over from 2023) and shingling the feed room. Plus, a few more shop things. My big project for 2025 is to build a lean-too off the back of the shed to make up for what I’ve lost in storage space inside with the shop project. I’d love more concrete inside the shed, but I need to pay down what I’ve spent the last two years. 

 Honestly, I think the best thing we did was add the hot and cold faucets in the garage. That is just so handy. The point was to be able to wash the dogs, which we’ve only done about once, but filling their water buckets just makes that Worth it. And all the buckthorn that Kelly cleaned out the last two summers! That makes me happy every day! The view that it has brought back, both from the road above, and from below looking up. Even the neighbors commented on that. So many of the things on the list was just work that had to be done. Kelly and I were talking one day about so much of the last 30 years we can’t even remember. As the phrase goes, ‘Life is F-ing Relentless’. it’s so hard to remember every-day special moments because you’re so busy just existing. Milk the cows, go to work, do chores, feed the kids, repeat. It’s hard to remember all the little day to day stuff.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE LATIN PHRASE?

2024, Automotive, education, History, Kids, Uncategorized

What’s Your Ride?

35 Comments

I made it home from South Dakota early yesterday afternoon. There were lots of newspapers waiting for me to go through. We subscribe to print editions of the Bismarck Tribune (6 days a week), the Dickinson Press (1 day a week), and the Rock County Star Herald (1 day a week). They are usually delivered on time. I was only gone 4 days , but that still left a lot of news to read.

I was tickled by an article in the Star Herald about Luverne’s recent High School Homecoming and the ABC Parade (Anything But A Car), which challenged students to drive on a parade route from the ice arena across town to the high school in unusual vehicles. Motorcycles were the most common, followed by tractors, lawn mowers. scooters, golf carts, a race car, a bulldozer, and a dump truck. How fun!

My first vehicle was a very old Nash Rambler my dad got very cheap from someone in 1973. I graduated to a Chevy Chevette when I got to college. I would probably have driven in an ABC Parade in one of my Dad’s U-Haul trucks. No CDL needed for that!

What did you drive to school in? What was your first vehicle? Ever been in a parade? What news outlets do you subscribe to?

2024, Automotive, Media, Travel, Uncategorized

Crash!

16 Comments

It has been in the news, but if anyone didn’t hear, last Septmber, a young man driving between Fargo and rural Minnesota had some car trouble. His Honda Pilot took on a mind of its own, speeding up to 113 mph, not letting him brake, and not allowing him to shut he car off. He was able to phone 911 as well as his mother while driving, and the Highway Patrol and county sheriff figured out how to stop him. A Deputy sped past him going 130 mph, stopped the patrol car in front of the Pilot, and instructed the young man to crash into the rear of the patrol car. He did, the vehicle stopped, and no one was injured.

The whole story is amazing, but what astounds me is that the driver was using his phone all through the ordeal. My phone is in my purse when I drive and is on silent so I can’t hear it or be tempted to answer it. My son has his phone set up so that it sends him calls and allows him to call while driving without taking his hands off the wheel. I imagine that is what the driver of the Pilot did, too. I don’t know if I would have had the presence of mind make the calls and drive and flip all the switches to try to turn the car off.

What would you have done? Is your phone connected to your car audio system? What is the fastest you have driven?

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2024, animals, Automotive, Business, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

A Little Bit of a Lot

27 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

We talked about the first false fall the other day. And now the box elder bugs have arrived. 

Egg production is down.

Last year’s chicks are finally aging out. The header photo is monthly dozens. This year’s chicks have started laying practice eggs. Takes three small ones to equal two regular eggs.

IT’S FAT BEAR WEEK! 

https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

https://explore.org/fat-bear-week

I heard about this on MPR. Made me think about Bart from the Morning Show. We know his cell phone is dead by now. Heck, it probably wouldn’t even work on the networks anymore. Trust us Bart, we’re not fat-shaming. We know you’re stocking up for winter. 

I’ve seen a lot of farmers out combining soybeans. The big farmers are worried about that forecast of an early snow, so everyone will be pushing hard. Me? I just wait for the neighbors who harvest mine to get too it. But I’ll be hoping they’re pushing hard to get theirs done so they can get to mine. It will be what it will be. 

Last week I pulled out a fence post in preparation for some stump grinding and I cleared some brush. In the process of clearing said brush, I somehow knocked a front tire off the rim. I think I hit a log or stick and broke off the valve stem. Had Appel Service out on Monday to repair that. Just needed a new valve stem. 

Even though it’s tech week at the Rep, I’ve gotten a little work done at home. To prepare for the shop heater I am having installed, I met the LP gas dealer, and we discussed where to put the LP tank. (I just had to google ‘LP vs Propane’ because this is all new to me and I learned they’re the same thing with different names. Since we live out in the country and don’t have natural gas piping in the area, and we have all electric heat in the house, I’ve never dealt with an LP tank. I guess in our old house we used fuel oil.) Depending on size, an LP tank has to be 10 feet from structures. It can be right next to the gas or diesel barrels, but 10’ from a building. We decided to put it behind the shed. Out of sight that way. I scraped off some dirt and made a level spot. They will bury the line from the tank to the building, then it can run along the edge of the steel siding. Easier than trenching across the driveway. And as long as I remember to fill it before there’s two feet of snow back there, it will be fine. 

Then I used the tractor loader and finally got the brush mower on a trailer and hauled it to a welding shop so they can fix it. Hard to explain, but the four large bolts holding one of the gear boxes came loose. It vibrated and rattled so bad it enlarged the bolt holes, and the vibrations led to multiple cracks. Repairing it was more than I could handle. Last weekend I used the forks on the loader and pulled it out of the weeds and tipped it up so I could take off the blades and related parts in preparation of the repair.

Using my extensive knowledge of picking things up, I managed to lift it up, work on it and then, again with my extensive knowledge, inadvertently tip it over backwards – on to the trailer wheel well. Huh. Oops.

From there I was able to tip it back up and get it back on its bottom. The only real damage was to the hydraulic hose which I’ll have to replace. And then from there, yet again using my extensive knowledge of redneck farming practices, I picked it up and got it on the trailer.

Luna got a ride in the truck ALL BY HERSELF that day being as the other two dogs still have a faint skunk aroma too them.

I was able to get a little work done in my shed. Started framing in the double door.

Friday, Olson’s Tree Service was out to grind out those stumps that was clearing last weekend. Glad to have that done. I can check it off the list now. 

We could use a little rain. The winter rye is off to a good start but doesn’t seem to be growing too fast. Rain would really help.

There’s a new bakery that opened on my route between dropping off daughter and me going to work. They have a Mexican version of rosetta’s called ‘Bunuelos De Viento’. Oh my are they good. 

So, a little bit of a lot going on this past week. 

Anyone grow up with frost on their bedroom ceiling nails?  What are you stocking up for winter?