Category Archives: Business

2026, Business, crops, Farming Update, Uncategorized, Words

IT’S A WHAT?

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This weeks Farming Update from Ben.

If I was smart, I would’ve ordered 500 gallons of diesel fuel a few weeks ago.

I called the supplier on Tuesday and he said diesel was six dollars a gallon. I didn’t even blink. Then he laughed and said he was just kidding. Well, let’s hope so. The price is up and was up more that day. Sometimes I fill the tank in the fall, sometimes in the spring, it just sort of depends. I won’t really need it for another month, but honestly, it’s anybody’s guess if it’s gonna keep going up or come back down at some point soon enough… my gut says I should just fill it now. Thankfully 500 gallons will last me the year. One farmer I watch on YouTube uses 7000 gallons / week. Ouch!

I got to the big parts sale at John Deere. I may not have mentioned a couple of weeks ago when I was picking up trees how I got the tractor over a stump and bent the driveshaft to the front wheels.  At first, I was hoping it was just a shield but no, it was the whole shaft that was bent.

That’ll buff right out!

That made it hit the bottom of the tractor with every revolution, and it was kind of sickening.

(I had to go back and look; I did very briefly mention it two weeks ago, cause I am embarrassed to talk about it.)

I knew the stump was there…but it was muddy, and dark, and frozen underneath, and one thing led to another and…. so it goes. But still.

Sigh. 

If only I had cut the stump 3” shorter.

Good thing there was a sale, saved a little money anyway. Which I spent on lawn mower belts and blades, digger shovels, chisel plow points, filters, rubber boots for the tractor steering knuckles. All that was about $1700.

Stopped and picked up the new bathroom door for the basement bathroom remodeling. It’s a few weeks out yet, but getting stuff around. Paid for that.

And then on another website I ordered some new LED lights for the tractors; just about have them all replaced now I think.

Got home and installed the new driveshaft. It’s really pretty.

Ooooo. Shiny!

Installation is easy; slip it over the splines in the back, four bolts in the front.

Forgot to get new bolts for the shields. They’re metric. I found a few at home, and then stopped and bought an assortment of metric bolts… knew the day was coming I’d need a collection of both standard and metric.

Try not to break this one, Ben.

I need to plan a road trip to Millerville MN. About five hours from Rochester, past Alexandria. I’ve purchased a ‘Track Wacker’. Everybody outta have a TRACK WACKER! (I can think of a few people I’d like to use a track wacker on.) I will mount it on the back of the 6410 tractor, and it covers up the tire tracks before drill comes behind planting oats. It was fairly cheap at $450.

There’s an online auction up in Plainview. The auction goes until Tuesday evening. I’ve marked several things to watch including a 32-foot wide, Brillion brand, Pulverizer / packer. One would use it to help break up clumps of soil, and firm the soil for planting. I knew it would be out of my price range, and as of Friday afternoon it’s at $13,000. That’s $12,000 more than I wanted to spend. 

I’m watching a 30′ drag / harrow. I use one after oats, and soybeans, again, just to help smooth the field. It’s over $1100 now…I’m still bidding on it, but by Tuesday I bet it will be $2800 and I can’t convince myself it’s worth that. My old drag is going to disintegrate someday…I bought it from a neighbor 40 years ago. Every year, I add another piece of chain to it, trying to hold it all together. 

Man… I am spending money like a drunken…. something. 

Included in the auction is one lot containing both a “Wood Duck Call and Vintage Anal Weather Station”. Yep, you read that right. And I checked, and that’s what it’s called. I think we all know what they really mean with the weather station and the three gauges, but it does give you pause, doesn’t it. I mean, it sort of boggles the mind! I really want to know what one would do with an anal weather station.

And there is always ALWAYS a dozen guns and boxes of ammunition. I asked up there one day and they said most of the guns come from estate sales. I bought a shotgun off this auction once, and a box of shells, if they sell cheaper than buying at a local store. All that stuff is officially transferred at a gun shop; you don’t just carry it off from the auction site. And the gun shop calls the state and I filled out forms, so it’s as safe as it can be, for what it is.

Among the shells this time, is an ice cream bucket, of 300- .223 caliber bullets. Called a FREEDOM BUCKET! Picture of a Revolutionary Minute-man and a US flag on it.

Give me a second while I put my head in my hands.

————-

A former student came to visit. She met a guy online, moved to Ireland, and has two of the cutest little girls.

Help me come up with an adjective for a bucket of bullets referred to as a FREEDOM BUCKET.

ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO SAY ABOUT WEATHER STATIONS?

2026, Business, Food, Kids, Mysteries

Derby Delights

33 Comments

YA and I actually have a lot in common.  I probably mention the ways we are different more often than not – makes for better stories sometimes. 

Anyway, we both really like the Derby cookies that they make at Great Harvest Bakery.  Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, pecans (plus all the other good cookie ingredients).  And they are huge – really too big to eat one a day, but yummy enough.

Great Harvest doesn’t make the derby cookie very often.  They make four or five cookies a month but for some reason they only make the derby a couple of months during the year.  At the beginning of every month, both YA and I scour the bakery’s monthly newsletter to see the monthly cookie listing.  I was expecting that we wouldn’t see our favorite until May.  I don’t know much about the Kentucky Derby but I do know that it’s in May.  YA was the first to see the newsletter this month and when I asked her how many I should get (the packages of six are a much better deal), she responded, two now and then maybe two the end of next week and two more at the end of the month.  She figured we can freeze any “overage”.  Like the two of us can’t eat 36 cookies in a month.  Snort.

Anyway, I obediently went up to Great Harvest today… ended getting three packages because once you purchase a certain amount at the bakery, you get a discount.  Did the math quickly in my head (and had the math confirmed by the bakery clerk) that buying one extra package of cookies actually made the price go down a bit.  Win/win.  I put one of the packages in the freezer for now. 

The capper to this story is that when I bought all these cookies and bemoaned the fact that the bakery doesn’t make them very often, the clerk concurred and also said that since the base of the derby cookie is the same as the base of a couple other cookies, we can special order our favorite on any month those others are made.  Which is most months.  Wish I had known this any time during the last several years!

Will you watch the Derby this year?  Will you wear a fancy hat?

2026, Business, chickens, crops, education, Farming Update, Gatherings, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

AN OAT-STANDING DAY* 

65 Comments

This week’s Farming Update from Ben

You know, it was so warm last week, it was so freaking muddy. It was terrible. And I know it’s gonna happen the next time it warms up again. But that’s next month’s problem!

I’ve always found it interesting the clumps of snow and ice that accumulate on the far side of railroad crossings. When a vehicle hits a bump like that and the ice chunks fall off and skid up the road a ways. Newton’s first law about an object in motion I think. It’s kinda cool to me.

Wednesday this week I went to an oat producers meeting. Got another really good free meal! 

It was a very good meeting. Lots of good speakers and interesting topics. I did critique the font of one guy’s slides… I’m such a snob. The meeting started at 10:00, and people wandered in for another hour. And it reminded me how hard it was to get anywhere before about noon  when milking cows and doing chores in the winter. Feed the beef cows, feed the dairy cows, milk, chase the beef out of the yard, let the dairy cows out of the barn, clean the barn, haul out the manure, throw down hay from the haymow, spread out straw bedding, spread out the hay, and put the cows back in when they’re done eating outside. It all took a while. 

Excuse me, can you keep your heads down…

There were 159 farmers in attendance (because the host said now she knew how long it took to get 159 people through the line for lunch.) 

One guy kinda looked like Robert Duvall. 

I wore a peach colored shirt. I was the most colorful person there. A lot of plaid and dark colors. And a fair number of women at this meeting too. 

It was mentioned that 26% of the farmers in Olmsted County planted cover crops last, involving 20,000 acres. 

As one speaker went through his slides, he’d show a field of oats and call out ‘Eye candy!’

*He’s also the guy that said it was an ‘Oat-standing day’.

I saw them in concert back in 1984 just to impress a girl. I Broke up with her anyway.

Several of the speakers, and many of the farmers, are growing a few hundred acres of oats. They talk about their 40’ air seeders and stripper heads for oats and growing 140 bushel / acre oats and I sit there quietly with my 30 acres, and 40 bushels / acre and think ‘You don’t have any deer do you?’ I asked a question if anyone is dragging their oat fields. Crickets. One speaker finally said they do no-till planting. Oh. yeah meaning they don’t have bare dirt like I do. Several said that. One of the benefits of no-till, is being able to get out and plant in March without needing to wait for the ground to warm up and dry out to do tillage before planting, like I do. 

Several of these farmers are responsible for the surge in oat growers. They’re the founders of the oat mafia.

One guy shared his spreadsheet for his crop input and expenses. If input costs are going to be high, and crop prices are going to be low, then we hope for high enough yields to make up the difference. One example was a 1400 acre farm. If he does 700 acres corn and 700 acres beans, expenses will be this much, income theoretically this much, and they’re losing money. However, if they do 466 acres corn, 467 acres bean, and 467 acres oats, they can make some money. Oats cost less than corn to produce. Remember, less yield or a thunderstorm or a lower price and it’s all out the window. 

Jochum Wiersma, from the U of M is always a good speaker. He’s from the Netherlands, and he’s got a bit of an accent, and he is funny, and a very intelligent good speaker. He asked the group if we thought farming was more like NASCAR or a European Rally race? Obviously, a rally. “NASCAR is all left turns, you always know what’s coming.” If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. That’s why farming and raising oats is all about managing risk. 

I took home several good lessons. My crop rotation has been soybeans, corn the next year, then oats the next. Repeat. I do it that way because soybeans add nitrogen to the soil meaning I spend less on nitrogen for the following corn crop. When our son was in high school, he did a report for some class, comparing corn after oats and corn after soybeans. Surprisingly, the corn after oats did better. and I don’t really recall when or why I changed up the rotation order, but it was said several times, DO NOT PLANT OATS AFTER CORN, it’s more susceptible to crown rust disease. And maybe that’s why my oat crop has been so lousy lately. So, we’ll try planting oats on the fields that were soybeans last year. 

I cut down a bunch of dead Ash trees last Saturday. Thirty years ago, I planted two rows of ash trees and some arborvitae shrubs, hoping to create a windbreak in which I planned to put calf hutches on the south side. It turned out to be a pretty wet area. All the arborvitae died off a few years later. The ash trees got to be 40′ tall and were kind of a pain to mow around, now they’re all dead from Emerald Ash borer. There’s a few I’m waiting for a tree company to take down as they’re too close to the feed storage building for me to cut down. I left the stumps about two feet tall for the moment. I’ll trim them off at ground level this summer. 

Using the tractor and loader I was pushing the trees into a pile, and that’s when a tree branch rolled around the inside of the rear tire rim and snapped off the valve stem. Have I mentioned the chloride fluid I have put in the rear wheels for additional weight and traction? It sprays out when you break off the valve stem. My friends at Appel Service and $650 fixed that on Monday. I put the grapple bucket on the loader and picked up the rest of the trees to move them.

I need to remember, a tractor is not a bulldozer.

That worked much better. Until I got the tractor I over a stump. Not really sure how I did that. Bent a shield underneath…

I parked the tractor in the shop and let it dry off and warm up for a couple days, then I rolled under with wrenches and removed the shield. Trying to bend the shield enough to reach the bolts and I remembered Newtons third law: me on a rolling creeper pushing against a larger tractor…doesn’t move the shield, it moves me. An equal and opposite reaction! SCIENCE!

I’ve had chickens living in the garage again. I chased three out of the rafters one evening. The chickens hop from one rafter to another, and the dogs got all riled up and daughter thought the whole thing was hysterical. 

Chicken!

TALK ABOUT LEARNING TO RIDING A BIKE.

TALK ABOUT BIRDS / THINGS YOU’VE SEEN PERCHED IN ODD PLACES

2026, Business, Food, Uncategorized

Product Reviews

38 Comments

Husband and I quite regularly purchase specialty foods from a Spanish and an Italian importer, as well as things now and then from Amazon. We also order quite a bit from King Arthur Baking Company. I usually ignore the pleas from these entities for reviews of our purchases.

I mostly have better things to do, and I would hope my continued ordering would let them know we are happy with their products. I know the reviews are all in the aid of marketing.

The other day, though, the King Arthur Baking Company hooked me with an offer of a possible $100 if I reviewed our recent purchase of all-purpose flour. I really do like their flour. I told them it is the only all-purpose flour we use. It was impossible to submit the review, however, and I finally gave up in frustration.

What products do you order on-line? Ever submitted a review? What products would you like to honestly review?

2026, books, Business, Fantasy, Mysteries, TV

The Doctor

34 Comments

When I was in the bookstore, I was offered a “new” position in Store #1 (Southdale).  My title was Associate Manager, a title that didn’t exist anywhere else in the bookstore world at that point.  This fancy title meant that I had more responsibility, more work but no more power than any average employee.  And certainly not a lot more money.  But the one thing that I was promised was the doing this job would mean that when it came time for me to become a store manager, I would be able to skip the traditional small “starter” store, but would jump right away to a medium store. 

If you live in the Twin Cities, if you ever visited the store over in Sun Ray Mall (not there any longer), you’ll know that they lied to me.  There were only a few stores smaller than Sun Ray at the time.  However, the Associate Manager job was such a pain in the patoot that I didn’t argue when they offered me the teeny store – off I went.

I’ve mentioned the teeniest because despite it’s small size, it had the largest Dr. Who section in the Twin Cities – seven full shelves in the corner so basically its own section.  A couple of times a week, someone would come in the front door and ask “Dr. Who?”.  We sold A LOT of the little mass market editions.  Some of them were books based on episodes and many were other Dr. Who fiction.  Written by many different authors.

That was over 30 years ago, only half way through what is now a 60-year legacy and still going strong.  Even though we had cornered the Dr. Who market at the time, it didn’t interest me much.  As time has passed, I’ve watched just a few episodes and a couple of years ago I did read the very first book. 

A couple of weeks ago I read something on FB that commented that Dr. #5 (Peter Davison) is the father-in-law of Dr. #10 (David Tennant).  Not sure why but that seems like a funny happenstance.  So I decided I might learn a bit more about the whole Dr. Who universe.  I’ve started with a series that was made about 10 years ago.  There is one DVD per doctor with a 30-minute overview and interviews covering the doctor, the companions and what made them special and different.  Then there is one episode, sometimes the first of that particular doctor, sometimes one of the most iconic.    

There have been 14 different Dr. Who actors, although some folks count 15 because David Tennant came back.  However clocking in with a whooping 892 episodes filmed so far, this is not a rabbit hole I’m going to jump down.  I’ll watch the rest of the series.  Maybe in the future I’ll watch a few more here and there – particularly David Tennant and Peter Davison, both of whom I already liked from other roles.  I don’t think I’ll need a spreadsheet!

Is there any science fiction you like?  A Dr. Who fan?  Star Wars?  Star Trek?  Firefly?  Avengers?

2026, Business, Mysteries, Stories

Keen

20 Comments

I haven’t been anywhere the last couple of days.  No errands of any import, no lunches, no appointments, just a quiet few days.  The one downside to this is that I’m listening to a CD in the car that I have been missing.  The Woman Who Walked in the Sunshine by Alexander McCall Smith; it’s part of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

A need arose for something from the hardware store yesterday so I hopped in the car and immediately turned on the CD player.  Mma Ramotswe is having a holiday and is enjoying an afternoon tea with some ladies at President Hotel in town.  As the other women are gossiping away (just as I was getting to the hardware store) this passage came up on the CD:

Mma Ramotswe lowered her eyes.  She was not enjoying this conversation, but she had to say something.  “There are many shocking things that happen,” she said.  “I see them in my work.”

One of the ladies exhaled loudly.  “You must tell us about these things some time, Mma,” she said.  “You must tell us about some of these shocking things.”

“Yes,” said another.  “We are very keen to disapprove.”

I had just taken a big swig of coffee and it was all I could do to keep from snorting it up my nose when I laughed out loud.  “Disapprove” was not the ending to the sentence that I expected but it was a better ending than anything I could have thought up on my own.

Has anything made you laugh recently?  (Book, film, kid, meme…..)

 

 

2026, Business, Family, Food, Travel

Pea Green

32 Comments

When I started in the travel department of my company (35 years back), nobody had cell phones.  Of course, mobile phones did exist, however they were huge and very expensive.  Nobody I knew had a cell phone until the 90s.  The first small phone, the flip phone, came out in 1989. 

If you needed to call home while you were traveling, you needed to call through the hotel and it was exorbitant.  (This was also before everybody had laptops.)  My company had a strict “once every three days” rule for these expensive calls.  We all know how much technology has changed the world.  Now the company doesn’t even have a rule about calls home. 

This morning, I got up to the above photo texted to me from YA, who is on a work program right now.  Up until that moment, I had thought we were having a really warm couple of days.  Everything is relative, I guess.   The caption under her photo was “Breakfast on my balcony.”

Are you jealous of anybody this week?

Business, Media, Uncategorized

Time to Make the Donuts

32 Comments

January 8.  I am not willfully ignoring the events of yesterday or the day before that.  Or the day before that.  I don’t want us to become a source of dissension that could attract trolls.  And on a more personal note I need at least one place/forum separate from the insanities that are surrounding us on a daily basis.  If others disagree, I bow to the majority but will mostly likely be quiet.

***********

I saw a news story that some residents of the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts are upset at the smell emanating from the new Dunkin’ Donuts factory there in town.  They complain about the fried dough smell and that their homes and clothes reek of it.  Of course, quite a few others think it’s a nice smell.

It was a surprise to me that the donuts are made in a factory; while I never really thought about it, I assumed they were made in each Dunkin location:

Turns out it’s a little of both worlds.   Most Dunkins get frozen dough from various partner factories.  They thaw the dough, shape, fry, ice, etc. in the individual locations but there are also franchises that have the donuts made in their local factory.  Who knew?  Truly I do like the idea of the donuts being made right in my little store, but as long as they taste good when I get them in the drive-thru, I guess it doesn’t really matter to me.

However I do sincerely understand how the anti-smell folks in Havervill feel.  When I was working in the bakery, I came home every single day and took a hot shower before I did anything else.  I even convinced the owner to include me in the uniform rental (the other women in the bakery didn’t want this) so that I could leave the odor-drenched clothing at the bakery.  I could FEEL the bakery smell on my skin.  It wasn’t even that it was a bad smell just that it was so enveloping.  And, of course, I believe I told the pumpkin pie story more than once, but my aversion to that smell is just as strong now as it was back then. 

I guess that means I would be in the “ew, it stinks” camp if I lived near the factory.  But I’m not sure I’d be willing to complain about it out loud.

What kind of a factory would you prefer not to live near?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, gardening, History, Nature, pets, Science, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Thinking Ahead

54 Comments

This week’s Farm Update from Ben

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.

Not my photo. Courtesy of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmpuWNcqF2s

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?

I know tim will have a story….

2025, Business, crops, Farming Update, Government, History, Music, Science, Technology, Theatre, Uncategorized, Weather

INTEREST-ING

60 Comments

This week’s farming update from Ben

Brrrr. We are hardy Minnesotan’s but it’s still cold out. Hope you can stay inside and warm for the weekend. 

Honestly, how did people do it 100  years ago? Or 500? Or 1000?? 

We have so much to be thankful for. 

I got my corn check from the co-op last week and put it in the bank. And this week I paid off the loan I borrowed from a month ago to pay the bills. And the co-op emailed about setting up the loan and credit for 2026 crops. Easy come, easy go. Repeat. I spent some time this week comparing interest rates. It’s kinda hard to find out what the actual Prime rate is. Course it varies by bank and how much money you have. And it was kind of interesting how that works. One of the companies the co-op uses does Prime minus 0.5% until August, then Prime + 0.5% until Feb of 2027. Another company has different rates on some of the products and zero interest on some, but then Prime +2% on fertilizer. In the end, it doesn’t amount to that much money. It would be a different story if I was spending $450,000 at 7.5% interest. (That’s $33,750 @ 7.5% if you’re curious. Now we’re talking real money!) And the government is going to bail me out with the poor prices on soybeans. So they say. I don’t know what that’s going to amount too yet. It won’t be $33,000 I can tell you that. I’ll bet I can take off a couple zero’s there and be more like it. I always say the difference between me and the big farms is a couple zeros on the expenses and the income. 

I’ll fill out the forms this weekend and figure out next years crops. Samantha, the agronomist I work with at the co-op sent out a rough worksheet of next year expenses for my planning purposes, and I’ll get things ordered and prices locked in by mid January for the best rate. 

Yesterday on the blog we were talking about things from the past. I had a guy at the farm the other day who had a front wheel drive car and was almost stuck on the bare, but snow covered driveway. He clearly didn’t know how to drive on snow. His wheels were spinning and he blamed the posi-traction. I can still hear my dad’s voice “DON’T SPIN YOUR WHEELS!” Our mantra in winter back in the day of rear-wheel drive cars. “Sit heavy! Don’t spin your wheels.” And my family jokes that Dad would say, “NO TALKING! BE QUIET BACK THERE!” I don’t remember that, but I’m sure it was so Dad could hear the wheels not spinning. Shift to low, back up to the garage so you can get a run at it, and don’t spin your wheels. And the guy got out. Our driveway is long and starts right off with an uphill “U”. (So right, “get a run at it” but you’re making a corner at the same time. You learn a lot about friction doing that.) Then you’ve got a flat 75 yards to gain some speed before the next uphill corner to the left. Most people, if they get around the U, can make the next corner. Although there was some days I had to back up 50 yards and get a run at the second corner again. But a front wheel drive car? Dude. Learn to drive. I remember years ago, the guy who would come in to breed the cows. He had a little tiny car. Rear wheel drive. He couldn’t get out. And he turned around and went backwards really fast around both corners. I was very impressed. But he made it. 

Last weekend Padawan called me about 10:00 at night to see if I would help pull a friend of his out of a ditch. So I went. Because we’ve said Padawan is our second son, so, that’s what you do for your kids. The friend had a new sporty little car. Still had the temporary plates. Skidded on the snow and slid into a ditch. Another kid who needs to learn how to drive. He was only a little stuck. Pulled him out with the truck.

Haven’t had much time to work in the shop this past week. Concerts at the college, homework, (had the last ‘in person’ class. I have a couple tests to take yet and some online lectures to watch. Last day of classes is next Friday) And I’ve been moving snow. 

Our mailbox is out on the highway. It’s on a swinging post so the snow launching off the snowplow doesn’t damage it, the box just swings out of the way. Meaning it WHIPS the mail out into the ditch…More than once we’ve found the mail under that pine tree behind the mailboxes. Sometimes we may not find it until spring. Hopefully it wasn’t the check we’ve been waiting for. There are three mailboxes as there used to be three homes down our road. The third, unused mailbox our neighbor named “S. Lamb”. The sacrificial lamb. Our neighbors are very witty.

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The choir sounds really nice this year. It’s a new conductor and he’s doing a great job with the students. At rehearsal I heard him ask the kids, “Are you ready for the concerts Friday and Saturday?” And they responded, “Thursday and Friday!” 

“Good. What time is the concert?” 

“7:00”

“Good. What time are you going to be here?”

“6:00” 

“Good. Saturday and Sunday concerts, It will be fun!” 

“THURSDAY AND FRIDAY!” 

“Good.” 

Clearly, he’s worked with teenagers before.  

In my happy place.

HOW YOU GONNA STAY WARM THIS WEEKEND?

HOW DO YOU THINK YOU WOOD HAVE STAYED WARM 500 YEARS AGO?