Oft times I feel as if my world is fairly small. 494 to the south, Highway 100 to the west, 35W to the east and Franklin to the north. Obviously I do travel outside of my “zone” but overwhelmingly, my life and errands are within. So it isn’t odd to me that my mother also had a fairly constricted range. It was brought home to me last week when YA and I were in St. Louis that Grasso Plaza is basically a catch-all for just about everything.
Grasso Plaza is about 5 minutes from my mom’s house, up on Gravois Road, which is a major thoroughfare in the southwestern suburbs. It’s basically just two strip malls across Gravois from each other with five lanes of traffic in between. (One of these lanes is what St. Louisans call the “suicide lane”, in which you can basically go either direction – insanity.) The parking lots on both sides were clearly designed by an idiot who had been drinking heavily. I can’t believe that the insurance companies haven’t banded together to force the Plaza to have them both re-done; I’ve witnessed two accidents myself in my visits to Nonny.
Anyway, here are all the places in Grasso Plaza that we went to in our three full days:
Schnucks. This is one of the grocery store chains in St. Louis; I am not making this up. We got a few snacks and some beverages to keep in the condo while we were there.
St. Louis Bread Company. SLBC was bought by AuBon Pain in 1993 and everywhere else except St. Louis, the name was changed to Panera. I assume some lawsuit or contractual thing was involved. On the outside the sign says St. Louis Bread Company, on the inside, everything says Panera, including how your receipt prints out. We had two meals there.
Walgreens. Of all the things that Nonny didn’t have in her condo was lotion!
Southern Bank. Nonny’s bank – we had to deposit a check of hers.
Post Office. We had to send the equipment back to MobileHelp (Nonny’s “help I’ve fallen and can’t get up” service). Very very friendly and chatty clerks – good thing no one was waiting behind me.
Cotton’s Ace Hardware. I’ve been here many times over the years but this trip it was to drop off the last of Nonny’s canned goods/cereals. Cotton’s has a collection barrel for the Affton Christian Food Pantry.
Dollar Tree. Just a quick stop for some plastic drinking cups for the condo since there were so many folks working on the cleaning out.
H&R Block. Stopped by to ask one tax question concerning Nonny’s taxes. They weren’t helpful. I should have just texted Linda. Ended up getting better info from AARP.
These weren’t the only errands we ran, but it was most of them and I was happy to put Grasso Plaza behind us. Even though it was handy, I don’t want to mess with those parking lots and that suicide lane ever again!
*A working title that was as good as anything else.
This week’s farming update from BEN
Spring is coming. The female cardinal is fighting with her reflection in our car mirrors. She did that last year too. (Remember when having that right side mirror was a big deal? They were not standard.)
The maple trees are getting buds on them. Crocuses are coming up. The chives are coming up. And the snow fence is falling over, so it must be time to be done with that. Fingers crossed. I saw a turkey vulture Friday morning and Kelly heard a killdeer.
Last weekend Kelly traveled to San Antonio for a work thing. Spent 12 hours in airports on Saturday. Had two layovers, three flights, and every flight was late for one reason or another. Left RST at noon, got to SAN at midnight. And then couldn’t get to the gate because there was some sort of medical emergency inside.
At least her luggage showed up! She had time to walk around Sunday afternoon. Saw the Alamo and did the river walk downtown.
Did her work thing, had supper with a co-worker, went back to the airport at 3AM, no trouble getting through TSA at that point, and was back in Rochester with no issues at 11AM Monday. She slept the rest of the day.
Man, air travel… I’m gonna ask you about that at the end so give it some thought.
Really haven’t done much on the farm this week. I’ve seen several posts from the Oat Mafia group on FB of guys out planting oats. One guy did it before the blizzard. Another guy remarked when he got to the field at 2:00AM it was 31degrees and a little wet. By 3:30AM and 27 degrees it was perfect. I read that and I think to myself, honestly, I am just playing at this farming thing… Yeah, they got 1400 acres total, and 300 acres oats, while I got 25 acres of oats, So, it doesn’t compare, but still… it’s hard not to compete. My equipment doesn’t do what their equipment does. I have to do tillage before I can plant. They’re doing no-till. I looked up some no-till drills. A brand new one, six feet wide, lists for $17,000. My current drill is 15’ wide. Ok, here’s a used no-till 15’ drill, 1996 model. $35,900. Whistle. That’s a lot of oats to make that pay. Plus having the field ready to plant last fall in order to plant this spring.
Last week I mentioned jumping through hoops at the local Farm Service Agency. Somehow, after 10 years, they decided the Hain Trust and me were not the same people. I had to get a lawyer to draw up some paperwork to show I am indeed part of the Hain Trust. And that made FSA happy and this week I got a nice deposit from them. Evidently, it’s tied into that Big … Bill the orange president created. Yeah, more bail out money since he screwed up all the markets. And this is how we’re saving money, right?
And the check from the corn I sold so I had a really nice bank balance.
Then I paid the first half of rent on two fields, $2000. And paid the diesel fuel and gasoline bill. $2300. And Farm insurance $1200 quarterly. And the monthly electric bill, and, and, and… easy come easy go! But hey, at least I could make those payments.
Working on a show at the college. We open in about 3 weeks and I am busy building stuff. I clean up as I’m working because I hate walking through sawdust and tracking it all over the rest of the shop. And that’s why I vacuumed up the remote for the dust collector on the table saw. And because I have a bag in the shop vac, I had to sift it to the top and fish it back out the hole. I knew it was in there because I turned it on while fishing it out, haha. I’m gonna add a board to it so I don’t do that again. This was the second or third time I’ve done that.
I took a walk along our creek last Sunday. Me and the dogs.
Bailey…
Silver Creek
I heard some sandhill cranes calling. A flock/siege/construction/swoop of 12 or 14 of them made a loop and head off south. I hope a few spend more time in our area. I thought of our Steve.
I had a lot of township business this week. Lots of phone calls and fact-finding. Relinquished my chair of the town board and don’t have to chair that board again for 4 years. And Thursday night was the annual meeting of the People’s Electric Cooperative. Supper was provided and it was… food. I wore sleeves and a jacket.
As chair of the nominating committee I presented the election results and read the oath to the winners. And that’s over for another year. Shedding projects left and right!
I couldn’t resist. Got up early on Sunday morning and headed to SunStreet Breads for their last day. Got there a little after 6; there was one fellow already standing outside the door but since I didn’t have a coat on, I stayed in the car listening to my book on CD. When the next two guys joined the little line at 6:10, I got out and joined them.
We had a great time, first talking about bakeries and donuts and rustic breads. Everybody had other bakeries that they sometimes frequent but it was clear that Sunstreet had a place in all our hearts. I can’t remember why somebody in the line behind me highly commended the movie The Hail Mary Project. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that – another favorite book of mine that I don’t want “sullied” by some movie producer’s vision. This led to a lively bit of talk about science fiction movies. The first guy in line and I convinced to the two younger men between us that they needed to see Forbidden Planet with Leslie Nielsen and Walter Pidgeon. I mentioned John Scalzi, but apparently any science fiction written after 1985 was a non-starter for my new friend in the front of the line. The topic then returned to the bakery with all of us listing what we were planning on purchasing.
At 6:30, opening time, the line was all the way back to the Caribou Coffee – probably 40 folks. There were signs up about no espresso (I’m guessing that’s a time suck you can’t afford when you have lines out the door) and only six pastries per person. All three of my guys did the six pastries bit but since I was just there for the experience, I just got three – a raspberry cream scone, a laugen croissant (kind of a pretzel crust) and a blueberry turnover for YA. Oh and one last tray of outrageously expensive (but yummy) animal cookies.
The line was even longer when I left. I headed on home with my treasures, realizing that I’d had a great time – not so much because I’d gotten pastries on the last day of my favorite bakery but because it had been a blast to talk about donuts, bakeries and science friction in the wee hours of the morning.
In the last month we have had numerous workers in our home to replace the dishwasher, stove, and microwave, as well as to do some minor plumbing as we had one toilet replaced and a hot water shut off valve replaced under the kitchen sink. We also had new smoke detectors installed and a new electrical outlet installed for the new stove. The old outlet was a 110, and the new stove required a 220.
We have been very happy with all the workers who have come to the house. I was most delighted, though, with the plumber. He was a fully credentialed professional plumber, but he looked as though he was 16 years old.
I asked him if people often remarked that he looked too young to be a plumber. This was evidently a touchy subject with him since he told me that he is always told this, and it was really annoying. “People tell me I look like I am 18. I am 21 years old!” I suggested that it might help if he grew a beard. He said that he had inherited his father’s inability to grow much facial hair, so that wasn’t a solution.
People assumed that I was older than I was when I was a child and teen because I was tall for my age. I didn’t mind, but it meant that people often expected more from me than I was capable of. Now I just hope I look younger than I am.
Do you look your age? Do you act your age? Had any home repairs lately?
The bad news actually came down before Christmas. My favorite bakery, SunStreet Breads is closing. The owners are moving back to their home town and want to pursue “a new business model”. This coming Sunday is their last day; more importantly to me, yesterday was the last donut day (they only make their fabulous glazed donuts on Wednesdays).
I’ve been preparing mentally for this day for awhile. I made the card a couple of weeks ago – a big shaker card in the shape of a stand mixer. On Tuesday I headed to Michaels for a bit of black fabric and made an armband. Touch too dramatic? Well, I’ve been to SunStreet every Wednesday for 12 years for my donut fix. Missed a few during the beginning of Covid when they were closed for a couple of months and there were never donuts on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving due to the high volume of other orders. I figure I can mark this as a major passing if I want to.
Set my alarm early, headed down to Cub to get a small pot of pretty yellow flowers and was able to arrive at SunStreet by 6:15. Waited in the car until 6:28 when the line started to form for the door opening at 6:30. I was in line behind a father and son; the son was about 3 and cute as a button. He informed me (if I understood him correctly) that they were having donuts before school.
The head baker came out to say thanks for the flowers, although it was a short greeting and there was no shaking of flour-covered hands! I was back to my car with my donut and scone by 6:35 and the line of customers was already out the door. I might drive up there on Sunday morning to see what it’s like, but I expect that it will be a zoo and of course there won’t be donuts (I asked). Definitely the end of an era for the neighborhood. Wonder who will take that space next?
Have you ever gotten “verklempt” over a favorite store closing?
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?
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?
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
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?
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?
Trail Baboon 