Category Archives: Business

2025, Business, Food, Mysteries

Postage-Less

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Yesterday I had to send off a package to my friend in Nashville.  She broke her ankle in two places while traveling in Italy and had surgery today (she came home for this).  Post-surgery she’s staying with her son who lives just a few miles from her.

I, of course, sent off a card immediately but wanted to do a bit more.  My friend has a soft spot for the Little Debbie Swiss Rolls and I’m sure her son won’t think to toss them into the shopping cart when he gets groceries.  So I got a couple of boxes, boxed them up and headed for the post office.

It was a little busy when I was there and it was surprising that there was a supervisor who kept coming out to say “thanks for your patience, we’ll be with you….”   I’ve never experienced that before.  Then I heard the postal worker next to mine say that they didn’t have any stamps.  I was sure I had heard that wrong, but my postal worker confirmed… no stamps.  She said that the manager who “unlocks” the stamps hadn’t come in yet.  I couldn’t help laughing, although I did try to suppress my giggles in case anybody else in line needed stamps. 

I couldn’t stop thinking about it and it reminded me of the gas shortage in the 1973 with the long lines.  And of course, it made me remember the toilet paper “crisis” at the beginning of covid.  But for some reason, the post office not having stamps strikes me as the weirdest.  Why does only one manager have the key?  Why hadn’t that manager come in; if not able, why hasn’t someone driven to his/her place to get the key?  I suppose I’ll never know.

What other shortages have you survived?  What strategies did you use?  Did snack cakes help?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Technology, Theatre, Uncategorized

To Park or Not to Park

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Wrapped up another academic year by celebrating commencement this past Wednesday. I will be employed at the college until June 2 as I have some rentals coming through. I’ll be going to half time to allow myself a little more time farming while I still finish up odds and ends at the college before starting back this fall.

The oats are up! And I see the neighbor’s corn is coming up. Mine will be coming out any day now.

We’re at 452 GDU’s – ‘Growing Degree Units’ for our area for 2025. About double what normal is considered. I did get some corn planted last weekend and the co-op spread the last of the corn fertilizer and I’ve gotten all the fields dug up at least once. Mechanical tillage helps with weed control, and I was afraid if we got too much rain the next few days the weed population would explode. There was a few late nights with me and Bailey in the tractor.  

I planted oats and grass in the waterway that was built last fall. A little rain would be nice and helpful, and it would be especially helpful if we didn’t get any heavy rain for, well really, the whole summer, but at least the next couple of months until it is established and gets some good root structure down. Before I could get the waterway planted there was a couple of logs out there that needed to be picked up. I had told Kelly “We’re only doing the ones as big as my head and 4 feet long.“ But, of course then it’s hard to pass up the ones as big as my arm and 2 feet long. And if you’re gonna pick up those, you may as well pick up the ones as big as my wrist and a foot-long.

Kelly picked up a lot more sticks than I did just because I was in the tractor dealing with other stuff. She did several loads like this.

Kelly and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on Monday. It was a pretty low-key celebration as I spent the day at the college getting ready for commencement and she was working. Back in 1999 I wrote a card for her, wrote on the front not to open until 2025 and tucked it in my dresser. I kind of forgot about it over the years and every now and then I’d find it again. I know I looked at it just a few months ago, and then I put it… “somewhere safe”. It took me a good half an hour to find it on Monday. Life was sure different for us 25 years ago. I kind of wish I had written more about just what was going on in our lives. I’ve wondered if I should do the same thing again? Do I dare do I make it for another 25 years? I realize no one is guaranteed tomorrow, and as we are both in our 60’s now, 25 years might be pushing our luck.

I planted corn Saturday and Sunday.

The load in for commencement was pretty uneventful this year, both for me and the IT guys hanging a large projector, screen, and setting up multiple cameras, and the sound system. Monday was the biggest part of that job for me as I picked up the rental lights, got them hung and cabled, and set up the laptop and lightboard to control them.

It kind of turns into a free-for-all on Monday and as I parked, I thought ‘Well if this doesn’t completely sum me up”:

Tuesday was stage decorations, curtains, banners, flowers, my floor lighting for all those things, and finalizing cues, and making sure everything worked. Wednesday morning was a walk-through, a nurse pinning ceremony, the main event at 6 PM, and it all came back down and packed up in about two hours and I was home by 10 PM

The obligatory ‘Head in the clouds’ photo:

I’ve got a lot of stuff to put away back at the theater, and I’m still checking my budgets and verifying expenses the Business office has compared to my Excel spreadsheets and catching up on things that I’ve let slide the last couple weeks. Depending on the weather, I may get out and do some more fieldwork this weekend. I might be able to finish planting corn if everything goes smoothly.

Chicks are growing and doing well.

Found a couple deer antlers while doing fieldwork.

And that one field that always ALWAYS grows big rocks came through yet again. Kelly and I dragged it home behind the gator. It took a long bar, two shovels, a chain, a 20’ long ratchet strap, and Kelly’s ingenuity, but we got it home and added it to her collection. “What are you going to do with it?” asks my one sister. We’re gonna admire it! …what a question… like everything needs to be practical.

You can tell it was a busy week because I needed a pen, pencil, red sharpie, and chrome ‘dress’ sharpie.

SIGNS WITH RED AROUND THEM ARE OPTIONAL. TRUE OR FALSE?

2025, Business, Family, gardening, Mysteries

Weekend Dress Code

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Last week YA and I headed off to Bachmans for our veggies and flowers for hanging baskets.  This is an annual ritual and this year we needed flowers for 15 baskets and six bales (although I was pretty sure I would need a trip to Gertens for my favorite dragon wing begonias.

YA was ready sooner than I expected so I had to rush to get ready.  I grabbed a pair of khaki shorts that were sitting on my dresser and then my Pi Day shirt, which was at the top of the drawer. 

I hadn’t thought about this combination until a Bachman’s employee stopped me almost immediately upon entering the store, commenting that I looked like a staff person.  For those of you who weren’t there (or more likely just don’t remember), my Pi Day shirt is purple.  I laughed it off, but she wasn’t kidding.  Person after person tried to ask me a staff question. 

It wasn’t a big deal until the end of our trip.  As we were checking out, it turned out that my bright white petunias didn’t have a code to scan.  Telling the cashier they were bright white petunias didn’t help. She didn’t have a binder full of codes, she didn’t ask anyone else, she certainly didn’t believe YA and I when we said it was the same price as the royal purple petunias.  No – she sent me back to the flower barn to find one with a tag and code.  This week is NOT a good time to hold u p the line at Bachmans, so I was almost running when I headed back to the barn.  Two more people stopped me.  One woman realized immediately that it wasn’t a Bachman’s shirt and backed off.  The second woman felt the need to talk about my purple shirt and how she had mistaken me for staff.  It took me much longer than you would think to extricate myself from her and get back to the cashier.  The lines were pretty long and it was clear some folks weren’t happy.

So my lesson for the week?  Don’t wear purple to Bachmans!

Any businesses where you could make a credible staff person?

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, books, Business, History, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Where in the World Was VS?

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Turns out that Renee and I were both out of town last weekend.   Any ideas where I was?

  • This town was established in 1848 and was initially named Bad Axe. (There is still a Bad Axe Music Store in town.)
  • A Masonic lodge and theatre was rebuilt in 1922 (after a fire) and was a hub of the community for decades. In 1995, after being shut for several years, it was purchased and the theatre was subsequently remodeled with monies raised by the Historical Society and the surrounding community.
  • 40 years ago, a one-room Waldorf schoolhouse was established in town. It is still operating with 125 students, grades kindergarten to 8th
  • This is the home of one of the earliest organic dairy companies, cooperatively owned and managed, opened in 1988.
  • In 2012 a guy named Randy moved to the area, built himself a cabin and then built himself a wood burning stove. Folks started asking him to build stoves for them and within a couple of years he founded a company for wood heating solutions which has been a runaway success.
  • This is the smallest town in America that hosts a book festival.

Any thoughts?

 

100 Words, 2025, Business, Family, Mysteries

Postal Game

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It was bound to happen.  The postal tide has turned.

As a working young adult, YA now gets a chunk of mail.  Lots of credit card offers, lots of requests from charities. Stuff from her healthcare folks, catalogs for trendy clothes.  Very little useful stuff at all and almost all of it ends up in the trash.  But it occurred to me today when I was sorting our letters, all of which went into one pile for her, that she gets more mail than I do these days. 

Unfortunately the mail I do get is mostly the bills.

You get anything interesting in the mail these days? 

2025, Business, Family, Food, Mysteries

Coffee Break

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These days I rarely stop at coffee shops.  Mostly I’m just too cheap when I can make my own coffee or tea at home for a fraction of the cost.  But every couple of months, YA and I will make a stop at a Caribou if we are out and about.

In early days, when there was a Caribou two blocks from house, I will admit I was more of a regular.  But in keeping with my “like it cheaper” gene, I purchased myself a mug that I could use whenever I stopped by.  Saved a bit of money and saved yet another coffee cup in the trash.  Even though this mug is close to 25 years old, it’s in pristine shape – it doesn’t get used that often and I wash it by hand instead of throwing it in the dishwasher.  When we lost our little Caribou (first the big Lyndale closing and then the Minnehaha Creek bridge re-build), my use of my mug plummeted.

When I dragged it out to the car with me yesterday, it was probably the first time in a year that it had gotten any use.  The young man behind the counter was astonished to see it.  He picked it up, turned it around, looked at the bottom then called over co-workers to look at it.  The big draw turned out to be the logo, which apparently was “updated” back in 2010.  If you had asked me, I would not have been able to tell you what the new logo looks like:

Guess I’m just oblivious.  But it turned out OK… they were all so enamored of my antique mug that they gave me my decaf for free!

Do you have a favorite cup/mug for your coffee or tea?   

2025, Business, History, Uncategorized

Greenbacks

27 Comments

In addition to a daily check of our local regional jail for the inmate list so I can see which of my little darlings are in the hoosgow, (There are several today) and the two funeral homes to see who died, I also check a history site to see what of importance has occurred on this day in the past.

I see that today is the anniversary of the US Congress in 1862 authorizing the printing of paper money. I rarely have any paper money in my purse. Husband usually has some, but it is hit or miss. I remember my dad being so happy to have some “Silver Certificates” in his possession when I was a child. I remember that the engraving was quite elaborate on those bills. I wonder, given the advent of all that is digital, if we will need paper money in the future. It seems the penny is also on the way out.

What is your favorite bank robbery movie, song, or story, or songs or stories about money in general? What is the largest monetary bill you ever carried?

2025, Business, Fantasy, Food, TV

Avocado Tumble

23 Comments

Sitcoms have never been my favorite form of entertainment.  A few exceptions over the years, but for the most part they seem silly and overblown to me.  Truly, what person on the planet would actually do this:

Then every now and then…

I was meeting a friend at Whole Foods for lunch (they have a great salad bar and hot bar along with tables and chairs, so it’s a great place for two folks with food restrictions to have a fun meal together).  My friend texted me that she was running about five minutes late so I decided to hang out in the produce section near the front door while I waited. 

And then it happened.  A woman took a corner a little too tightly with her cart and rammed into the lovingly stacked display of avocados. They didn’t all come tumbling down (like they would have on tv) but it was still a waterfall of green as them fell.  She was mortified and sank to her knees, trying to corral the wayward fruits.  Three Whole Foods employees appeared out of nowhere and they had the avocados re-stacked in less than a minute.  It was very impressive.  The photo above is after everything was back in order. 

Although I never video tape anything, I did have a small wish that I could have gotten the fall and the re-assembly on film. 

Maybe I should give sit-coms more leeway!

If we were casting for sitcom roles today, who would you like to be cast as?

2025, Business, Government, Uncategorized, work

Legislative Attire

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I recently found out that this Thursday I have to testify in person in Bismarck at a Labor committee hearing regarding a proposed bill that my regulatory board opposes. Our ND legislature is in session right now. The proposed bill involves lumping all the mental health regulatory boards, now independent, self funding, and self sustaining volunteer boards, into one board run by the state.

I have never done testimony like this before. One of my board colleagues is writing the testimony. He has done this many times before. It will be no longer than three pages, because if you go on too long the legislators start looking at their phones and stop paying attention. We have a good strategy and have had several emergency board meetings to plan.

I have two major concerns regarding this experience: What should I wear, and will the sciatica in my left leg cause some problems (problems as in giving out from underneath me and causing me to collapse on the State Capitol floor). My colleague who is writing the testimony works for an agency that provides long term residential services to developmentally disabled individuals. Rather tongue in cheek, he told me he has access to lots of wheel chairs and could bring one to Bismarck. He thought me being wheeled in would elicit sympathy for our cause. I told him it wasn’t THAT bad, thank you, and I would bring a walking stick if I thought I needed one. I told him I could also it to club legislators who were difficult.

Regarding attire, it used to be a rule that that women legislators had to wear dresses to the Capitol when the legislature was in session, and I was worried because if that extended to people testifying, it would be a problem for me. I haven’t worn a dress in ages, I have no workable stockings, and I really didn’t want to drive to Bismarck in this cold in a dress and heels. I was relieved to hear that I just need to dress in “Business Casual”. I have yet to decide what that means for me. Whatever I decide, I will dress in warm clothes, given how drafty the Capitol can get.

Any cleaver Baboon suggestions regarding attire or costuming that I should consider? What would be your considerations if you had to give public testimony to a legislative body or commission?