Yesterday we had 120 bags of organic raised bed soil delivered to our driveway. You can see them in the header photo. A retired guy who was the head of the city solid waste department picked them up from Bomgaars and brought them to the house. He has a forklift for just such loads. He knew my dad. The raised beds will ship this week. We have enlisted the help of a young man to move the bags of soil into the back yard. The gate on our fence is too narrow for a tractor, so he will move the bags with a big wheelbarrow. He is a cement worker for his day job and used to date one of the daughters of the former owner of our house. Everyone seems interconnected here!
Best friend is excited to plant chard, heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers. The raised beds are 32 inches high and will be good for plants that need deeper roots. I am planting a late crop of spinach and lots of basil for pesto. We will have herbs in separate pots on the deck. We saw two large deer roaming our neighborhood a few nights ago and I am glad our yard is fenced.
I want to get some Canadian roses to plant around the house, as well as some hydrangeas. We thought about putting in a raspberry bed but it would be too complicated due to underground wires and such. We also have a Birch tree badly in need of pruning, but we will leave that for the fall, as well as planting spring bulbs.
How are your garden plans coming along? What are your experiences with raised beds?
I sent a couple emails last week that I probably shouldn’t have. My brain was filled with too many other things and I was having trouble forming a coherent thought and missing details, which I have trouble with on a good day. One email I just said right up front “this is all a jumble and I’m sorry about that. See if it makes sense.” The other email I had to send a clarification follow up.
It’s a crazy time.
Like, when isn’t it.
Been busy at both the college and home. It helps when spring isn’t so early. Course then I fuss it’s late. We open the college show next Thursday, so I’m in the final week of painting and tweaking things. Working on lighting and fixing all the little things I forgot I told the director I’d have. I’ve had Padawan coming in to help me. He needs something to do anyway and I can give him life advice while we’re at it. And then I go home and work in the shop for a while. I sure am glad I added the outside lights. I’ve used them a few times this week.
Read an article today about increasing fertilizer prices. (due to the Iran … “Conflict”.) USDA Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins says farmers have pre-purchased 80% of their spring nutrient needs. The article I was reading did an informal survey and they got a 65% response to having pre-purchased. Thirty three percent have most of it purchased, and it’s just what’s needed for the final spring decisions. Only 2% said they haven’t purchased anything. All prices are up of course. I pre-purchased everything in December, and I’m sure the co-op has a lot of it on hand already. But jeepers. I’ll bet there’s gonna be fuel surcharges if nothing else. I mean how can you plan for these kinda jumps??
I’ve seen the sewage treatment plant trucks out applying / injecting waste …”sludge”? on fields. Did you ever think about that? You flush the toilet, it’s gone, right? But gone where? At our house, to the septic tank. And then the liquids go to the drain field and every few years we dig up the cover and have the solids pumped out of the tank. (I wrote about that last fall when we had a taller cover installed on the tank. See : https://trailbaboon.com/2025/08/16/what-mystery-is-this/ )
I’m not sure how the city plant works, I’ve never asked. I know our township doesn’t allow for applying sludge. Well, technically it’s “allowed”, but you have to get a license and pay $10 / acre to apply it. So the farmers in our township don’t do it. Some of the township supervisors created that rule quite a few years ago because they didn’t know what risks might be associated with spreading the sludge.
I took some time Monday afternoon and moved machinery around and took the stuff I put inside for winter, back outside. Like the scrap iron tote. I hooked the soil finisher to the big tractor. I got the flat trailer hooked to the truck and loaded up some scrap iron so I could get that hauled in because I needed the trailer to pick up seed and it had scrap on it from last winter. I worked in the shop until 10:00 PM. Got three of the new LED headlights on the 6410. There are three plastic clips on the old lights, that aren’t supposed to be removable. I managed. Cut my finger, again, with the grinder.
A couple weeks ago I grazed the 8” bench grinder wheel with a knuckle. The next week I hit the wire wheel of the bench grinder with a different finger. Just took the skin off. And this time was my left index finger with the 4” hand grinder. They don’t hurt at the time it happens, it hurts for the next week.
Scars, right? Yeah, some scar stories are better than others…
A burn on my thumb, a fresh cut on the finger, and the healed one you can’t hardly see anymore. Oh, there’s some red paint too.
Wednesday I hauled that scrap in and went to pick up seed oats. The guys at the seed house weren’t so sure about the guys who were out there planting oats before the blizzard. That made me feel a little better. Got 50 bags of oat seed. Worked at the college until 7PM, then home and got the seed wagon in the shop and got Kelly’s C tractor running. Unload the oats using the loader and pallet forks. Another late night and glad to have those outside lights.
Last Saturday was a gala at the Rep theater announcing next seasons shows. I got to give a little welcome speech. That’s fun. I appreciate that I’m comfortable talking in front of people.
Showing how I’m running lights through the phone remote.
The chicks are a week old now. We’ve lost some, it always happens.
And this second chicken that’s moved into the garage and is nesting in this basket…
I have ordered Oat fertilizer to be applied, that should happen either late Friday or Saturday. If we get enough rain to soak it in that’s fine, and if it doesn’t rain and I can get out with the digger, that works too.
The wind on Wednesday. Jeepers. This is why I’m glad we live in a valley. A few tree’s blew over in the fields. Always something. I’ll add it to my to-do list.
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!
Our Easter menu consisted of scalloped potatoes, roasted butternut squash with apples, raspberry cream pie, and smoked farmer’s ham with a plum glaze.
Since we had to sing in the choir at both services on Sunday, I decided to make the potatoes and the pie on Saturday. I got the pie crust made and the pie assembled, and then started on the scalloped potatoes. I used Julia’s recipe, which she describes as “ambrosia”. It consists of two cups of heavy cream and two cups of half and half, bay leaf, salt and pepper in which you simmer on the stove two pounds of very thinly sliced Yukon Gold potatoes. They simmer for 90 minutes, and then you put them in a gratin dish. They can be made ahead of time to this point, then baked the next day in the oven for 20 minutes after you sprinkle them with grated Gruyere cheese.
I put the simmered potatoes in the 14 × 9 ceramic Le Creuset gratin dish to cool down preparatory to putting them in the fridge for the night. Husband was looking for ingredients for a cucumber salad in the cupboard just above the gratin dish when he accidentally knocked a bottle of avocado oil off the shelf. It landed in on the potatoes, and the gratin dish shattered into about eight pieces.
The pieces seemed pretty intact, and after we had scraped all the potatoes into another gratin dish we reassembled the busted dish in the sink to see if we could salvage the potatoes and serve them on Sunday. We were able to account for all but a quarter inch piece of ceramics.
I was really torn about what to do. Should we serve the potatoes and warn our guest about the possibility of a ceramic fragment? Should I throw it out and make it again on Sunday? I decided to decide in the morning.
The chance of our guest breaking a tooth or swallowing a sharp glass fragment was too great for me to deal with, so I tossed the potatoes and made more after church. They were ambrosial. I remembered a conversation I once had with the wife of one of our ND psychiatrists. She admitted that when her husband was in his residency in Texas she invited several people over for dinner. She really wanted to impress, and wanted to serve liver pate. They were quite poor at the time, so she bought a can of liver cat food and served it with crackers. No one was any the wiser, and her guests liked the “pate”. Well, we certainly could afford more cream and potatoes, and I am glad I threw the first batch of potatoes away.
What kitchen disasters have you had? Ever served a dish that you knew had something wrong with it?
I don’t know if it is the increased humidity and cold and storms here, but Husband and I have been drinking much more tea than we did in ND. Husband is a great tea maker and we have nice teapots and infusers.
If all goes well, we will have an order of a variety of teas delivered today. I particularly like fruit teas like Rote Grutze, a North German tea with hibiscus and dried fruit. I also like East Friesien tea you must have with cream and rock sugar. The cream is poured in a specific way to make it look like eruptions. Husband prefers strong black teas like those from Scotland and Ireland.
I never had much tea before I went to England as a college junior, and had tea in a tea shop. I tried to sweeten my tea with what looked like sugar, but turned out to be coarse salt. My, did I get odd looks from the servers! I like lemon in my black tea, but the salt was really awful! They gave me a new pot of tea.
What is your favorite tea? Sweetened or lemon? Tea cakes?
If the weather improves by Sunday, best friend/boommate will come for Easter dinner. She had been coming down from near Hutchinson almost weekly preparatory to moving in with us in May, bringing things she doesn’t need the moving company to transport.
Friend is a quilter. She has tons of fabric and sewing equipment the movers will load up and put in the very large and sunny room in our basement that will be her quilting headquarters. She has lots of projects underway, including a new quilt for our bed that we commissioned last year. She does really nice work.
I was making one of the beds yesterday and stopped to examine the quilt that I am using on it for warmth under the bedspread. You can see it in the header photo. It was made by my mother and her paternal aunts in the late 1930’s. It was made from any fabric they had on hand as well as worn clothing pieces. There was both machine and hand stitching on them . I wish I knew whose hand stitching it was, my mom’s or either Lena’s , Meta’s, Bertha”s, or Greta’s.
My mother had about four of these quilts and kept them in her cedar chest and never used them. She let me finally start using them about 30 years ago. We have two left. Friend has the opinion that quilts should be used, not stored, and if they wear out, you just make a new one. I agree with her, but it is pretty wonderful to have this 90 year old quilt to still use.
Know any quilters? What special quilts and textiles have you seen? What were your great aunts’ names?
I’m rarely without a book at hand. I always have a CD in the car, CD player also in my studio. Libby on my laptop. Libby on my phone. STACKS of books in my bedroom (library books in one place, my unread titles in another). Even when traveling, books come with me; my packing list on the computer has books as a box to tick.
Even though I didn’t think I’d have any time for reading on this trip, I brought books. No books on CD in the car with YA but I had my laptop with Libby, had my phone. STILL brought books with me. I did make a conscious effort to bring things on the lighter side…
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (CD) by Agatha Christie. I’ve read this before but all my BritBox the past two months stirred up a desire to read a few of her early works again. I’m actually almost done with this. Maybe I can do an errand by myself today to finish it up!
Serial Killer Support Group (Book) by Saratoga Schaefer. I haven’t started this yet but it’s called a “dark, witty debut” about a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her younger sister’s murder. Hopefully the “witty” is true.
Family of Spies (Libby) by Christine Kuehn. This is non-fiction; written by the author when she discovered her dark family roots. I’m about half way through this one; although it’s not a feel-good subject (spies during WWII), it’s written pretty much as a straight-forward history. I think the author was putting some emotional distance between herself and the story.
Dangerous Davies: The Last Detective (Book) by Leslie Thomas. I also haven’t started this one yet but I have seen the first three episode of the TV series thanks to BritBox. The TV series was a little on the lighter side so I suppose the book could swing either way.
A History of the World in 12 Shipwrecks (Book) by David Gibbins. This is the last of the “listicles” books that I picked up for Blevins Book Club. I was trying to cram it in two weeks ago and then the snowstorm happened, so I haven’t picked it up since. I’m about 1/3 of the way through. It’s not nearly as good as I was hoping. Writing is a bit dry and I was hoping for much more interesting photographs.
Of course, the chances I’ll finish any of these (well, maybe the Christie) is pretty slim, but where reading is concerned, hope springs eternal. A bit like the cat and the grocery bag from Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater!
*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!
Our CeskyTerriers were initially bred to work together in a pack hunting vermin. They are much different than other terriers who tend to be independent operators. We had Welsh Terriers who would dart out the front door and be off exploring at any opportunity. Our Ceskys stay home because they are pack dogs, and we are members of their pack. Stay with your pack!
It has been fascinating watching Kyrill, our 4 year old Cesky adapt to having a Cesky puppy in the pack. Over the past three weeks he has become increasingly solicitous and protective of Mitzi. He allows her to chew on and tug at his beard. She allows him to roll her over and drag her around. They snuggle up together and snooze on the sofa. They are starting to share their chews and toys.
I am an only child. I have no idea what it would be like to have either younger or older siblings around all the time. I see interesting parallels between how Kyrill and Husband, also an oldest brother, take care of the puppy. Husband seems to worry about how she is doing far more than I do, although we are both attentive to her. It is fun to be a member of a pack.
Who is in your pack? How do you think birth order affected how you deal with people and family?
Guinevere, queen of her yard, her house, her peeps passed away on Sunday. Know as Gwen, Gwenner, Gwen Gwen, Gwenner Butt, Puppy Girl and Nana’s baby, she was anxious and afraid of almost everything: the robot vacuum, pillows, falling leaves, other dogs, cats, men, women, smoke alarms, the bathroom — yet not thunder or fireworks. A fussy eater, she would often decline a morsel of something every other dog on the planet would gobble up and she liked to have her kibble enhanced – cat food, Greek yogurt, maple syrup were just a few (but no wet dog food). She preferred her blankets smoothed out and she always curled up facing the closest door.
A fierce and feared defender of the yard, she would hunt squirrels, rabbits and mice with abandon. Even a possum once. Guinevere never ate a sock, never counter-surfed, never pushed open a partly shut door. She was quite smart, although sometimes she hid that light under a barrel – never did master the concept of bringing the ball back to you. She knew a good number of tricks; treats were appreciated and always taken politely and so so gently – an inborn trait – nothing we ever taught her. The aroma of cheese could attract her to the kitchen from any room in the house. She wasn’t crazy about dressing up, but would do so patiently, usually holding stock still while the obligatory photos were taken.
She passed calmly and quietly in YA’s arms. She was loved and will be missed.
Trail Baboon 