Category Archives: Family

2025, Family, Farming Update, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

First False Spring?

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

I feel like I’ve been really busy the past week. I don’t know why exactly, I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing, I just feel like I’ve been running from one thing to the next.

However I know spring is coming, I heard a kill deer! And the Sandhill Cranes! And I got out the pot with the chives in it. There’s still some ice on the north side of the house and I saw a small snowbank in a patch of grass, but we’re getting there. As I write this on Friday, they’re predicting thunderstorms for Friday evening. ” They” say, the first frost will be six months after the first thunderstorm. Which gets us into mid-September which, while not ideal, wouldn’t be unheard of either. There was a large halo around the moon Wednesday night. Google says spiritually, some traditions see a lunar halo as a positive omen, indicating a time of good fortune, spiritual alignment, and harmony. Good, let’s run with that one.

I spent Thursday at a meeting on nitrogen management in Southeast Minnesota. A continuing education course of sorts. Focus on the southeast Minnesota region is relevant because of the karst geography and sink holes and how rapidly ground water can enter drinking water. Please know, farmers care a great deal about their farms and the water we are drinking, and our soils as well. Putting on more fertilizer or chemicals than a crop can use is a waste of money. There were a lot of charts, and graphs, and a lot of data presented. If you notice from this picture, commercial fertilizer started being available shortly after World War II and greatly accelerated in the 1960s.

Soybeans came into play in the 1940s.

It’s interesting to think how much of our farm practices are not really that old.

One of the comments made was that we could do a lot better with our fertilizer practices if we could more accurately predict the weather. A lot of fertilizer and nitrogen is applied in the spring as pre-planting or at planting. And yet the following picture shows the plants greatest need for Nitrogen is tasseling through ear development.

While the greatest amount of precipitation and the greatest chance to lose nitrogen happens in the spring.

So why do we apply it in the spring?

Well, that’s kinda just how it works. Corn does need some starter fertilizer to get going from seed. And we do soil testing to know how much nitrogen is already in the soil, and it’s just easiest to do it before anything is planted. I have done some ‘side-dressing’, which is injecting anhydrous nitrogen between the rows when the plant is 18-24” tall, but there’s also more damage to the standing corn when turning at the ends, or not driving straight. And some guys, with the right equipment, can apply liquid nitrogen when the plant is 6’ tall just before it tassels, but that takes tall sprayers, and again, there is crop loss. In my small fields, I’d damage so much turning around on the ends that it would defeat any gains.

 I’m greatly simplifying a lot of this, it’s too much to get into here, but it was all really very interesting.

And much of the data presented yesterday really didn’t show much difference between spring applications and later applications. We just have to know that we are going to have less available for the crop. It was also noted, we see so many new products claiming to save money and time. But if the cost of the new ideas ultimately don’t create much of an improved crop yield, ($$$), then they fall out of favor.

The bathroom! Here is a before photo-

And finally, minus the shower glass yet, the after photo-

It looks really nice. It IS really nice. Kelly has already enjoyed the bathtub several times. I really like the rich color of the cabinets in the laundry room.

The heated floor is nice.

It was hard finding room for towel bars and grab bars, and we probably gave up some storage that we hope we don’t come to regret. But it sure is an improvement.

We had a bidet in the old bathroom, one of those simple ones from Costco that you simply add to the toilet seat. This time around, we ordered an actual bidet seat. It’s quite the deal. Or at least so I’m told. I haven’t used it yet. I haven’t used that function yet.
When you approach the toilet, the lid opens on its own and a nightlight comes on. For us gentlemen, there’s even a light inside, I guess so we can tell what we’re aiming at. Our contractor said he’d seen a lot of toilets, but he didn’t think he’d seen one that fancy before. Lest you think otherwise, it is not gold plated.

Later this summer we’ll start on the downstairs pink bathroom remodel. I do not expect a bidet in that one.

WHAT WOULD YOU ADD TO YOUR BATHROOM? WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN AT NIGHT LATELY?

2025, Family, Food, Travel, Uncategorized

Seriously Early Dinner?

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With YA out of town, I’m in my “eat what’s here and don’t shop” mode.  I actually enjoy this part of YA traveling.  (Not as crazy about being in charge of Guinevere’s early morning and late night trips outside, but I’ll live.)

This week there have been quite a few leftovers in the fridge – more than usual.  Since I also worry about food going bad, I decided that I would have dinner for breakfast.  I’ve done breakfast for dinner many times in my life but except for a handful of cold pizza starts to a day, I’ve never actually heated up what I think of as dinner food and had it as the first meal in the morning.

I heated up some rice with carrots and parsnips and had it alongside some brie and applesauce.  It was very nice and now I’m thinking I should switch things up more often.  The only  hitch was the feeling that I needed dessert afterwards!

Do you have any foods that you wouldn’t normally eat for breakfast?

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

A Decent Week for Weather

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHATS YOUR FAVORITE CLEANING PRODUCT?  ANY MONKEY STORIES?

2025, Family, Gatherings, Kids, Movies, Uncategorized

What’s In A Name

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A couple of Sundays ago, Husband and I arrived at church to play bells with the hand bell choir and found, upon reading the bulletin, that there was to be a baptism. That wasn’t at all unusual, but what was unusual was the name the parents chose for their son. Yes, we were to participate in the baptism of a little boy who had been named “Tarzan”.

Of all the names to hang on someone, Tarzan isn’t one that immediately pops into my mind. We have had some unusual names for baptisms lately, like Coven, pronounced like cove and not like the name for a group of witches. Tarzan, however, really takes the cake. What would you call him for short? Zan? Tarzy? Tartar? Zanzan?

I really can’t imagine what could have led people to choose that name, and I can foresee a rough time for the child once he starts school. We didn’t get to see little Tarzan as the family all had the flu and they cancelled and haven’t rescheduled the baptism.

What are some unusual names that you have run across? If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?

2025, Family, home, Uncategorized, work

Taking Inventory

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Since I have been home full time after retiring on February 1, I have had time to sort through some closets, papers, and freezers that had been pretty well neglected over the past couple of years. It has dawned on me that we can either have a clean, organized home or work full time. We can’t do both. Husband is still working essentially full time and has been for the past several years.

Because of our harried work schedules and after work exhaustion, things like papers have been thrown on our work desk or filing cabinets to be gone through “later”. It is hard to see what you have in closets if it is poorly organized and things are just stuffed in. It is also hard when you live in a food desert and you love to cook and you run across hard to come by items that you get excited about and buy a whole bunch because they are scarce, and then you throw them in your poorly organized freezers and you sort of forget you have them as they get covered up with subsequently purchased groceries, and then you inadvertently buy more the next time you run across them.

I decided to start by sorting and organizing the freezer that has all the sausages, ground meat, lamb, and homemade brodo. I was rather dismayed to discover we have seven pounds of ground veal, five pounds of ground lamb, and four legs of lamb and a huge lamb rack. Veal and lamb are virtually impossible to obtain out here, so we bought a bunch when we had the chance, then forgot we had it. There will be meatballs and meatloaf on the menu for the next several months. I have plans for one of the lamb legs for Easter.

I also organized the linen cupboard, and found we have eight sets of queen sheets. We only have three queen beds, and we only sleep in one of them, and I have no idea why I thought we needed so many. The sheets are all in great shape. We will not need to buy new sheets ever again.

I have several closets to go through and a couple of freezers to organize. I am so glad I will only work part time starting in March so that I can finish sorting and organizing.

How do you fold fitted sheets? What are you prone to buy too much of? Any helpful home organizing tips?

2025, Family, Health, Kids, Medicine, Uncategorized

Self Care

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Aside from a mild bout of diverticulitis when we were in Brookings, I felt pretty good during the visit. Everyone else seemed to feel pretty good, too.

Grandson went home from school on Wednesday with a fever that had spiked to 102° by yesterday afternoon. Daughter-in-Law was also home with a fever, and Son was at home taking care of both of them.

Yesterday Husband started feeling puny, as the say out here, with fatigue and a a low grade fever, so he took a nap and decided to not go into the office in the afternoon. He chose not to take any Tylenol so as to give his immune system time to heat up and fight off whatever was plaguing him. By evening he felt better.

Thus far I have not started to feel “puny”, but I plan to engage in my self care, which is to stay at home, cook, sleep late, and not leave the house until Sunday morning when we sing at the 9:00 church service and play bells at 3:00 at the local If Music Be The Food Of Love concert at our church to raise money and donations to the food pantry.

What is your self care when you start to feel “puny”. What are your euphemisms for illness? What major childhood illnesses did you have?

2025, Family, History, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Remnants

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My mother and her four paternal aunts (Lena, Meta, Bertha, and Greta) spent a great deal of time in the mid-1930’s filling my mother’s Hope Chest with patchwork quilts they sewed. They used cloth scraps from their own and others’ unneeded clothing as well as larger pieces for backing. Mom never really used them and just kept them in her cedar chest.

I started using them after Husband and I married. There were four of them. One is still in tremendous shape and we have it on a bed in the basement. The quilts worked best as blankets under the bedspread as they are all sized for double beds. Two of the quilts disintegrated after about 10 years. I decided to preserve the third one and patched it as best I could and put on a new backing. I hung it on the wall in my work office for many years until time and gravity started it to sag and tear at the seams.

It has been in a cabinet in my new office until I started to clean and get rid of stuff preparatory to my retirement. I took the quilt out to our van and left it there to be used as part of winter survival gear

Husband brought it into our son’s house when we were visiting there last week, and our grandson insisted that we put it on his bed, and he slept under it every night we were in Brookings. Mind you, it hadn’t been laundered in 25 years, and was probably full of dust, but grandson loved it and wasn’t happy when we took it home. I told him I wanted to patch it better and we would bring it back to him at our next visit. It dawned on me that the quilt is about 90 years old. My mother and her aunts would be pleased some of their handwork is still being used and loved.

What precious things do you have that have been handed down? What do you want to hand down for future generations? What do you think are essentials for “Hope Chests” these days?

2025, Family, Food, Games, Gatherings, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

Fear And Cold

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We have been at our son’s home since Friday, and the cold weather has made for a great deal of family time. Son, Daughter in Law, Daughter, Husband, me, and Grandson are all here together. There has been lots of time playing Uno, putting together jigsaw puzzles, doing art projects with grandson, cooking big meals, watching the first two How To Train Your Dragon movies, playing with the Westie and the cat and sleeping late.

I have been a nervous wreck since before we drove here on Friday. The cold frightens me more than it used to. I have developed great anxiety anticipating driving in this cold weather, mainly surrounding the van breaking down in the middle of nowhere and then freezing to death.  We were supposed to go to see my 93 year old aunt yesterday in Watertown, SD, about 40 miles north of Brookings, and I was so relieved when she phoned in the morning to say she had a cough and a fever and we shouldn’t come. Husband has been going out to start the van at intervals and even drove it into town yesterday, so he is keeping the engine warm.

This cold weather is unprecedented in my experience, and I am really worried about the trip home on Tuesday. The subzero windchills aren’t supposed to let up until Wednesday, and I might try to convince Husband to stay another day and leave on Wednesday. We have lots of blankets in the event of a breakdown. The van is working well, but you never know!

What do you have in your winter survival kit in your vehicle? How are you coping with the cold? What are your favorite indoor family activities?