Category Archives: Family

2023, animals, Family, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

It’s Hot

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Today’s Farm Update comes from Ben.

It’s hot. Been like this all week. I turned on the fan for the big chickens and opened the back door for more air movement. 

We moved the chicks out of the tank and into the bigger pen and I unplugged their heat lamp; they’re not needing that anymore. 

Here’s a link to a video of the chicks making their happy little chirpy noises. https://youtu.be/yi9hqYbf5aM

The guineas are making a racket in the background. 

So here’s a video of them yelling at me. https://youtube.com/shorts/Ojzd5cqJ3pY

We’ve got the 5 little guineas in the entry way yet, but one of them jumped to the top of the water bottle, and it’s only one more hop out of the box, so we’ll need to get them in the big tank down in the crib soon. (In fact, an hour after I wrote that, it was out) One of them has a bad leg; seems like it’s up at the hip, and it’s out sideways. We’ve tried to make splints for it, and we tried wrapping the leg up to the body. That was something; the chick sure didn’t like any part of this. Didn’t like being picked up in the first place, didn’t like being manipulated, and didn’t like the wrapping job. I got the wrap to stay on for about 3 minutes. Course I was holding onto it for 3 minutes… once I set it down the wrap was off. 

Google has lot of suggestions on this. We need to try it again. 

We’ve been watching a red headed woodpecker mom and dad feed their family. A maple tree with one large dead limb full of holes and the woodpeckers climb halfway into this hole and we can hear the babies chirping. 

And one morning, I saw a heron flying away. It was right by the barn and it wasn’t very high yet; not sure where he came from. They’re always fun to see. 

I was mowing some grass the other day down behind the barn and knocking down some tall grass that had been too wet to mow earlier this year, and one of the roosters killed a large mouse. He was pecking at something and backing off, then going in again. I’ve heard of chickens getting mice before, yet I’d never seen one. They didn’t eat it.

The lightning bugs are back. It’s fun to watch them at night over the corn fields. There’s an article in this month’s Smithsonian Magazine about a guy studying fireflies. Did you know they’re classified as beetles? They’re not “bugs”. 

Bailey has finally started to shed and she loves being brushed. Except back on her hips; she doesn’t like that. Humphrey loves being brushed too and he’s got a bit of undercoat coming off, but not as much as Bailey. 

The auction is happening this week where I took the fertilizer wagon. It runs through next Tuesday. I’m bidding on a few things too. With any luck, I’ll come out ahead on this deal and not in the hole. Normally it’s the last hour the bidding frenzy happens so we’ll see. 

Crops: 

I talked with crop insurance last week. Soybeans can be replanted, and still covered by insurance, until July 5th. Of course the shorter season varieties produce less too. And unless it rains, there’s no point planting anything. The co-op is ready to spray for weeds, which is the only thing making the fields look green right now, lambs quarter and velvet leave. Stupid weeds. The wild turkeys are out there digging up soybean seeds, and the deer are eating the tops off the corn. Stupid turkeys, stupid deer. 

I’m at a point, I’d almost rather it didn’t rain until mid-July. By then, we could skip the expense of spraying the beans, declare them a loss and plow it up. Just be done with it. If we do get rains this weekend, Then I will need the co-op to spray so I’ll have that expense, and we’ll see what kind of stand I get going. Replanting in July is tougher as it all depends on the weather this fall. PHOTO

I just read an article from the University of MN Extension service, saying you can tell how stressed the corn is by what time of day the leaves curl up. The sooner they curl, the more stressed it is. Here’s my corn at 10:00 AM.

Here it is at 4:00 in the afternoon.

I noticed on Friday, the corn was curled up at 11AM. 

The oats is all headed out and we’ll see how that does. I haven’t heard much from the food oats people since spring. 

My shop project progresses. I sure do have a hard time focusing on any one project and getting it done. I have my weekly ‘to do’ list, plus a general ‘do this summer’ list. And something like ‘replace tractor light’ gets more involved because the connector isn’t the same between tractor and the new light and I ordered some connectors which fit the tractor, but not the light, and so I had John Deere find the right ones and I’ll pick up. And the tractor cab roof light bezel I did get replaced. Took me about 6 trips climbing up on top of the hood as I had the wrong wrenches the first 4 times. (brain fart) then one of the wires had come loose inside. They work now.

When I write down an item like ‘Install window’ it is a lot more complicated than that. I have built all three rough opening frames. But now I need to mount them on the wall, cut out the steel, frame up the opening, and then figure out how we’re going to get this 250 lb. window up there outside. I need some strong young men or women. 🙂 

I also need to remove a lot more stuff in the middle. I move something every day and it’s getting cleaner. I predict the first snow storm in December and I’ll be scrambling to finish some part of this to get machinery in the shed. I’m telling you right now, that’s what’s going to happen. 

I reserved a scissor lift this morning to pick up on July 7. There, now I have a deadline to work towards; I need the floor area mostly clear, I need the walls mostly clear and with the lift I can install ceiling joists and steel and seal off one rafter, and then I can call for insulation on the walls and above the ceiling.

I made sure I dressed the part before I went into the rental place. Sometimes when I take daughter into her programming I just wear my crocs. It’s a rule, you can’t wear crocs into an industrial place like this and order big boy toys. I made sure I was wearing my boots, and a dirty enough hat, my sleeveless shirt, and I dropped enough names so they know I know what I’m doing.

I haven’t had to buy any new tools for this project. Yet. I may pick up something at this auction, but that’s not directly related to this project. I’m still using the worm drive circular saw Kelly gave me for my Birthday back in about 1992. It’s a great saw!

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE BLIND MAN THAT PICKED UP HIS HAMMER AND SAW?

LET’S DO BUILDING SONGS THIS WEEK.

2023, Family, Food, Uncategorized

Spice

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A couple of weeks ago we had an exciting UPS delivery of a box of spices and seasonings from Penzeys. It is always exciting to get a box of spices delivered to the house.

We have ordered spices instead of buying them in the grocery store for decades. The nearest Penzeys store is probably in the Cities or Denver. In Winnipeg there was a bulk spice store we frequented regularly. I think learning to prepare East Indian and Asian foods contributed to our spice inventory. Our justification was that buying from the grocery store was more expensive per ounce and that we were mainly paying for the glass jar.

We typically buy spices in bags and keep them in mason jars. Sometimes we buy a smaller jar of spices we don’t want to have too much of and have it go stale. Here are photos of our spice cupboards.

Husband has a special shelf just for his grilling spices. I try to organize the jars into whole spices, ground spices, and spice blends.

Both our son and daughter buy spices like we do. Our son has his in a lovely pantry off his kitchen, in pint jars that are labeled and in alphabetical order. I imagine there are Baboons who have even more spices than we do. I can’t think of a more lovey and useful luxury.

What are your favorite spices and seasonings? How do you store your spices? How do you organize your spices and seasonings?

2023, Family, gardening, home, Uncategorized

The Air Turned Blue

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Saturday was supposed to be a day of house cleaning and weeding, a less vigorous Saturday than the previous weekend when we exhausted ourselves with garden work.

The day started off calmly enough. We went to church to check on the garden and plant a couple of bedding plants a parishioner had left for us. We drove back home, and I noticed that there was water gushing out of the hose in the front yard. I knew that neither of us had turned on the faucet that morning, and Husband said he must have forgot to turn off the water the night before when he washed his hands. The end of the hose was right by the egress window in the smallest basement bedroom. The water had been running for 12 hours.

We have struggled with water filling up the egress window well during heavy rains, especially when the down spouts are plugged. We have replaced drywall below the window in that bedroom twice, and removed some of the carpet right below the window after it flooded. We solved the problem with the down spouts by building up dirt around the window well so water from the down spouts flowed away from the window. Husband ran downstairs and came right back up and said there was water everywhere.

There was about an inch of water on the bedroom floor, and it had spread under the walls into the furnace room and the larger adjacent bedroom. The carpet in the hallway was also soaked. We got the wet vac and started moving things out of the bedroom. We pulled up the remaining carpet in the small bedroom and removed the pad. After 90 minutes of using the wet vac the pad was still sopping wet. It is now in pieces in the garage. We were too exhausted to pull up the wet carpet in the other bedroom and hallway. We are waiting for a water damage company to send a crew out later today and they can remove that carpet and pad. Husband feels awful about this.

Our plan for next winter was to paint the basement and put in new carpet. The basement looks dreadful now. I haven’t cussed like I did Saturday for a really long time. My mother would have said that the air turned blue had she heard me. I don’t know the origin of that phrase, but it was pretty blue around here.

What are some of your favorite phrases and euphemisms? Have you ever had water damage?

I

2023, animals, Family, Farming Update, Gatherings, History, Kids, Uncategorized, work

Dry

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Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben

Daughters program held their second annual prom on Friday. It was fun to see the participants dressed up and waving and dancing. Daughter came out blowing kisses. That’s been her thing from her cheerleading days. She loves the limelight. She does have a tendency to light up a room when she enters. I had to laugh, staff asked me if I could tie a tie and I did that for a couple of the gentlemen. Another lost skill that means I’m old. And I thanked my dad for teaching me how to tie a tie.

On Tuesday night, Kelly and I had dinner at the Mayo Clinic Foundation house. It is the former home of Dr. William J. Mayo and his wife Hattie Damon Mayo. We were there for the Pathology Residents Graduation, the program that Kelly works with. It was a full 5 course meal with 3 forks, 3 glasses, a charger plate

and food I couldn’t pronounce, and was held up in the third floor Balfour Hall. (The Mayo’s oldest daughter, Carrie, was married to Dr. Balfour) We had time to snoop around the house and see some Frederic Remington statues, Dr. Will’s study, and wonder at living in such a place as this. The gentleman who was the guide said he’s been there for 18 years.



I’m still working on the shop project. I don’t feel like I got much done on it this week; Been busy with ‘stuff’, just not that stuff. Last Friday they poured the outside slab of cement and I’ve started to back fill that. It needs about 10 days before I can start driving tractors on it. I picked up some windows for the shop and hope to get them in next week.

It’s not like I’ve been busy cutting grass…

The baby chicks are doing real well, just starting to get tail feathers. Of the eggs I put in the incubator, we only got the one early chick, and then we got five guineas. Kelly spent several hours on Saturday trying to convince one of our broody hens that they’d like to be the mom they think they’re already doing in their heads. But none of them wanted anything to do with an actual live chick. We tried getting them to sit on some actual eggs over in a side pen, but they didn’t want that either. You can lead a hen to eggs, but you can’t make her sit on them. The guineas are living in a cardboard box in our entryway.


Crops are still looking pretty rough. The oats is just starting to head out, (we call that the ‘boot stage’), and, according to the seed dealers, they haven’t seen any oat fields in our area that look good. It’s about knee high. It should be almost waist high. I expect there will still be an oats crop, it just won’t be that great. And with the shorter height, there won’t be as much straw either.


The corn is still doing all right, it’s about knee-high. It will be canopied soon. But it’s coming up on a point when it will be taking up massive amounts of nutrients and moisture. Moisture requirements are between .2 to.3”/day at its peak and this will also be when the length and girth of the ear are set. Stress then makes bad yields well before the ears even show up.

My Soybeans. Ugh. They still look terrible.

There are plants out there, but they’re small, and many haven’t emerged. I drove to Northfield on Wednesday, and it appears if you were able to plant soybeans early enough, and they got some of that moisture in the ground, they got off to a good start. A lot of beans were planted in dry ground and it just hasn’t rained. I’m wondering if it wasn’t also the fact I planted with the drill, and most are planted with a planter, and that gave them better seed to soil contact than I got. Seed to soil contact is important, and most years I haven’t had a problem, perhaps because it’s rained. So, this crop feels like it’s already 3 weeks behind, even though it was planted when it should have been. We’ll see.

I baled the roadsides on Thursday. Not much there. I cut some waterways too and got 50 bales total. Most years I have 70 bales just on the road. The camera I added last year to watch the twine strings, was super helpful!

I find it interesting how the tools change by the size of the tractor. Our oldest tractor, the little, two cylinder John Deere 630, has a plain wood handled hammer, a straight screwdriver, and an 8 inch adjustable wrench in the toolbox. Our next tractor, the 6410, the one I use for just about everything, has two 10 inch adjustable wrenches, two screwdrivers, a claw hammer with a fiberglass handle, and some various adapters. Then our big tractor, the 8200, has a 12 inch wrench, socket set, a 4 pound sledge hammer, and one large screwdriver / pry bar in the toolbox. The bigger the tractor, the bigger, the tools I guess. It seems like, when I was growing up, we fixed a lot more things out in the field. Every tractor had various nuts and bolts, and chain links in the toolbox. Add a piece of wire from a nearby fence and you could repair and keep going. These days I don’t hardly fix anything out in the field. It doesn’t seem like things break as much, or it’s something I have to go home to fix.

My shadow, Bailey, has to go everywhere I go. Humphrey just keeps an eye on me so he knows where I am but then he might go sleep at the house. I was laying on the floor of the shop, on my new cement, changing the drawbar length on the tractor and there’s Bailey, right in my face to help. I can appreciate that she wants to be my friend and she’s such a good dog and she makes me laugh, but does she have to be my friend from half an inch away? Can’t she be my friend from 6 inches away?

She also had a 12” piece of barb wire stuck in her coat and trailing behind her. Eventually I was able to snip off the part of her fur holding it tight.

EVER HAD ANYTHING SNAGGED IN YOUR HAIR?

2023, Family, Fantasy, gardening, home, The Future, Uncategorized

Best Buyers

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I was walking in our back yard the other day and I started thinking about all the things I want to tell the next people who buy our home about our plants and shrubs.

We have lived here since 1988 and have landscaped and put in all sorts of plants and shrubs that we care deeply about. I want whoever buys our home to know how to care for the plants in ways that work. I am imagining, of course, that they will keep all the plants we have and just add more.

Husband and I like to imagine that the ideal people to buy our home will be a retired couple, preferably a farm couple who like to garden and can, and who want enough bedrooms for family to visit. Nothing too fancy, but with a nice garden and not too much lawn to mow. We won’t be putting our house on the market for a couple of years yet, and we have lots to do yet to refurbish the interior. I hope whoever moves in after us will be as happy as we have been here.

What sort of people would you want to live in your home after you? What would they need to know about your house to be successful there.

2023, Family, Health, Medicine, Uncategorized

Carpal Trouble

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Husband is a sort of left-handed person who does everything he learned before the age of 5 with his left hand. Everything he learned thereafter he does with his right hand. He needs both his hands to function. He switches hands often. Although he writes left-handed, he is right-eye dominant.

He has spent decades typing/ keyboarding multitudes of psychological evaluations, and is a keyboard slammer, particularly with his right hand. It is no surprise that he has carpal tunnel issues in his right hand. It didn’t help that he fell on the ice this winter while walking the dog and sprained his right hand.

He is scheduled for carpal tunnel surgery June 30th. He is quite nervous as he has never had surgery before. I wish I could be more sympathetic. My first surgery, for an umbilical hernia, was at age 9 months, with several surgeries since. I just hope his fingers are no longer numb and he can button his own cuff buttons.

Have you or anyone you know had carpal tunnel surgery? Did it help? What are your surgical experiences?

2023, Family, Food, Travel, Uncategorized, work

Coffee Time

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We are incredibly spoiled, and order six pounds of coffee beans every six weeks or so from this coffee place in Brookings, SD. The beans are dark roasted. I place the order on-line, and they arrive, freshly roasted, sometimes the next day via Speedee Delivery. They are Carmen Pampas/San Ignacio blend beans from Bolivia/Peru, and for every pound we order the coffee place makes a donation to destitute schools in Bolivia. The coffee tastes heavenly. We like it strong. We only drink it in the morning. The box of beans is redolent of coffee aroma, even before we open it.

I really don’t know how the coffee place and Speedee Delivery manage to get the beans to us so quickly. It is 500 miles from there to here. We only drink coffee we brew at home, and never go to coffee places in town. I like my coffee with half and half and sugar. Husband needs heavy cream and sugar in his coffee. We use a Bodum French press pot to brew our coffee.

The other day I was able to greet the Speedee Delivery guy when he delivered our coffee order. He told me he couldn’t stand the smell of coffee, and it was really hard when he had to go into coffee shops and got all these boxes of coffee beans to deliver. I sure hope he didn’t have to drive 500 miles to deliver ours! Poor guy!

How do you take your coffee? What cooking smells can’t you abide? What comestibles are you fussy about?

2023, Automotive, Family, Kids, Technology

Gimme gimme

18 Comments

All of our car talk the other day struck a nerve here.

YA loves cars.  She has always had all the cars in the neighborhood memorized and can tell you the make of any car she sees as we’re driving down the street.  I wondered if she might go into some kind of automotive engineering but she never seemed interested in that route.

When it was time for her to purchase her first car, she did a lot of research.  Unfortunately the first car we went to look at turned out to be one of those cars that was totaled out by an insurance company and fixed up by a third party.  As these cars are generally not insurable and YA needed my name on the loan paperwork, I was able to put my foot down easily on this. 

The second car was at a dealership and didn’t start.  I would have left right then – what kind dealership doesn’t even run down to check that the car will start before an appointment?  But she pleaded with me so we looked another car on the lot.  It didn’t look to me like the kind of thing she would like but she REALLY wanted a car.  The salesman then tried to convince her (while I sitting right there) that leasing a new car would be good.  Her eyes got that kind of glazed-over look.  I squashed this idea as well as telling the sales guy that he was out of line.  But she REALLY wanted a car, so ended up buying one that had fairly low mileage and pretty good price.  I told the sales guy that if he was even thinking of telling her it was pre-owned by a little old grandma, to think again.

This was the car that got sideswiped and totaled out two years later.  Back down to a different dealership.  This car turned out to be a stick, which was why it had been sitting on the lot for a while; the website didn’t say it was a manual so everybody who came to see it passed on it.  I suggested to her that if the dealership couldn’t be bothered to fix the listing online, maybe they weren’t to be overly trusted.  But she REALLY wanted a car so she signed on the dotted line.  Luckily she learned to drive in Civetta, my Honda Civic, which had been a stick. 

She’s whined about this car for a bit over the last few years and in the past month or so had set out a timeline (about 8 months from now) for looking for a new car.

Fast forward to last week.  I got some frantic texts – she had locked herself out of her car at the station/carwash down the street.  Apparently she got out of the car to pay for the carwash and the door swung shut.  I know you’re thinking, how did it get locked?  Well, if the car is RUNNING when you get out to pay for the carwash…….  I drove down with her spare key, but of course it didn’t work.  It took about 20 minutes and $80  to get somebody there to break into her car (AAA had a 2-hour wait).  As I was driving home I thought to myself “that’s the nail in the coffin for that car.”

And I was correct.  A couple of days ater, she took off at lunch with a “I’m going to look at a car” called over her shoulder.  I thought to myself “she’s going to buy a car today”.  Luckily the days of my having to go with her are over.    I was correct again – she bought a car.  A new car.  Honda (I can’t remember the make) with some kind of hatch back and I think it’s a hybrid as well.  Won’t know for sure until the end of June when she picks it up.  She’s done the math and says she can afford it, although she did sheepishly say she should probably cut back on some of her clothing/shoe purchases for a while.  Good thing she’s living rent-free with mom!

There’s been A LOT of car talk the last few days – I’m just grinning it and bearing it – hopefully it will die down for a bit soon.  At least until it gets closer to the car’s arrival!

What is something that you just had to have?

2023, animals, Family, pets, Uncategorized

Forbidden Fruit

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Oh. terriers!! Ever since we got our Cesky Terrier in May, 2022, we have kept the basement door shut to keep him from going into the basement to chase the cat and do indiscriminate marking to claim the territory as his own. This rather isolated the cat, but we tried to give her as much attention as we could.

Being a terrier, Kyrill turned getting to the basement into a game and a challenge. He would wait for any opportunity to get down there, lurking to see if we forgot to shut the basement door, then racing down the stairs, chasing the cat, and eating her food.

We picked him up from the boarding kennel yesterday, and I decided to change strategies regarding the basement. Before we picked him up I put a gate in front of the basement room where the litter box and cat food resides so the cat could get in but Kyrill couldn’t. He was so excited to see us when we got him home that he didn’t even notice the basement door was open. Once he noticed, he immediately ran downstairs, but, because we didn’t chase him and because he wanted to be with us he came right back upstairs. He ran up and down rapidly a couple more times, but eventually settled on the sofa with me. The cat walked into the livingroom several times and he ignored her.

I could kick myself for not doing this earlier. Now I have a much happier cat who can wander upstairs as she wishes, and a dog who is probably waiting for an opportunity to make some other activity into a game.

Why is it we want what we can’t have? What have you wanted and then regretted once you got it?

2023, Automotive, Family, Travel, Uncategorized

Wheels

32 Comments

We are back from our trip to South Dakota, happy but weary. I noticed as we drove our Honda van East out of Bismarck on Thursday that the odometer passed 153,000 miles. It wasn’t too long ago we were thrilled to get a vehicle past 100,000 miles. What happened?

We have two vehicles- a 2011 Honda van and a 2014 Toyota Tacoma pickup. I am unsure how many miles I should expect to get on the Honda, I really don’t want to think about getting a new vehicle just yet. I need to rethink the need for a van if we have a pickup. They are all so expensive, and I come from a father who never in his life bought a used vehicle. It was unthinkable in his opinion.

What vehicle did you get the most miles on? If you got a different vehicle, would it be new or used? What is your most memorable means of transportation?