You all know I’m a little obsessed with a certain event each August. I like to be organized but normally don’t start getting going until a couple of weeks before (athough before retirement I used to request the days off several months in advance).
YA and the State Fair, on the other hand, are rarin’ to go now. In the past couple of weeks there has been a barrage of emails. Grandstand announcements and ticket offers. Highlighted fair beverages (of which there seem to be A LOT). New vendors and new foods.
YA has definitely inherited some of my love of lists; over the weekend she came into my room with a pad of paper and announced that it was time to make our food list. She started doing this a few years ago so that we remember what we want to get while we are at the fair. This list includes our favorites as well as items from the new foods email that look interesting to us. It looks like a long list but it’s spread out over several days and we don’t always get to everything. I did notice that nothing from last year’s new items have jumped to our “old favorites” list.
The floodgates are open now. I printed off all our tickets as well as my fair packing list. Can’t go off to the fair without all we need in the turtle bag. We even started a little pool of cash for the big event.
Anything you’re preparing for (or obsessing over) this summer?
On Friday YA made our annual trek to pet deer and goats and llamas at Fawn-Doe-Rosa. The route to get there is straight through Lindstrom, which is a pretty little town with deep Swedish roots and one of the cutest water towers ever (see photo above). But it turns out that it’s not actually a water tower any longer.
Back in 1992, the city built a new water tower because the original was no longer able to meet the demand. At that time, the older water tower was “repurposed” as the world’s largest coffee pot. A local business owner funded the conversion – adding the spout, handle and knob along with repainting it. Initially there was a steam function but it hasn’t been working for years.
Several months ago the city council approved an initiative to spruce up the paint job and also to restore the steam function. This time around, much of the cost was raised by the said of small water tower replicas. Four weeks ago, the steam poured out of the pot again for the first time in years.
Just by luck, we were driving through Lindstrom at exactly 10 a.m., which is one of the two times per day that the steam functions. YA was telling me about all this so I did a quick u-turn so we could circle back and get a good look. There were folks hanging out on the street corners to watch as well. It was cloudy, so while we could see the steam, I think on a clear day it would be more impressive.
A fun tangent, I recently read Off Main Street by Michael Perry and one of the essays is called “You Are Here” which is about water towers in the Midwest. It was entertaining and I learned there’s more to a water tower than meets the eye. Highly recommended reading. Fun confabulation of reading and traveling!
Have you seen any fun water towers? Ever climbed up one?
In weird news this week, it’s been reported in the South China Morning Post that a 64-year old man has undergone surgery to remove a toothbrush from his stomach. The kicker is that he swallowed the toothbrush when he was 12. Apparently he was afraid to tell his parents and figured that it would just dissolve. Turns out even stomach acid is no match for hard plastic – his stomach started to bother him last year.
It took the surgery team 80 minutes to remove the 7-inch toothbrush – it was stuck in “a crook of the intestine” where it had been living happily for decades. Yikes.
I’m not sure how you can swallow a toothbrush but as Hamlet said “more things in heaven and earth”. Maybe he is one of those folks who brushes their tongue with their toothbrush and got a little carried away? Maybe the dog surprised him in the bathroom while he was brushing? Maybe he was practicing to become a sword swallower?
What kind of toothbrush do you use? Toothpaste? Floss?
When YA and I go to the zoo, we normally follow a particular pattern of what we see in what order. I’m not sure why, it’s just a habit we’ve fallen into.
There’s been a lot going at the new zoo (Minnesota Zoo – it will always be the new zoo to me – unless a third zoo opens up in Twin Cities – then I’ll have to revise). There is the sea lion show which has been getting good reviews, new Bennett’s wallabies from Australia, a new Black Water Monitor, the new Red Panda / Crane exhibit, the summer Llama Trek AND the bird show has moved outside for the summer.
You can’t just show up at the zoo and get in these days – you have to get reservations ahead of time (this is a post-covid thing) and you also have to get reservations for the sea lions and the bird show. No charge for these. For the sea lion show if there are still seats at 5 minutes before the show, you can get in without the reservation. For the bird show, YA and I were there fairly early to get the seats we wanted and to settle in and drink the pop we had just bought – if they were asking folks to show their reservations, we didn’t see it.
SO… with all this going on, we had an agenda and as the day went on, we adjusted as needed. First Tropics. This took longer than usual because the tapir had just gotten out of its pool and decided to do zoomies:
I’ve hardly ever seen a tapir walking around much less running. Clearly nobody else had either, judging by the crowd it was drawing. Even the two zoo staff were filming!
We had time to do the Minnesota trail before we headed over to the sea lion show. YA got some good photos of the coyote and the mountain lion.
Sea lion show was great and so was Llama Trek. It was almost as if the llamas had all had a “Photo Op” seminar over the winter:
The tiger waterfall was turned on and the bird show was very nice, ending with a flurry of beautiful macaws free-flying into and out of the exhibit. We got to everything we wanted and at the right times. Fabulous day at the zoo!
When was the last time you had to keep to a schedule?
Happy day after July 4! Everyone still got all their fingers and toes?
Corn and oats both made knee high.
It’s been a busy week for a lot of different reasons. Monday morning I got a call from the co-op asking if I could pull out a stuck sprayer. No, I couldn’t, I was about to head to town with daughter and I also had an appointment. They called neighbor Dave, and he ran right over. I was pretty sure where the sprayer was stuck: a field that was wet when I tried to plant it a month ago, and that was before we got 6 inches of rain. I talked to Dave later and he said all he did was get the sprayer more stuck. The sprayer driver had gotten out and looked before he drove into the field, and Dave agreed, it was dry on the top. But you broke through that crust and it was muck underneath. And he didn’t get more than about 10’ into the field. Heck, I didn’t even think that was the wet spot.
Eventually a tow truck was called to pull the sprayer out. This was one of those fields that neighbor K wanted for a deer food plot and it’s the first time it had been worked up in 20 some years. I kept telling the neighbor there’s a reason this field was put in the Conservation Reserve Program back then, but I don’t think he’s figured it out yet.
Sunday afternoon Kelly and I had our usual Sunday Farm Gator Tour and we also found a wet spot in a field. Didn’t get stuck but close enough.
When I came home Monday afternoon there was another drone at the farm. neighbors Dave and Parm, who rent our pasture hired a company that uses a drone to spray for weeds. They used the drone to spray the wonderful crop of thistles. It was really pretty cool to watch. The pasture is so rugged, with so many gullies, and steep slopes, that you can’t drive it with a tractor and mower, so this was an absolutely perfect application for a drone. Talking with the operators, the drone will cost you about $25,000. They also have $75,000 in the spray trailer, complete with a 30 kW generator on the front, landing pad on the top, room for a second drone, chargers, chemical storage tanks, etc. Maybe we could all chip in and buy one. Then what should we do with it? Oh, you also need the drone operator’s license, which is fairly involved, and a license from the federal government allowing you to spray chemicals from a drone.
I did cut the grass on the sides of our road, and the one small field here in the front of the shed. I put the exhaust pipe and the new muffler on the 630 and used that for raking. That thing is as loud as ever. I never really thought about it before but evidently John Deere two cylinder tractors were not known for being quiet. I got it baled Wednesday afternoon. The baler worked perfect, never missing a knot on the bales, and my camera to watch the knots, is still slick to have.
Kelly’s tractor and the smoking wire I still haven’t completely diagnosed but I’ve ruled out a few things.I replaced a couple wires and I’ve disconnected both the rear light and the front lights and the wire still gets hot, so now I’m not sure if it’s the switch, or there’s something else wrong. I don’t really know what it could be, and adding to the mystery is a blown fuse on the dash. And if the fuse is blown, why is anything still working?
There’s a couple different places I order old tractor parts from. Lind Brothers included a bag of microwave popcorn in their box. It was really good popcorn. Steiner Tractor Parts always puts “Cow Tails“ candy in with their parts. When I order theatre stuff from Monkey Wrench, they throw a handful of candy in their boxes, usually something banana shaped. And Sweetwater, of course has to put candy in their box too. Can’t have a name like that and not include candy.
The padawans and I spent three days working on summer remodeling projects at the Rochester Repertory theatre. One day I painted the bottom of the balcony black.
We are adding a few more hanging racks in the costume room, and trying to remove an old boiler that was original to the building,1959. I asked a few plumbers how to get it out and they’d all groan and roll their eyes and say get a sledgehammer and a couple young men. Every day I bring a new Implement of destruction, we are working on it, and it’s slow going.
The big job will be insulating a north wall which is just concrete block. I have two by fours and blue insulation board and I’m bidding on a power actuated nail gun on an auction. It’s a “hammer“, that uses a 22 blank as a charge to drive a nail. I’ve seen them, never used one. Sounds like fun. I think that would be faster than trying to use cement screws. This is the auction that I took that old cultivator, running gear, and garage door to be sold. As of Friday the cultivator is at $41, the wagon is at $6 and the garage door at $7. Drifting off to sleep one night I bid on a really nice 26 foot cabin cruiser, and a mower. I need to not open the auction page as I’m falling asleep. Thankfully I was outbid on both within a day or two. The boat was gonna be a steel at $6! Kelly said I should at least go up to $10. It jumped to $96. We thought we could make a B&B out of it. Park it out on the lawn.
REMEMBER CRACKER JACK’S? WHAT SURPRISES WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET IN A BOX?
Yesterday YA had the day off so we decided to tackle a couple of outdoor projects first thing in the morning before the heat took over the day.
I started with putting some paving stones on the south side of the house under the water spigot. The pavers were left over from when we expanded the little patio two summers ago so I thought I’d put them to better use than just being stacked up in the garage. Unfortunately the ants didn’t think this was a grand project and it took a bit for them to give it up and I did get a couple of good bites out of it before they moved their party elsewhere.
By the time I was done, YA had made a good start on edging our northern “garden” with bricks that we inherited from our neighbor who just moved. She asked which of the jobs I wanted – digging or placing the bricks. While placing the bricks seemed like the easier of the two jobs, I know my daughter well. If I placed the bricks, she would eventually come behind me and “fix” what I had done. I admit freely that she is more patient with a lot of home projects and therefore does an overall better job. This made it an easy choice – I dug and let her place the bricks. It was a great decision. As I dug I watched her running her hands along the bricks to make sure they were even and using her finger as a measurement tool to make sure they were all the same depth. I would not have thought to do either of these steps.
We didn’t finish yesterday. It got a bit too steamy so we knocked off about half way through and vowed to finish in a couple days when it’s a bit cooler. Looks good so far.
YA works in the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Occasionally she also goes into the office on a Monday or a Friday. When she has a big project, she likes the quiet of the office as well as the big screen on her desk.
There is a fairly complicated (from my perspective) process for her to get ready for work. During her junior high and high school years she started wearing make-up and taught herself how to apply it. As part of her beauty routine, she has a massive number of products, from masks to foundations to mascara to eyelash curlers to lip glosses. Massive. She can sit at her make-up table for upwards of 30 minutes some mornings. It’s exhausting just to watch.
She learned none of this from me. Not one smidge. I think I’ve told the story of when I quit wearing make-up; it was well before she was born. Even when I DID put on make-up it wasn’t anything as robust as YA’s routine.
Every now and then, when she is in a rush (usually when we’re going some place on the weekend or if she’s gotten up really late), she can cut the time down but very very rarely goes without. On work mornings, I don’t usually pay that much attention. I have my morning stuff to do (feed animals, make bed, eat breakfast, gym, errands, etc.)
Last week on Friday, she came rushing down and out the door before I even had a chance to look up. After 15 minutes, our ring doorbell dinged my phone, which was in my pocket and as I was opening the app, I heard the front door open and YA’s footsteps running up the stairs. She didn’t come down for almost 10 minutes, way too long for a forgotten key card or computer mouse. When she was headed for the front door I asked what she had forgotten and she replied “I forgot to put on make-up.”
I’m still thinking about this. First off, how do you forget something that is so much a part of your every single day routine. And mostly, why get 10 minutes from the house (about half way to the office) and turn back to put on make-up when it’s Friday and there’s next to no one in the office? Her answer when I asked her later was “just in case”. When I asked “just in case what?” all I got was a shoulder shrug.
So, yet one more instance of my certainty that I live with an alien from another world!
Do you have anything that is an every-single-day-no-matter-what routines?
Yesterday Husband declared that after we move to Minnesota we are taking a trip to Alexandria so he can buy a canoe.
Husband has wanted a canoe for decades. He chose the Alexandria shop on the recommendation of someone from the Wenonah Canoe Company. While Luverne isn’t close to any reasonably sized lakes, there are several navigable but smaller rivers nearby that he is excited to explore. The rivers in our current location are either too shallow or too big (The Missouri).
He wants a one person canoe. That is fine with me. I had a truly wonderful and exhilarating experience on a BWCA canoe trip with my church youth group in 1974, and that was all I needed to have a happy life. We canoed in Manitoba during our courtship and early marriage, but my canoeing days are over. He can take his day excursions on the Rock River and Big Sioux River, and I will sit comfortably at home with the dog, drawing on my Dutch roots and practicing niksen.
What are your most interesting canoeing or boating experiences? Does niksen hold any interest for you?
This Thursday a photographer is coming over to take pictures of the house and yard for the real estate listing. We spent the weekend packing eight more bankers boxes full of books and sheet music and stowed them and the fourteen boxes of books we packed last weekend in the empty closets in the basement bedrooms. Then we put all the basement furniture back in place as the painter finished up painting the basement last Friday. We also took lots of unwanted things from the shelving in the furnace room and put them in Husband’s truck so he can take them to the landfill tomorrow. I straightened out the remaining items on the furnace room shelves so they look neat. Our new house has tons of storage and we don’t need to take any shelving with us. We hope to use the furnace room shelving as an added enticement to buy our ND house.
Today I am painting the front door and a couple of small garage doors and touching up some chipped interior paint upstairs. My goal then is to stow anything that might make the upstairs look cluttered in the upstairs closets. It will come out after the photographer is done on Thursday. I also plan to straighten up the work benches in the garage so they look neat and tidy. All this is an exhausting nuisance, but I guess this is the game you play when you sell your house. There is some consolation in knowing that everything we box up or toss out will make the final move that much easier.
I am thankful our realtor thinks our house looks nice enough as is (now that the basement is newly painted) without asking us to do any more “prettying up”. The idea to paint the doors was mine. (I intended to paint the front door 10 years ago when we had new siding put on, but never got around to it.) We will have to be vigilant about keeping the house as clean and uncluttered as possible though, for when the realtor has people over for a showing.
What kind of “prettying up” would you need to do sell your house? Any long put off chores for you?
Well I didn’t start anything on fire this week so that’s a win.
The co-op was out on Wednesday to spray the oats for broad leaves and apply a fungicide. They used a drone! I wasn’t there to see it but they took some video and had it in their newsletter:
According to the newsletter, the drone carries a 10 gallon tank, meaning it can cover about 5 acres, and the spray pattern covers about 25 feet at a pass, so they did my 25 acres of oats in a couple hours. I think that’s pretty cool! I don’t know if they were flying it manually, or were able to upload GPS field maps from their other machine passes earlier in the year, allowing it to fly, mostly, itself. I think this is such cool technology. It didn’t make tire tracks through the oats, and it didn’t leave ruts in the soft ground with the recent rains. Some of the big farmers are starting to buy their own spray drones. It’s another tool in the toolbox.
Me and one of my summer padawans cleaned out two corners of the machine shed, rearranged machinery and got the corn planter and the grain drill put away, and moved the haybine to a different spot. Just about every day I spend an hour or two in the shop, “organizing”. I’m still rearranging and sorting out things. I sure am glad I put that used AC unit in there. I just run the dehumidifier and it’s staying about 64 degrees. I love it. I’m happy to putz out there as much as I can.
I’m trying to do some of my home ‘honey-do’ projects, as well. A couple years ago, Kelly took all the landscape rock out of an area and we added compost large rocks for a walking path, and planted some grasses. That only survived one year, and the biggest problem was keeping the dogs and the chickens out of it. Daughter and I went to the local compost site and got half a pick up load of compost on Wednesday. Thursday afternoon was pretty warm, but I waited until this area was in the shade and then I dug out the old stuff. Padawan and I will unload the truck on Friday.
I ventured off into the weeds one day. I knew there was an old cement mixer out there, and there was supposed to be a second one that I couldn’t see at first. A tree had fallen in front of it. And I mean I hadn’t used either one in 25 years or more. For all I could remember, I let someone borrow it. But I found both of them.
I don’t remember using the sliver one, but it was fun to spin the handle and make the barrel turn. I remember playing with it often. The header photo is a plate on the side of it.
And the red one Dad got from a neighbor. I know we used that one. Whichever one I pick to use now, it will need a little grease… but the innertube on one tire is still holding air!
Might need a new tire, but the tube is good!
Heck, it doesn’t even need tires, I’ll be using it right by the shed.
One of the projects on the list is a concrete pad outside the shop walk in door, and a concrete pad for a garbage dumpster. Figured the summer padawans could learn about pouring concrete. I’ve done just enough to be dangerous. I found a concrete calculator online, which gave me a total of about 3 yards or about 170 bags at 60lb each. Wow, that’s a lot of bags to mix up even with an electric mixer. Checking some big box stores, a bag is $4 – $6 each. I sent an online message to a local concrete place just to see what the deal is with small batches. I’m in no hurry for this. Could be a month or two.
Also back in the tree’s was the old combine that Dad bought in the 1950’s and I parked in the tree’s in 1990 something. Time to haul that to scrap iron.
My brother and I both learned to drive a standard clutch in the 1967 Chevy pick-up truck following dad and this combine around the fields. Times were different back then. I’m guessing I was maybe 10 yrs old. I can picture it like yesterday though. He would have been pulling this with the 630 tractor (that I still have) and combining oats and would dump it into the truck. Today’s huge combines are bigger, fancier, self-propelled versions of this.
MONTGOMERY WARD IS SELLING FLYING CARS. WHAT COLOR IS YOURS AND WHAT OPTIONS DOES IT HAVE? GOT ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT WARDS?
Trail Baboon 