One of the challenges of sharing a kitchen with Husband is his extreme fussiness regarding the foods he cooks and prepares. He has many preconceived expectations as to what goes with what, and is unhappy if the combinations aren’t exactly the way he wants them. When he seasons a dish, he spends quite a bit of time tasting and adding this and that til it is just right in his mind. I can’t tell the difference.
The same goes for his fussiness in pairings of different foods. I can usually put up with his demands for just the right main course with just the right sides. It is a little more difficult now that we are trying to empty our freezers before we move. We have agreed, for example, that we aren’t going to buy any more sausage, brats, or ground meat until the stuff we have is gone. There are a lot of sausages to be used up.
The other day I was pretty exasperated with him for stopping at the butcher shop and buying some ring bologna and summer sausage. I reminded him of all the brats and other sausage that we had that would work just as well as bologna. He insisted that he had to have the bologna because that is always what he has with the particular side dish he was going to have that evening. I told him that we would never get through the food we already had if he keeps this up, and that he might have to change some of his expectations for meals if we are to reduce the food in the freezers. He sighed and stated in a somewhat martyred tone that he would just have to start practicing acceptance regarding our meals. Husband says he owns his culinary idealism.
I am fortunate to be married to someone who loves to cook and loves good food. I just hope he doesn’t get too distressed as he has to change his ideas, at least temporarily, regarding our meals.
What do you have to practice acceptance of? Do you have inviolable expectations for some meals and food pairings?
Wow, Man, what a week again. Thursday night I hit a gumption trap so hard, I had a rootbeer float and popcorn for supper…
We have baby guineas! I had seen one sitting on a nest behind the machine shed a few weeks ago, and we talked about getting the eggs into an incubator but never got too it. Next time I looked the nest was empty and there were broken eggs. Momma was nowhere to be found, and we feared the worst. A week later I saw her and a bunch of chicks heading into a corn field. Typically, guineas are not the best moms. But this group seems to ‘community parent’ and they’re doing surprisingly well.
As you can image, the real world is a tough place for a little chick. They could fall into a hole, they could get eaten or lost. It’s a tough place. But yeah, they’re doing well and getting big enough they might just make it. They’re not quite pigeon sized, and they hop and flutter and there’s always that one that’s six feet away and running to catch up.
I cut down a bunch of box elder tree’s growing over a fence down around the barn yard. Treated all the stumps. Then tore out the old feed bunk augers and cement bunks. Don’t need them anymore and it will help open up the yard.
The cow yard, before.
The cow yard after.
Tree’s before
No more tree’s. Looks better.
Dad built the first silo in 1968 and installed these augers. When the second silo was built in 1976, the whole feed bunk was turned 90 degrees and the cement bunks installed. Then it was 1978 when I stuck my leg into this.
The augers I stuck my leg in. Hard to visualize from this picture how it was set up when working. I’m just really lucky.
As I tore it out, I thought about that. I don’t harbor any resentment. These bunks fed a LOT of cattle over the years and provided for two families. They served their purpose well.
I put the forklift extensions on and used the loader forks to lift the old bunks out. I expected animals to be living under them, but nope, nothing. I’ve been asked why I’m doing this, and to what end? Just to clean up. There is no end goal. It would never be used again, why save it?
The oats got harvested Friday and Saturday. Yield wasn’t very good, the oats didn’t even fill a semi. Ended up at 735 bushels, meaning about 31 bu / acre. According to the oat people on FB, oats has been all over the place this year. At least the test weight was 34.6 meaning the elevator would take it. Wasn’t heavy enough to be food grade, nor was it enough bushels to mess around with.
Lots of straw! I ended up with 900 small square bales. Put 700 in the barn.
The hole in the middle is where the elevator was.
I had the three teenage boys helping and I couldn’t have done it without them. They were great. The one doing the most work, number 3, (and treated as the odd wheel out by the first two for some reason), had a broken toe (dropped a barbell weight on his foot). Ah, the teenage mentality.
I baled 3 loads of straw on Monday, the boys came out Tuesday and we unloaded the first two, just throwing them into the empty barn. Then we put the elevator up and unloaded the third. I baled three more loads Tuesday afternoon.
Wednesday, I started back at the college. You know what that means. Sleeves.
The boys came out at 5PM and we unloaded those three loads. 700 in the barn. Full enough. Haven’t had it this full in a few years. The boys rode in the wagon and we went to the field to bale up another load. And to stack this one as it will sit for a few months until the neighborhood berry farm is ready for it. I’d put one kid in the tractor with me, and the other two stacked on the wagon. I only hit one kid with a bale. He moved! I was aiming to the side and as the bale kicked, he stepped to that side. Oops. He was OK. Straw is light.
I’d have them rotate positions so they all got to ride in the tractor (and the AC) and they all thought it was pretty neat in there too.
Tractor view
Number 2 and 3 Padawan’s stacking in wagon. Number 1 is in the tractor with me.
Pretty proud of themselves. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I noticed on Friday, one of the rear wheel bearings on a wagon is gone. So that wagon is out of service until I can get new bearings. Hopefully it hasn’t damaged the wheel hub or axle.
And then Wednesday night, backing the stacked wagon into the shed, and the front wheels are not aligned. What the heck?? Tie rods are bend. Jeepers. Not sure when or how that happened. And I moved it a bit more to back it in and one wheel goes completely sideways. Well heck.
Huh!
So, I pulled that wagon in backward to at least get it under cover and out of the way. More repairs. Add it to the list.
AND THEN- Thursday evening and I’m taking down the bale elevator and the lift cable snapped and it all fell to the ground. Words were said. It didn’t break anything. It was about 8’ up and I was lowing it to transport height of about 6’ when it dropped. I dragged it to the shop and Kelly and I worked on it for an hour. Gumption traps were hit several times until I blocked it up with an old pallet and we called it a night. So that’s three things. I should be done now for a while. Right?
HUH!!
Corn and soybeans look great! We have reached the point we cannot make any more management decisions to help the crop. The last thing done was aerial application of fungicide. Now the crop just has to finish out the season. One neighbor called me upset about aerial application too close to his house. I understand that and will take steps in the future to create a buffer zone. However, by the time it gets from me to the agronomist to the company to the pilot, I’m not sure what will actually happen. Not an excuse, just warning him a lot is out of my control.
I finished lighting the show in Chatfield last week, in time to fly out on Saturday with Kelly and our daughter. Kelly had a work conference and we got to travel along and amuse ourselves for a few days. I was under the impression that taxi drivers were always better than Uber / Lyft because they are more professional and know the roads better. But that plan falls apart if they’re all independent taxi’s and they all seem to need to enter the address in their phones anyway. And they tell me they’ve lived here multiple years, so it makes me wonder why they don’t know their way around yet? But whatever. Our first driver was crazy; drove like a maniac and told me he liked American women and big boobs! Second taxi was a nicer driver, but his car broke down and when daughter and I came out of the Butterfly Pavilion he was sitting right where he had left us. He called a friend of his to take us back to town. And the taxi back to the airport was a nice guy with sheet metal screws holding his car door together. Resourcefulness!
Daughter and I had a good time walking around downtown and there was lots to see. I took lots of photos of old buildings. The day we saw the butterflies, that only took an hour. We never got going too early in the day, because we were on vacation after all. I was surprised that I could out-walk daughter. It was as hot there as it was back in MN, but less humidity, so that was nice. I didn’t expect it to be that hot. I found it interesting so many restaurants and bars had wide open windows or garage doors and yet there was very few bugs. One bartender told us they really spray the place down at night, but she said there was less flies this year than usual.
On Wednesday Kelly gave a presentation on Laughter Yoga. I snuck in the back and watched. It was well received, the group liked it, and she had several good loud laughers, so that got the rest of the group going.
She picked up some swag for me with the catch phrase: “Wicked Smaht Pathologists” and a link to their group. It makes me laugh. If you need a pathologist, you’re gonna want one that’s Wicked Smaht.
We had a young lady staying at the house to deal with dogs overnight while we were gone, and some other friends that would take care of chickens and eggs and amuse the dogs during the day. They said, “Bailey and Humphrey make us want dogs. Luna reminds why we don’t have a dog.”
And on the way home, in the MSP airport, the gate agent was a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in 40 years. We had a little reunion right there at the gate for 15 seconds. It was nice to see her again.
Last week as I was headed to Chatfield one night, I saw, walking on the side of the road, three nuns in full black habits with the veil and headpiece. I had to double take, and double take again. This was out in the country. A few days later, Facebook, of course, provided the answer. There is an old order Catholic Church in the area and they have been seen coming from there. Well that explains it. Sure did make me wonder though. And then, ten days later, I saw two more nuns in full habits. But that was outside a Catholic Church, and they were selling baked goods at a street fair. Although when I saw them, they were packing up. I saw them pulling the totes with the collapsible tents up the street. I hadn’t seen a nun in full habit for years and now here was twice!
You all had that big storm come through on Monday night with high winds… the oats got beat up. Yep, sure did. Maybe 50% of it down. We didn’t get any hail so nothing threshed out on the ground, it’s just broken off and lying down and it makes it more difficult to pick up for harvest.
The plan is to start harvesting Friday. Going to try taking it straight- meaning I don’t swath it and lay it in windrows first. A lot of guys do take it straight. When we have tried it in the past it didn’t work so well… we shall see. I have the swather ready just in case.
The soybeans are waist tall and looking good. At least some of them. They don’t all look this good, but some of them.
There’s a guy on YouTube goes by ‘Bushel Billy’, from the Ohio area and he was talking about a corn issue with a certain variety, in extreme weather conditions, having “tassel wrap” meaning the last leaf doesn’t unwrap from the tassel. So of course if the tassel can’t open up to shed pollen, it’s going to be tough to get all the kernels (silks) pollinated. It takes 90,000 kernels to make a bushel. Hence 90K pollen grains to 90K silks are needed. He pointed out how after pollination the silks turn brown and detach from the kernel after pollination. I didn’t know that and I had to check it out myself.
Notice how many silks are loose. Just a few on the tip still stuck.
HUH! Sweet corn would be so much easier if the silks would detach.
Husband and I find ourselves exhausted these days. We are sorting through our stuff, packing some and throwing some out. We also are at our jobs finishing the last of our professional work, keeping up the house and garden, and going through the work of selling one home and buying another. Husband commented that we are living in the past, present, and future all at once.
I have tried to imagine what it will be like once we move to our new community. I haven’t lived there for almost 50 years. There are still quite a few high school classmates and other people I know there, and I have been thinking how I want to reintegrate into the community. I think it would be a mistake to live in the past, as I am not the same person I was 50 years ago, and I doubt they are the same people they were. We integrated ourselves into our ND community 38 years ago by going to community events, joining a church, and through our jobs. I hope the we can have the same new beginning in our new home.
How have you integrated yourself into the communities you have lived in? How are you different now than you were 50 years ago?
According to the weather channel email I received on Thursday, an acre of corn releases 3000 gallons of water into the air every day. It’s “evapotranspiration”. A quick google search shows multiple newspaper articles blaming corn for the humid weather. I am tempted to call it misleading. I mean I don’t like the humidity either, but is it really all the corn’s fault? Data from the Ohio State University Extension office in 2024 says corn sweat is not contributing MEANINGFUL levels of humidity. More humidity is brought in by weather systems with southerly winds and bringing humidity from the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest amount of water usage by a corn plant is during tasseling and flowering, which is where we are at in SE MN. My corn just started tasseling this week. (And again, I am so amazed at how it all works! The silks emerge at the same time!) After tasseling, water usage in the corn decreases. All plants have some form of transpiration and evaporation. Don’t blame it all on the farmer and my corn.
The header photo by Kelly is soybean flowers. Soybeans are looking good and coming along.
This week I have been either finishing the projects at the Rep, or down in Chatfield lighting ‘Shrek’, the musical for Wits End Theater. Lots of road time. And with the main route to Chatfield, Highway 52 South closed at I90, I’ve been taking other routes. Sometimes Highway 7 through Eyota to 52, sometimes Highway 10 through Dover to the East side of Chatfield. Usually County Rd 19 through Marion to 52, or my favorite, County Road 1 through Simpson, past the Root River County Park, down in the valley over the North branch of the Root River and Fugles Mill, through Pleasant Grove, and into the west side of Chatfield. I try not to take the same road home as there.
I still haven’t gotten the oats harvested. It got mostly ripe but still had some green in it and that’s where it’s been sitting for 2 weeks. Rain and thunderstorms the last few days have caused more of it to go down. A lot of oats has been taken out. The Oat Mafia FB page says a lot of guys are finding it wetter than preferred. And there are some photos that show a stark reminder of the benefits of applying the fungicides. Fields without are broken and flat, while the fields with it are standing well.
No fungicide on left, fungicIde on right. PHOTO COUTESY OF THE OAT MAFIA FB PAGE
Oh, then our refrigerator died on Wednesday. I had noticed the freezer temp was 33 degree’s in the morning, and I thought maybe it was just defrosting. That afternoon it was at 39. We took everything to the basement chest freezer and I put a thermometer in the fridge. I laid on the floor and vacuumed off the coils and used the long narrow cleaning brush to dig out as much dust and gunk as I could. A repair guy was consulted and it was not given much hope. By that night, Kelly emptied the fridge, taking it to the downstairs smaller fridge. That little basement fridge was originally purchased as the “egg fridge”, but it has since become the pop fridge. Thanks goodness we have it. It’s a little no-name fridge that just keeps chugging along. Daughter is very put out that we don’t have the regular fridge upstairs. She insists it is still working and I’ve had to rescue her food and take it to the basement fridge a couple times. Thursday morning I went fridge scouting. The salesguy, Randy, his first question was counter depth or regular? “Uh….” Then he asked me what color? “Uh….” Did we want ice and water in the door? “Uh….” I didn’t have any of that information. My only question to him was ‘”Which ones have the better interior lighting like our old one?” That local store is where we’ve purchased appliances since we got married. They had a delivery slot open for Friday afternoon. I’ll take that one! And I sent Kelly some photos. We met there in the afternoon and agreed on a fridge for Friday.
Priorities, you know? When I checked with Kelly, her only priority was double doors. Yep, that was all I looked at. And freezer at the bottom. And good lighting. Beyond that, I didn’t know.
I hate having too many choices, so thankfully that only left us three choices, and if you remove the $12,000 model, well, I sent Kelly photos of those two.
By Friday evening daughter should be back in her happy place and we’ll have a new fridge with nice interior lighting.
I can’t remember a more rainy July than the one we are having this year. In addition to keeping the house interior spotless, we are intent on getting rid of garden weeds. The weeds have been horrendous because of the rain.
Weeding for us entails crawling through the garden beds on our hands and knees with dangerous looking implements to remove the weeds, and large buckets to put the removed weeds into. We rarely use herbacides. Husband is currently limping around with a walking stick due to a strained knee muscle from weeding. With apologies to Bob Dylan, this song keeps going through my head every time I pull weeds.
Buckets of weeds,
Buckets of shears.
Got all these buckets coming
Out of my ears.
Buckets of bind weeds in the yard.
Why does weeding always have to be so hard?
I have not seen the new Bob Dylan movie. Husband reminds me we saw him in concert at the Bismarck Civic Center about 30 years ago. He only had a bass player and a drummer with him. I don’t remember the concert very well. I never was a big Dylan fan, but some tunes just stay with you.
Did you ever see Bob Dylan live? What Dylan tunes stick with you? What is your weeding strategy? At what age is a person too old to weed?
There has always been a vision in my mind for the backyard. Over the years we’ve added a patio, then a little bigger patio. A table and chairs for the patio. An umbrella for the table. A friend of mine gave YA a fire pit years ago. Another friend gave me a swing when they moved to an apartment. Of course, there are all the flowers and the bales. About 15 years ago I had enough credits at work to purchase a hammock, which I installed toward the back of the yard. Over the years I’ve had to replace the fabric several times as well as having to MacGyver the suspension a couple of times when the fabric wasn’t exactly the right size.
YA has always detested the hammock. First is that it is a collection spot for leaves and twigs that come off the trees. Then there is the issue of having to mow around it, requiring moving it about. YA thinks it makes the backyard look “cluttered”. When I suggested we get right of her Adirondack chairs and little table, she didn’t respond well. She has a point. We use the Adirondacks quite a bit and truth be told, I probably only lay in the hammock once or twice a summer. It’s not actually all that comfortable and I get impatient really fast.
As I’m pursuing my pre-downsizing project, I decided that I really needed to pay attention to the reality of the hammock instead of my emotional attachment to the idea of a hammock. To that end, YA and I carried it down to the boulevard. When we got down to the boulevard with it, YA had to shore up my determination. The miracle of my street worked as usual – within an hour someone was taking it apart to shove in their truck.
I thought I might be unhappy in the first few days after the hammock was gone but that hasn’t happened. That says to me that I made the right decision.
Tell me about something you have an emotional attachment to.
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?
Trail Baboon 