Category Archives: Farming Update

2025, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons

May

56 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The barn swallows are back.

Often we get one that stops in about this time of the year, just as the scout, and then it’s gone again until about May 6 when they generally return to stay. This year we had one back on April 26. I joked that mom came back as a barn swallow. And a few days later, she brought dad with her. And this pair moved into the usual nest on top of the Windchime next to the front door. They seem to be here to stay.

I’ve been saying I couldn’t remember what day it was for the last month. Heck, throw in a funeral and I’m totally discombobulated now. 

Finished our spring play at the college last weekend, then had a spring concert this past week. Commencement isn’t until the 14th, so this coming week, maybe I can farm a bit between other things. 

It has rained enough I haven’t gotten much fieldwork done or anything planted yet. I think the damp conditions are Gods way of telling me just to relax, it will be OK. Ha! “Relax.” Clearly God isn’t aware of how my mind works.

We moved the chicks to a bigger pen. They’re enjoying that, eating A LOT and growing well. Just starting to get some tail feathers. 

After cutting down all those trees, last week I got them all cleared off the fields. That was more involved than I expected, but it’s done. And I didn’t break anything on the tractor nor hurt myself. 

I did some repairs on something I had bent on one of the tractors last winter, and I graded the road. The chickens sure love a fresh pile of dirt or even if it’s gravel. The first grading of the spring, I’m pulling in rock from the edges, and cutting down the edges so rain water will run off the side and not down the road. It kinda makes a mess for a while. It will get better. Eventually.

I got my final rabies shot got so I got my rabies tag now.

You all know, with any death there is a lot of details. There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Mr. Magorium‘s Wonder Emporium, where one of the characters says he’s just the guy that makes sure all the papers are in order. I kind of feel like that sometimes. I made a lot of phone calls this week. I thought when mom passed away I would be complete blubbering mess. But honestly it was a huge relief. It felt like such a weight off. And I’m lucky that I have such a supportive family and we all get along so well. (Well, there’s that one… we’ve had enough together time for now.)

We laugh together at the meeting at the funeral home, we laugh over stories with the minister during the meeting at the church.

I asked the funeral home director for a tour. He said he couldn’t give me a tour. I told him I didn’t want to see a dead body, I just wanted to see the “backstage” areas, so he did show me the garage. I remember when Dad died, there was a framed picture of Bea Arthur in the casket room. I couldn’t figure out if she was the celebrity spokesperson or what?? Her picture isn’t there anymore. And the guy wouldn’t believe me that it was there before. But I know what I saw!

Mom had requested a private burial and then the service will be in a few weeks because all the grandchildren were already planning a “cousins reunion” and we didn’t want them to make two trips this close together.

So we’re at the cemetery for a quick little service, and I’m looking at dad‘s headstone “over there”, but the casket and hole over here. And somebody else questions that as well. Finally I get the attention of the funeral director. He went pale for a second, and he started to sweat, and then we realized they had moved the headstone in order to dig the hole and get the mechanism in place for the casket. Oh. OK, that makes sense. He teased me I was gonna give him a heart attack.

Kelly and I stayed after and talked with the cemetery crew and watched them lower the casket into the vault. It’s all part of the process.

And the world just keeps on going round.

IS THERE A CELEBRITY SPOKESPERSON YOU’D BELIEVE?

2025, animals, Farming Update, Nature, Uncategorized

Shut The Door

60 Comments

Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Nothing too exciting this week. No dog bites or trees on fire.

I made an earring out of an old rabies tag and the township guys thought that was pretty funny. I bought a pair of ‘Animal Handling Gloves’ off Amazon. The tag says they’re not “High tech bomb proof”, but they are puncture RESISTANT. I get my final rabies shot on Monday. So yeah, now that the horse is out…

I’ve been part of a County study group discussing roads, and traffic safety from the Township’s perspective. It’s been interesting. I’ve always said I’m not the idea man, I’m the one who makes your ideas happen, so I don’t have a lot of opinions at these things. Some guys certainly have more to say than I do. It’s an interesting group. The guys all have dirt under their nails, and that one black nail, and are very articulate and well spoken.

Our easter ham was really tasty. We planned on eating about 4:00. But then Kelly and I were being lazy, and then we were doing our Sunday Gator Farm Tour, so it was closer to 3:00 before I put it on the grill. At 3:45 the grill temp was at zero and the propane tank had run out. Not to worry, I had another over in the shed. We ate about 6PM. It didn’t really matter, we had nothing else going on. Monday I worked on machinery. Got the digger tires checked and filled, and I changed some worn out points, (the part that actually goes in the dirt), It’s greased and ready to go. I checked the grain drill tires and it’s greased up and ready. I crawled under the digger three or four times out on the concrete pad. It would have been nicer if there wasn’t so much gravel and dirt on the pad. It’s hard to keep it clean. Even “clean” would help. Later on, I did sweep and use the leaf blower to clean off a bit.

Tuesday I got the corn planter out and tires checked and it’s greased and ready to go. There are multiple places to grease the planter with three zerks under the planter and I can always find two of them, but that third one is tricky. The two don’t move, but that third one rotates and it was pure luck that it ended up right there in front of me.

I put both the 630 and Kelly’s C tractor in the shop. I replaced the spark plugs, spark plug wires, and coil wire on the 630 and it’s running much better. I still need to adjust the timing, and replace a throttle plate, because the throttle lever doesn’t stay forward and the tractor ends up at a slow idle. Sure was nice working in the shop.

I checked the tires on all the tractors. You’d be surprised the large rear tires may only have 8-12 pounds of air in them. Several factors determine that pressure and the goal is to get the best traction with the least amount of soil compaction. They can last a long time on dirt. Running them on the highways causes a lot of wear. New tires might be $4000 each. Imagine putting 8 of them on a tractor. Wednesday morning us five township supervisors met for breakfast at a local diner, and then went out to do our annual road inspection. Yep, all the roads are still there. We have about 30 miles of gravel township roads and we put fresh rock on about 1/3rd each year. We verify those roads need the rock (The average is about 500 tons of rock / mile). Some roads already have a good base and we may only do half that. Depending on the winter, we can get frost boils (mud and dirt coming up through the rock) and they may need more rock. We know of a few culverts that need to be replaced and we make note of trees that need trimming. We look at the bituminous roads and which ones need crack sealing or overlays. Takes about 5 hours to make the rounds. It’s a good bunch of guys and we get along well. Notice I’ve said ‘guys’ in three different township situations. I don’t know of very many women as supervisors. There are women clerks and treasurers, not sure why we don’t have more as supervisors. No reason they can’t be elected.

I went out in the afternoon and cut down trees hanging over the edges of fields. I mention every year how I’m knocking down branches or pushing back brush on the edges. This year I took the gator, three chainsaws, one dog, my safety glasses, chainsaw chaps, and I cut down a lot of trees.

Mostly box elders that lean toward the sun, and end up hanging low over the field edges. Plus some ash trees that have died and are going to fall into the field sooner or later. I only got the chainsaw stuck once! That’s why I have multiple saws. One of them is  battery operated and it’s a pretty impressive saw for battery power. Course a sharp blade is what makes a saw good. I sharpened one with a hand file on the back of the gator, but when the chain came off later, I just used to a different saw. I picked up a cheap electric bench-mounted chainsaw blade sharpener at an auction, and when I got home, I tried it out on one of the blades. I haven’t got the chain put back on to see how I did, but it has to be better. One of these days, weather and time permitting, I’ll be back out there with the tractor and loader and will push the trees off the fields. I must have cut down 30 trees along 1 ½ miles. It’s been a long time since I last did this.

The chicks are doing well. We’ve lost a couple, which always happens, but they’re eating lots and growing well.

Last weekend of our college shows. Band and choir concert next week. Then Commencement on May 14th.

FAVORITE WORD THAT STARTS WITH A ‘Z’?

2025, animals, Farming Update, Health, Nature, Theatre, Uncategorized

It Is What It Is

32 Comments

Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Life is what you make out of it. It’s always an adventure.

Monday you’re bit by a dog, Tuesday daughter will run out in bare feet to greet you when you return home, and Wednesday she stands outside your door and says she hates you. Thursday there’s a tree on fire. Is it any wonder I can’t remember what day of the week it is? 

Whoosh! Another week gone. Or maybe that was just the wind on Thursday.

Got the college show open and it is going well. The floor turned out OK and the wall patterns, well, I can’t decide if it looks like giant presents, or wall paper. The concept is still good, it’s just the execution that lost traction. There’s a lot of justification in this if you know the story and think about it long enough. Love, relationships, difficulties in both.

I got corn and oat seed picked up last Saturday,

Got the wagon top swapped on the running gear,

Had all four tractors out and running, and got 3 of them back inside the shed.

Got the shop stereo hooked up to one speaker, and the blu-tooth receiver connected to an old cell phone and streamed Radio Heartland as the inaugural music. Will be better when I get the second speaker mounted, but at least it works.

Monday I got bit by a stray dog I was trying to pick up for the township and spent a few hours in the Emergency Department. I was inspected and injected and injected some more. Two more rabies shots to go (four total) I got a Tetanus booster, and immuglobulin in the ED. Had a great RN and to my astonishment, the ER waiting room was empty when I arrived! Honestly, there are worse things in life, this was nothing. I joked, I’m going to go pick up all the rabid dogs now! The other township guys joked I will need to wear a rabies tag.

I got a call about running another 20 acres of ground in the neighborhood. I’m going to do it, but I also had to run some numbers first. It’s not the best soil, and there are just as many deer there as my place. And with input cost up, and crop prices down, I offered a low rental price. It was accepted for this year, and we’ll see how it does. “Experts” are predicting an increase in farm income, due to Government Rescue payments, and cattle prices are up, but…it’s still going to be a tough year financially.

We had thunderstorms Thursday night, and over an inch of rain, which we really needed. As I came home from the college show, about 9:30 PM, I could see a light where there shouldn’t have been light. A tree was on fire.

I always thought if lightning struck a tree it exploded. Nope, this was just on fire 30 feet up. I called the non-emergency line for the fire department, because I wasn’t quite sure what to do about this. It rained enough after they put it out that there wasn’t a risk of re-igniting. At the time, I didn’t know how much rain we had gotten and I was concerned about the dry grass below it.

We got our new baby chicks on Tuesday. These 40 chicks are Black Australorp, and Barred Rock. Twenty of each.

I used a new hatchery this year due to supply issues with chicks at the hatchery I have been using, and these were the available breeds. We’ve been looking up guineas to order later this summer, and again, some places have NOTHING available for 2025. I’d sure like to do more ducks, but not if they’re only going to get eaten by something.

There’s a female Cardinal really stuck on watching herself in our car Windows.

I did a little fieldwork Thursday afternoon.

It was good to get out in the dirt. And now with the rain, I can take the time to check tires, and grease machinery and replace some parts.

So it’s been a busy week. With the show open and no more evening rehearsals, I hope to get some farming done now.

It always feel like I should have more time, and then suddenly the weather is nice, and the ground has dried up and, worst of all, I’ve seen some neighbors out working, and then I gotta get out there! Springtime is always hard. There’s always a college show to open, and then concerts, and commencement, and depending on how the winter was and how soon the snow melts, assuming we had any, it all affects what all I should be doing at the same time. And it will all get done. I still should cut down some trees hanging over the fields, and I still have branches to pick up in the waterway area. Plus getting the machinery greased and tires checked, and oil changed.

When I swapped the wagon top last weekend, I tightened up the rear wheel bearings and added grease to the bearings on the running gear. That’s not something I do often enough, but this was the perfect time to do it before I put the wagon on top.

We’ve got an Easter ham thawing and I’m looking forward to that.

I’ll promote a place we’ve been ordering meat from lately:

FarmerGrade.com

It was started by a couple guys who raise hogs down in Iowa. They have a Youtube channel and I watch them. They started marketing their own hogs, and it expanded into other farms with beef and chicken. Beef from Sonne Farms in South Dakota (and others). Sonne Farms also have a YouTube page I watch.

Happy Easter.

Take some time to appreciate what you have.

LIGHTNING, DOGS, CHICKENS, AND SHOTS.

WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON?

2025, Farming Update, home, Theatre, work

Twist And Shout

36 Comments

Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Another week that zipped by at breakneck speed.
I feel like I barely get time to comment on the blog these days. The next month and a half will be this way. Maybe longer, depends how the spring goes.

Monday my friend Paul and I drove to Minneapolis to pick up some lighting fixtures that had been repaired. We enjoyed lunch at Doolittle’s Woodfired Grill, and had an uneventful drive to and from the big city. Tuesday was a trip to Northfield, with just me and loud music and my mind wandering. It was fun to see the farm fields and I saw a little snow in one ditch, and nobody doing any fieldwork yet. It’s early, it’s only April 12th, but when the snow melts and the temperatures are above average, everybody sure gets antsy. And when the weather is all over the place like this, who knows what’s gonna happen in two weeks. Crop Insurance doesn’t kick in until April 15th, so most people won’t start planting corn before then.

I do plan on picking up oat seed and corn seed Saturday afternoon. Remember I talked about that wagon frame a couple weeks ago and moving the flatbed wagon from one frame to the other? I haven’t done anything further with it yet but maybe this weekend. Especially since I use it for seed. Won’t take long once I get my butt in gear.


Our play at the college, Swimming in the Shallows, will open on Thursday. I’ve been busy with that. I painted the floor with a base coat of white one night after rehearsal. I don’t consider myself a good painter, my style with the floor is to thin down some paint, and use a couple hand sprayers and just have at it. It’ll look like something!
Often a show will take place in multiple locations so the floor may have to cover all the bases. Not always, sometimes it is just a house, and I can put a rug down, but often it needs to be rather neutral, and I don’t ever wanna leave it just plain black. A couple of the themes in this show are water and a beach. So first I mixed up some white paint, put it in a typical garden variety sprayer, and just based the floor white.

It’s kind of fun to watch the dots fill in the floor. It’s oddly satisfying. Then I’ll come back with blues and browns…or something. I feel a little like Georges Seurat, a little bit of pointillism.

I’m working with the marketing department for this show because they have a large format printer and I’m making tessellations. Repeating patterns.
My original thought was to use objects from the show like shoes, purses, cigarettes, but I couldn’t exactly make tessellation from those items. I found a free website where I could create and modify repeating patterns and then I include approximations of those items inside the pattern.


This was a sample as the marketing department and I worked out scale. There are six freestanding walls that will have six different patterns on them. I don’t want them so busy the audience is trying to figure out what it is, I just want to turn it into a texture. We talk a lot about texture in lighting and scenic design.
Two of the walls closest to center will have patterns that are just squares with some images inside.
The next two walls are more like diamonds but slightly skewed. And then the last two walls, centered on each side, are very skewed. It’s a visual metaphor for the twisted relationships in the show. Or the way real life can be twisted sometimes.

The electricians have finished in the shop. Three and a half days.
The outlets and the lights are wonderful.


I have lights over the bench!

And I have exterior lights that I’m excited about.

We had some kind of issue with the garage door opener, but on Friday I had the door company come back and fix it. I wasn’t home, but from my phone, I was able to open the door, pull up the shop camera, and watch the door open! I cackled gleefully. Then I watched it close again. From my phone. I giggled.

I got the stereo moved out there last weekend, and I have a Bluetooth adapter for it and now I just need to get the speakers mounted.

It’s all coming together!

PATTERNS IN YOUR LIFE?

WHAT’S YOUR TEXTURE?

2025, animals, Farming Update, home, Media, Music, Nature, Uncategorized

Down The Hole

62 Comments

Today’s Farming Update is from Ben.

I was listening to a jazz station the other day and a song came on that I remembered.

“Li’l Darlin’”, a 1958 song by Neil Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra. And I recall hearing it late nights on MPR with Leigh Kamman and the Jazz Image. I went down an internet rabbit hole looking up Leigh and the Jazz Image. He has a Wikipedia page. He even has a website created by his daughter and others.

https://www.leighkamman.com/

He was on MPR for 34 years, in radio for 65 years.

Born in Minnesota in1922, he grew up in central Minnesota, and spent time during WWII in the Armed Forces Radio. The last edition of The Jazz Image was September 29, 2007, and he passed away in Edina, MN, at age 92 on Friday October 17, 2014. From the look of things, his contribution to jazz music is severely understated.

He used music of Alice Babs as his ‘filler music’. But Li’l Darlin must have been in there somewhere, how else would I have known it? And that led me to Count Basie, and a recording by the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble, and down the hole I went. I had forgotten how poetic he was on the program. From a substack website by Tyler King called “From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey”, there’s are quotes from some of his broadcasts: “wrapped in honey and floating on a cloud” or “Here we are in pursuit of a timber wolf howling across Miller’s Bay, Leach Lake; and we are headed to Star Route, Walker, Minnesota zip code 56484.” Pretty good imagery!

And in the words of Duke Ellington, “If it sounds good, it is good.”

Thanks for the memories, Mr. Kamman.

It must be spring as the college put out the ‘Ornery Goose’ seasonal email.

The college has several nesting geese. This one has moved to a new spot in the parking lot this year.

At home, I picked up the driveway markers, and I took off the rear blade, but I haven’t taken down the snow fence yet.

I have started picking up sticks, branches, and roots from the dirt work done last fall. It’s a little too muddy in places yet, especially with the rain and snow we’ve been getting lately, but there’s a lot to pick up and we’ll get them eventually.

And before it snowed and rained last week, I cleared a downed tree off the edge of a field and pushed brush back into the trees along the edge. Trying to keep nature at bay. Or least in its place. It’s a yearly battle.

The weather was so nice Friday evening, Kelly and I and the dogs sat out on the veranda for an hour. We didn’t have wine or even chairs; we just sat on the steps and talked and watched the chickens and the clouds and the world go round.

I’ve had three electricians working in the shop this week. One journeyman and two apprentices. There is so much planning and forethought required in this, it is one of those situations where I’m paying for his 20 years of practice, in addition to the 3 days of work. Look at the skill it takes to create concentric 90-degree bends. Plus, all the code requirements, and the cleanest way to get all the wires where they need to be with the least amount of conduit.

Part of me wonders why I hired this out and didn’t do it myself? All the aforementioned is why. Plus, he has a scissor lift.

I did pick up the lift early and mount the lights to the ceiling, and I’ll install the ceiling fans myself, but they’re doing the hard work.

It will be nice to have the large garage door opener hooked up, and outside lights when needed, and better inside lighting, and outlets all over, and a dedicated outlet for the air compressor, and two welder outlets! One inside, one outside!

Can’t wait. It’s gonna be SO COOL! And then really, I’m gonna stop spending money. On this.

I moved some tractors on Tuesday. I was going to hook up the big tractor to the soil finisher, my main spring implement, but decided it wasn’t quite time for that yet.

Moved the scrap metal tote outside so I can get to the grain drill. And it will be time to pick up seed shortly.

It’s interesting the chives growing wild are greening up, but the chives in the pot are not yet. The ground stays warmer than the cold air surrounding the pot I suppose is the reason.

JAZZ MUSIC IS THE THEME THIS WEEKEND

2025, animals, Farming Update, Gatherings, Government, Mysteries, Uncategorized

General. Walz.

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

The robins have been snowed on twice now. Once more and we should be good to go. I see the turkey vultures have returned, we’ve seen and heard sandhill cranes, I’ve heard there’s rhubarb coming up, and we’re starting to see hints of green in the lawn and in the rye that I planted as a cover crop. Spring is coming. Oh, and nettles are growing. Why do the weeds always get the upper hand?

One day last week I found both the lost pen and pencil from two days before, and a water bottle from about three weeks ago. The water bottle was in the office at our Townhall. I remember stopping there to look through some files, would not have remembered that I had a water bottle with me, I just knew that there used to be two in the refrigerator and now there was only one. And I was pretty sure I had put the pen and pencil in my pocket one morning, but that afternoon they were gone. Three days later I found them in a box I had bent over to pick up. There’s always, usually, almost always, a rational explanation for missing things.

Last Saturday, Governor Walz held a Townhall meeting in Rochester at the largest high school auditorium we have in town. Three days before, I got an email asking if I would be free on Saturday to work lights and sound for this event. Details were still being ironed out, and on Thursday I found out they were asking about various locations at the college, as well as various high schools in Rochester. Buried in an email someone said they were not expecting a very big crowd. I had to laugh at that. I don’t know why anyone would’ve thought that. A few years ago, yeah, small crowds, not these days. 

One of my jobs is doing technical support for community education events, or anything that’s not school related, in the public school auditoriums. So it’s pretty basic lighting and sound. We don’t do anything fancy, I don’t do video, but I can get him a microphone and turn on the stage lights.

I train in college kids to do this job and then ideally they can cover many of these events, most of which are dance recitals or various meetings. I keep the interesting things for myself. Like governors. But I did bring along a college student to train.

The large high school was finally selected and we did a walk-through there Friday afternoon with security and the governor’s staff. Saturday morning we were there at 7:30 AM and I observed this meeting of security personnel out in the hallway:

It sounded like this crew was searching purses and bags. I hope the big guy got to do more than search bags. I know the local police department was around, and I’m sure there was other security person that went unnoticed by me. From my position up in the balcony I really couldn’t see much.

I worked an event for Governor Walz several years ago at the college and it was much more low-key than this one.
As we finished up and were leaving, we saw the black SUVs with the tinted windows.

Some of you know Governor Walz would stay and take questions all morning if he could. He was only scheduled to speak for an hour, and they had started to make some indications they needed to wrap up. Shortly after the one hour mark, his wife Gwen, who had been sitting on stage, approached him and placed her hand on his shoulder. Governor Walz finished his thought and quipped, “You can see who holds the real power around here.“ and gave her the microphone. She spoke, she got the crowd up and on their feet and cheering and they both waved and exited. What a perfect way to wrap this up. The governor never had to say he had to go, no one had to cut them off, nobody plays the bad guy. Just smile and wave. Smile and wave. Well done. 

I make a show file on the lightboard for these events, and I have a ‘general’ file, which I then created a sub folder, ‘Walz’. Hence, GENERAL WALZ, which sort of made me giggle.

On the farm front, I didn’t get much accomplished this week on the farm. I hope to clear a down tree off the field on Friday, before it rains and gets muddy again. And I’m hoping to get some straw spread where I had the dirt work done last winter so that I don’t get any more erosion from the snow melting and spring rains.
Still sorting bolts, but I am just about done with that, they don’t quite fit back where they were so I’m still figuring it out as I go.

Electricians should be there on Monday to get the electrical done in the shop. I picked up the electricians scissor lift and will get the lights mounted on the ceiling prior to their arrival.

I’m looking forward to having a door opener installed, plus some exterior lights and more outlets in the shed.

And then I really need to stop spending money on this place.

The chickens followed me to the barn one day, eager for corn. And they got a drink while they were there. The ones with their head up are swallowing.

POISON IVY? STINGING NETTLES? POISON OAK?

EVER MADE A RASH DECISION?

2025, animals, Farming Update, Food, gardening, Kids, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized

Maple-ing. The Ambiance.

42 Comments

Although I probably won’t go down again to boil sap, I truly enjoyed the experience.  Part of it was learning all about the process, but a lot was also the ambiance.  Not in any particular order…

The weather was just about perfect.  It started about bright and sunny (I put on sunscreen) and even when it clouded up in the afternoon, the temperature seemed just right for boiling.  Not cold enough that you really felt it but not warm enough that the work made us sweat.  There was a short rain shower after dark, but when it cleared up, the stars in the night sky were amazing.  As a city gal, I never see stars like that.

Before dinner we had tea but instead of plain old boiling water, we used the boiling sap.  Very sweet tea but wonderful drinking it outside.

There was good company while we were working.  Astrid is a big dog with a big deep bark but a big softie; after dark we heard coyotes and while Astrid worked hard to convince us that she was a guard dog, she didn’t move more than 20 feet from us.  Whiskey looks like a cat, but he is really a dog.  He comes when he is called, hangs around most of the day for petting and doesn’t seem to think the rain matters at all.

My godson doesn’t actually “farm” but is embracing country lifestyle.  He was happy to tell me about all the classes he has taken at the local folk school (bee keeping, chain saw safety, how to “manage” chickens, syrup making and to show me all the improvements he’s made to the house and outbuildings. He has some animals: chickens and a mean rooster (I have bruises to prove it) and also a small herd of goats.  He has just acquired a male, so perhaps there will be kids and milk in the future.  I shared with him the wonderful soaps that Barb made when she had goats.

He is also a terrific cook and by the time he went in to make dinner, I had a handle on the boiling so didn’t need to panic.  Several of the borscht ingredients come from their garden and it was delicious.  Just soup and toasted baguettes.  Yummy.

Children.  He has three kids – 7, 5 and 3.  I got to play Legos with the youngest.  Lots of racing “vehicles” and crashing.  The 5-year old was obsessed with arithmetic so we did a ton of “what is ten plus ten” and other combinations.  He hasn’t worked on subtraction yet, so we did some “what is three minus two”, using fingers.  There was a very lively conversation after the 7-year old got home from school concerning the weight of the earth and how you would weigh it.  He’s got a lot on the ball for seven and there was gravity walls/barriers and gravity robot discussion.  My godson brought up the planet-building spheres from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, to which I replied that the weight of the earth is clearly 42.  The 7-year old didn’t get this joke but god son did!

It was just a wonderful trip, even if you don’t count the maple syrup (and a bonus small bottle of their black walnut syrup which I’ve had before and it fabulous).  I can’t imagine how it could have been better!

When was the last time you just really enjoyed something?

2025, education, Farming Update, Food, Uncategorized

Maple-ing. The Work

19 Comments

I spent a few days down at the farm of my godson last week; he invited me down to see his process for making maple syrup.  The past few years I’ve been the recipient of his syrup and have asked quite a few questions.   He thought I would like to see you it’s done – he was correct.

We started at 6:45 a.m. by getting the fire pit going.  He does his boiling out in the open – no hut or roof or anything.  You have to watch the weather forecast carefully when you do it this way.  The three pans fit right over the edges and we filled them about 2/3 full of sap.  With the 10 gallons that we harvested that day, we were working with 60 gallons total.

After about 5 hours, the farthest two pans started to darken as the water in the sap boiled off; the closest pan, due to being near the opening for adding wood, didn’t boil quite as vigorously.  We spent a far amount of time transferring from this pan into the darker pans.  That way we only added cold sap to the closest pan.  It takes quite some time to boil down 60 gallons of sap so we were still at it into the night.  The fire kept us warm as the temperature started to drop and it rained (lightly) for about 40 minutes.

When we had it all boiled down to about 3 gallons, we closed up shop and moved the syrup into the kitchen, where it sat overnight.  There was about an hour more of boiling on the stovetop the next morning.  There was quite a bit of fiddling with it, using a hydrometer to make sure it was the right density.  Not dense enough and the syrup can develop mold, too dense and the syrup crystallizes.  At that point we had about 2½ gallons and we filtered it through a very heavy duty filter that was hung from a camera tripod; why purchase something when the camera tripod works wonders?

Then all that was left was to get the syrup into bottles.  Although I had worked hard the day before, the bottling was the only thing I really helped with all morning.  It was really a one-person operation once it moved inside. 

Seems like a LOT of work (16 hours on Friday and 4 hours on Saturday) for the amount of syrup we got but I will say that the ½ cup that was left over after bottling, that we all ate with spoons was probably the best syrup I’ve had in my life.  See the bottle with the green cap in the photo above, that is a little larger than the other bottles?  That’s the one I claimed. 

What do you like to pour maple syrup on?

2025, animals, Family, Farming Update, home, Mysteries, Seasons, Uncategorized

What’s the Point?

31 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Another Wednesday, another blizzard warning and snow day.

For good measure, the three of us took Thursday off as a snow day as well. Wanted to make sure we gave the roads time to improve. And really, on the north side of Rochester we only had about 2 inches maybe, and most of our driveway didn’t have any snow on it. Credit to my dad for having the road built up like he did 50 years ago. I remember maybe 30 years ago there was a snow storm every Thursday for about a month. I would plow the driveway before milking in the morning, Kelly would take the kids in and go to work, and then before they came home, I’d clear the driveway and again wait for them out at the highway. Must’ve been before cell phones, and in one of those odd little memories that sticks with you, I remember sitting in the tractor with the door open while one of the sheriff deputies that we were friends with, stood outside and we talked for half an hour. I remember watching his ears get more and more red and thinking “I’m sure glad I’m in this tractor cab.“, and “why doesn’t he end this conversation and get back in the car already??” Maybe Kelly finally came home, I don’t remember. Maybe he wasn’t cold. Maybe I should have had him get in the cab out of the wind at least. Don’t know.

Daughter and I have the place to ourselves this weekend as Kelly flew out to Boston to staff a booth for some work-related event. Flew out Saturday, works Sunday, back on Monday. I don’t think you can even call that a working vacation. Sounds like just plain ‘work’ to me.

I think I have finally finished farm bookwork and can get our taxes done now. The software I use generates a Year End report that will be 31 pages this year. About half of it being farm related expenses, and the other half being household expenses. There’s no profit on the farm this year and that’s primarily expenses related to the farm shop. I always enjoy looking at the final tally of these expenses. The dogs cost us $3000: Half is vet expenses, the other half are dog treats, joint medications, and frisbees. Pretty astounding how much we’ve spent on groceries.

I have finally, I think, finished all the construction in the shop. In fact, I moved the miter saw and table saw off to storage corners. I started moving bolts to the new bolt shelves and placed another order for more storage bins and dividers. I am throwing out a lot! A lot of not only old, rusty, bent, things, but just bolts that I’ll never use. For example, a box of nuts and bolts from my father-in-law when he had a grain bin taken down. There’s just not a chance I’m gonna use 1000 round headed, 1 inch bolts, that have a glob of tar on them. I also threw out a box of 3/8 inch flat headed plow bolts. Again, it’s just not something I’m gonna use. I use plow bolts, but they’re ½” diameter and 2 inches long.

I have two boxes of stuff I’m saving for my crafty sister. Just weird little odds and ends that she always appreciates. Although in this case, I’m not sure what she’s gonna do with all this metal stuff without a welder. Maybe I should buy her a tube of JB weld to go with this junk. I mean “these supplies”.  

One of the boxes of dad‘s odds and ends and bits of doo-dads, contained eight sets of ignition points and three condensers. I have no idea if they’re from tractors or cars and it sort of boggles my mind that if he replaced a set because it wasn’t running well, why did he not just throw it right away in the first place??

I saved those for my sister.
Some of you might know what those are. Electronic ignition and everything these days has eliminated the need for these things, but these were a pretty remarkable creation in the history of the automobile and kudos to whoever invented them.

(OK, I looked it up. According to Wikipedia, Charles Franklin Kettering, founder of Delco, and worked for GM, is credited with creating this ignition system. It was first used on the 1912 Cadilac. Huh!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delco_ignition_system

The online auction in Plainview finished on Tuesday. I had taken a small, 4 drawer toolbox that I got for free, a large 5 drawer ‘document’ cabinet that had large, shallow drawers, and the anhydrous applicator toolbar. There were two other, much nicer anhydrous applicators than mine on the auction. I got $200 for that item. A lot less than I paid for it ten or fifteen years ago. I also got $40 for the small free toolbox. So at least all that stuff is out of my hair.

I’ve got 1 chicken laying eggs in the garage.

I’ve chased her out of the garage a couple times recently, so I was keeping an eye out for eggs. Every now and then I get a chicken laying eggs in the garage for some reason. Once they were nesting up on a shelf behind a box of sidewalk chalk. This time she’s on the ground, behind a shovel. I figure that out one day when the shovel was tipped over. Chickens are so weird.

Hey- check out this ‘egg fetcher’ tool I use when the eggs are in the corner underneath the nest boxes:

WHAT IS THE MOST COMMON THING IN YOUR JUNK DRAWER?  DID YOU GO LOOK OR DID YOU JUST KNOW?  WHY DO YOU HAVE THAT MANY OF THAT THING?

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?