We had new lighting put in the bathrooms we had remodeled last year. The lights had these newfangled clear bulbs in them. I imagine they are considered more decorative than regular bulbs. They are nice and interesting, but were a bit of a problem to replace when one burned out last week.
There was no indication on the bulb as to its wattage except some gold writing on the top of the bulb that was completely unreadable. We could discern they were a Sylvania product, though.
We headed to Menards with the burned out bilb as a reference. I was astounded by the varity of light bulb shapes and sizes. When did this happen? I guess I just haven’t been paying attention to lighting trends for the past few years. In fact, I am guilty of not paying attention to much when I buy light bulbs except the wattage, which probably explains the variety of light bulb colors in our house. Some are “soft white”, some are “bright white”, and sometimes it looks pretty odd with white and yellowish bulb colors in the same light.
We encountered a helpful young woman clerk in the lightbulb department who was able, at a quick glance at the burned out bulb, to tell us we needed 40 watt soft white replacements. Now we know. I decided I like bright white bulbs in the other lights in the house, but we’ll stick with these for the bathrooms.
Any decorative or fashion trends that are surprising to you? Are you a bright white or soft white kind of person?
The Badlands Opera Company staged Into The Woods last weekend at the local college auditorium. It was a fantastic and absolutely professional production. Costuming, special effects, and tech were superb. The cast was comprised of all local folks, and their voices were fabulous. The director/ Cinderella’s Prince was a 30 something local man who had made good as a theatre professor in another state. This was his directorial debut. About half of the cast are members of our Lutheran Church.
The oldest member of the cast was our church organist. She played Jack in the Beanstalk’s mother. She is a feisty 76 year old with a huge soprano voice, wonderful acting skills, and a sharp tongue. Most of the other leads were in their mid to late 30’s, and I realized I have watched many of them grow up through church and school productions. We were at the infant baptisms of the Baker and the Witch! Cinderella’s parents are wonderful ranch people who I have known for years and worked with when they were foster/adopt parents. We sat with them at the Friday night opening and talked and joked. It was wonderful. Little Red Riding Hood’s dad is Husband’s real life barber!
When we got home from the performance I took a look around our home, a pretty modest home for the most part, and saw the family mementos and possessions we have, and thought about the relationships we have built over the decades, and I considered how priceless they all are. They wouldn’t be priceless in the marketplace, but they are irreplaceable to us.
What are the things and memories and relationships that are priceless to you? What is your favorite scene from Into The Woods?
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?
Over the years I’ve tried a lot of different food plans. Whenever I hear of someone talking about how good they feel on some particular diet, I get curious. I’ve even tried raw a couple of times; the second time I lasted the longest – four days. Tried the zone for a bit. The Mediterranean is pretty close to our regular habit, although as vegetarians, we pass on the occasional fish/meat.
The keto diet was the one that I toyed with for quite some time before giving it a shot. I have two good friends who swear by it. I loaded up on a few keto carb substitutes and I made it three weeks. But I didn’t feel better. In fact if you factor in how much I was thinking about carbs, dreaming about carbs, crying about carbs, I was much worse.
So it probably won’t surprise anybody that every now and then I let my delight in carbs get the better of me. Every month or so YA asks if Great Harvest is making Derby Cookies; they are her favorites. She is also very fond of the various cheese breads that Great Harvest makes. When she looked at the March newsletter, she was happy that the Derby cookies were on the docket as well as the gouda garlic bread. Since she was traveling and I was in party prep, I made the bakery run on Saturday (that’s when they do the gouda bread). I thought that ordering ahead would help, but it didn’t. In addition to YA’s bread and cookies, I left the bakery with a White Cinnamon Chip loaf and an Apple Caramel loaf (mostly apple, not much caramel – a perfect ration for me).
This is a lot of bread, even for me. YA will take care of the gouda and probably most of the cookies. Guess I’ll just have to suffer through my two loaves. Sigh.
Anything that occasionally just makes you lose control?
I was much alarmed recently to see that some strange State legislator from Iowa was proposing to annex all the bottom southern counties in Minnesota, including my beloved Rock County, and make them part of Iowa. I haven’t seen much in the MN press about this, so I am hoping that it is being viewed as a political stunt and nothing to take seriously.
I lived within 15 miles of Iowa my whole life and lived in south central Iowa for a year, and I sure wouldn’t want to become an Iowan. Too conservative for my tastes. I also lived for a year in southern Indiana, and my, was that strange after living in Manitoba for six years. North Dakota is conservative, too, but I have managed to tolerate it for 37 years. People here are quirky enough to make life fun and interesting despite the influence of big oil and conservation politics.
We still plan to move to Minnesota in the next year, but if the Iowa annexation actually happens, it sure won’t be to Luverne!
What states or countries have you lived in? Where would you consider or not consider living?
I’m reading a memoir right now (Thirty Rooms to Hide In by Luke Sullivan). In the early pages, the author paints a picture of his life growing up with his five brothers in Rochester in the fifties. Here is an interesting passage on bedtime:
“Bedtime was indeed death. Even the rituals were the same: the preparing of the body (the solemn washing of teeth, the funereal donning of pajamas), the readings, the occasional prayer, and finally the inevitable darkness. All that was missing were Hallmark sympathy cards arriving in the mail.”
I never really thought about bedtime in terms of rituals but in my world, it’s probably the most consistent rituals that I have. Teeth, pajamas, highlighting items done from my to-do list, making a list for the next day, med/vitamins, daily entry in my “good things” journal. Once I’m actually settling in, there is the arranging of Nimue’s blanket on my side of the bed; her ritual is to settle in for about ten minutes, knead a few biscuits, purr while getting some scritches and then heading to her favorite bed on top of the radiator.
Almost forgot the “bang” treat for Guinevere and the yummies for Nimue… this usually happens between teeth and jammies.
Since I have been home full time after retiring on February 1, I have had time to sort through some closets, papers, and freezers that had been pretty well neglected over the past couple of years. It has dawned on me that we can either have a clean, organized home or work full time. We can’t do both. Husband is still working essentially full time and has been for the past several years.
Because of our harried work schedules and after work exhaustion, things like papers have been thrown on our work desk or filing cabinets to be gone through “later”. It is hard to see what you have in closets if it is poorly organized and things are just stuffed in. It is also hard when you live in a food desert and you love to cook and you run across hard to come by items that you get excited about and buy a whole bunch because they are scarce, and then you throw them in your poorly organized freezers and you sort of forget you have them as they get covered up with subsequently purchased groceries, and then you inadvertently buy more the next time you run across them.
I decided to start by sorting and organizing the freezer that has all the sausages, ground meat, lamb, and homemade brodo. I was rather dismayed to discover we have seven pounds of ground veal, five pounds of ground lamb, and four legs of lamb and a huge lamb rack. Veal and lamb are virtually impossible to obtain out here, so we bought a bunch when we had the chance, then forgot we had it. There will be meatballs and meatloaf on the menu for the next several months. I have plans for one of the lamb legs for Easter.
I also organized the linen cupboard, and found we have eight sets of queen sheets. We only have three queen beds, and we only sleep in one of them, and I have no idea why I thought we needed so many. The sheets are all in great shape. We will not need to buy new sheets ever again.
I have several closets to go through and a couple of freezers to organize. I am so glad I will only work part time starting in March so that I can finish sorting and organizing.
How do you fold fitted sheets? What are you prone to buy too much of? Any helpful home organizing tips?
And we thought it was cold during the last cold spell.
Not much happening on the farm this week. The sun is sure getting stronger, and the chickens stand on the south side of the shed, in the sun, out of the wind, against the white steel, and they don’t venture much further. They even laid a few eggs.
I’m having a hard time feeling motivated lately. Every now and then I get to a point where I feel like the Earth is going to fall into the sun, so what’s the point anyway.
Sigh.
And then I get up and go do something.
It could be the political climate, it could be the cold weather, it could just be the same old routine day after day. Have you noticed? Even though there’s a lot going on, and every day is different, the routine is still the same.
And coffee. Evidently, I’m a coffee drinker now. One day I bought a bag of coffee. Wait, back up—Why didn’t this group tell me there was different flavors of coffee?? I spent a day researching coffee flavors, and then I was determined not to buy a coffee maker because I wasn’t sure how committed I was to all this, so I tried various methods of making coffee without a coffee maker, and I researched egg coffee, and reusing the grounds, and strainers and filters, and I spilled a lot, and I made too many cups, bowls, and pans dirty… and then about the fourth day I bought a $10 coffee maker at Menards.
Sigh.
And a bag of small bag of Highland Grog coffee.
Sigh.
When we say we had “one cup”, are we actually referring to the volume measurement of one liquid cup? Because my travel mug is roughly two cups, and if I have two in a day, am I having four cups of coffee or two? This morning I made about three circles in the kitchen trying to figure out what I was doing first or next. I just haven’t gotten this whole coffee making process figured out yet.
Sigh.
There’s a spot in the yard where I get a real good echo off the barn and chicken coop. I stood there one day and yelled ‘Hello!’ a dozen times. I’d get two good echo’s off that and it was kinda fun and I enjoyed myself.
Out in the shed, I’ve gotten a cabinet mounted, and I’m working on the bolt storage shelves.
I saw a truck from a concrete company on the road the other day. I took a photo of it at the stoplight and was able to contact them for an estimate on adding more concrete in the shed. $13,000 for a flat slab 25’x50’. Well, that’s not a ton of money. I mean, it’s still $13K, but that’s hardly anything! Oh, it’s not going to happen this summer. I’ve said before, just because crop prices are up one year, doesn’t mean we should go crazy buying stuff, because you’d still have to make that payment next year. That’s how this whole shop project started: crop prices were really good in 2022 and I felt like I had money and I signed a contract for concrete in 2023 and began my shop. Here we are in 2025 and I’m still paying off the shop.
People may be curious about the agricultural environment in this administration…well, there’s lots of speculation. Prices are holding steady for the most part for corn and soybeans. They vary a few cents up and down every day based on talk of a trade deal with China, or good weather in Argentina. And I’ll say again, it’s such a global market, tariffs will send a price down, but bad weather in Brazil will bring it back up. It’s kinda crazy. I have a little corn in storage at the elevator, I put it there last fall, knowing I always need cash come spring, and hoping the price will have gone up enough to offset what I’m paying for storage of it. $0.06 / bushel / month. So, maybe today I win, and tomorrow I’ll lose. I’ll need the money either way.
This weekend at the college is the physics department club doing their demonstration show fundraiser. They physics kids are nerds as much as the theater kids are. They’re a good group though, and even though the show hasn’t changed too much in the 15 years I’ve been doing this, the audience kids seem to like it.
My mother and her four paternal aunts (Lena, Meta, Bertha, and Greta) spent a great deal of time in the mid-1930’s filling my mother’s Hope Chest with patchwork quilts they sewed. They used cloth scraps from their own and others’ unneeded clothing as well as larger pieces for backing. Mom never really used them and just kept them in her cedar chest.
I started using them after Husband and I married. There were four of them. One is still in tremendous shape and we have it on a bed in the basement. The quilts worked best as blankets under the bedspread as they are all sized for double beds. Two of the quilts disintegrated after about 10 years. I decided to preserve the third one and patched it as best I could and put on a new backing. I hung it on the wall in my work office for many years until time and gravity started it to sag and tear at the seams.
It has been in a cabinet in my new office until I started to clean and get rid of stuff preparatory to my retirement. I took the quilt out to our van and left it there to be used as part of winter survival gear
Husband brought it into our son’s house when we were visiting there last week, and our grandson insisted that we put it on his bed, and he slept under it every night we were in Brookings. Mind you, it hadn’t been laundered in 25 years, and was probably full of dust, but grandson loved it and wasn’t happy when we took it home. I told him I wanted to patch it better and we would bring it back to him at our next visit. It dawned on me that the quilt is about 90 years old. My mother and her aunts would be pleased some of their handwork is still being used and loved.
What precious things do you have that have been handed down? What do you want to hand down for future generations? What do you think are essentials for “Hope Chests” these days?
Get your long johns out for this coming week. Better yet, just stay inside until next Saturday. Nature is trying to kill you this week.
No further progress on the bathroom this week, still waiting on the countertops. We heard the electrician was on vacation last week, and when I pestered the boss electrician yesterday, he said two guys were on vacation and he’d get them out when back. Huh. Are they still on vacation or is he bluffing me? Could be either one.
Good thing our neighbors went on vacation again so we could do some more laundry.
The guys put heavy paper down on the floor when they started remodeling, and that’s still there, so we stopped the Roomba at the first of the year. Thank goodness for cordless vacuums, am I right?? So Much Dog Hair! My goodness…
Out in the shop I’ve finally figured out what I want to do for bolt storage. I cleaned out under the shop work bench, (That’s Luna helping me in the header photo) which hasn’t been cleaned out in 30 years, and I bought some good heavy duty storage bins to replace the old anti-freeze jugs we’ve been using since dad cut the sides out of them 40 years ago. I lined up a few bins that I’ve used over the years to see the progression in storage:
I’m not sure where the metal cans came from. They were up in the old shed ‘attic’. Dad made the yellow antifreeze jugs, I went to the small red bins, and now I’m doing the clear ones.
When these wear out it will be someone else’s problem.
A month ago, as egg prices were increasing, I thought I better look into getting chicks ordered in case they’re months out like they were a few years ago. To my surprise, nothing seemed to be delayed. I put 40 or 50 chicks in the cart, but didn’t want to order yet.
And then the company sent an email saying they’ve been overwhelmed, the website is down, and they’re not taking any more orders for this year. Well heck. I thought it seemed too good to be true. I started looking up other hatcheries. All seemed to be months out on orders. I know the local Fleet Farm will have chicks this spring, which is new for them. And the local Tractor Supply always has chicks, but again, this year, better get there as they’re coming off the truck to get any. And I saw even some of the local grain elevator will have chicks, but they’re also saying, ‘First come, First served’. Way back in the OLD old days, Rochester had two full-fledged chick hatcheries, and one of the buildings is still there, subdivided into multiple small businesses.
I haven’t seen the local elevators have live chicks in many years.
I found a small hatchery out in Willmar, MN that could get me chicks in April, and I got my order in. I did ponder just hatching my own. Guess I still could. I hope the new place is able to follow through.
I mentioned to daughter that we’re giving her Monday off because it’s Presidents Day and the college is closed. Kelly still has work, but daughter and I can take the day off. Then I proceeded to tell her about George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, asking what she remembered about them. I suspect sometimes she claims no knowledge because it’s easier than telling me what she does know. I told her about General George Washington, being the first President, and the dollar bill, and then started on Abraham Lincoln and the civil war, and his assassination, which led me to question the difference between murder and assassination (yep, politics, that’s what I thought) — and then I got a phone call which took a few minutes. When I got off the phone, daughter said, “What about having Monday off?” and I got the giggles. All of this information and she focused on what I said ten minutes ago?? I guess I should have known her priorities. And then, two hours later, she texted me a paragraph on Abraham Lincoln. Hmm! Maybe she was listening after all? Now I’m really curious: did she look that up herself or did they talk about it at her program? The kid never stops fascinating me.
This rooster was waiting for me to put corn out. 2 PHOTOS
Notice his comb? Not the traditional one you pictured in your head, is it.
And this rooster:
He got frostbite on his comb. He’ll be OK.
Did you know, there are 9 different types of rooster combs.
My current batch of chickens is really not cold weather hardy. Last week I was getting 12 – 16 dozen eggs / day. Then the weather got cold again and I’m down to 4-8 eggs / day. Some varieties are more winter hardy than others. The fancier the breed, the more ‘delicate’ they are. I’m sticking with tried and true this spring: Black Australorp and Barred Rock.
WHAT ELSE IS THERE ABOUT CHICKENS SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT?
