Category Archives: home

2023, animals, home, Nature, Uncategorized, Weather

Brrr!

40 Comments

Last Saturday we reached a milestone in our community of a record breaking windchill of -70° F. I can’t say I was glad to be a part of this. The cold interfered with a lot of things. The guy who is putting new carpet in our basement had to beg off from coming over as his diesel vehicle was completely frozen up and he couldn’t haul the things that he needed. We didn’t leave the house from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. We kept the curtains and blinds closed to keep the heat in and the cold out. I can’t imagine how hard it was for ranchers to keep their cattle safe out in the pastures.

The dog has suffered the most with the cold. He finally got a walk yesterday. Last Friday he went in the yard and got so cold that he couldn’t move and Husband had to rescue him. That was after only a minute or so outside. He wouldn’t be cooperative with booties, and the enforced inside stay has made him constantly begging for attention and doing zoomies around the house since it was too cold to go for walks.

Daughter tried to explain to her West Coast friends how cold it was here, but they just couldn’t relate. It is hard to explain that the cold interferes with the pressure in vehicle tires, and how hard it is to put air in tires when exposed skin will freeze in less than a few minutes. Warmer weather is predicted for next week. I think the dog will be relieved he can finally go for walks.

How do you cope with extreme cold? Any experiences with frost bite?

2024, Business, home, TV

No Purchase Necessary

41 Comments

Now that I have a little more leisure after the holidays, I’ve had more time in my studio which also means more time with the tv on.  It’s astonishing to see what some actors are willing to do in commercials these days.  I will admit to a bit of snobbery about seeing quite famous folks doing commercials but even so….

Drew Barrymore and Sarah Jessica Parker are both hawking gaming apps right now.  (I’m not sure I want to know where these apps are getting the money to make/run these commercials.)   SJP’s commercial isn’t too silly but I’ve seen three DB adds so far and she acts like a moron in all of them. 

Ty Pennington, who used to do those makeover shows is also doing ads for a casino app.  Luckily I’ve only seen one – he is hanging upside down in a chimney wearing a Santa hat.  Idiotic.

John Travolta is selling something by wearing a Santa suit and doing disco, although his age is really showing as he dances.  It’s probably problematic that I’ve seen the commercial a couple of times in the last week but can’t remember the product. 

I’m not the target audience but I do wonder how much money these folks are getting paid to act stupid on national/international tv.  Part of me thinks they couldn’t pay me enough to do this but part of me thinks that if some product wanted to cough up a TON of cash, I might weigh the pros and cons.  I think “well, it would only run so long” but then I remember some of the old commercials we’ve dredged up here on the trail (“it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”)… maybe my ad would go viral and I’d become famous and then where would I be?  But an infusion of cash wouldn’t be so bad either. I suppose it’s a good thing that I’ll never have to make this decision in my lifetime!

Any particularly heinous ads bugging you these days?

2024, animals, Farming Update, home, Seasons, Technology

January

64 Comments

The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Well, now it looks and feels like January in Minnesota. Snow and cold and we haven’t seen the sun in weeks. 

Days like this, I don’t miss the cow chores. Taking care of the chickens fills me with a sense of satisfaction like I used to get from the cows, without nearly the amount of work. With the cold weather predicted I’ll need to pay more attention to keeping the chickens water bucket filled. They drink a surprising amount in a day. It’s fun to watch them drink; they take “sips”, then tip their head back to swallow. Repeat. Just now I googled “how do chickens drink” and it says they don’t have an epiglottis, and their tongue isn’t helpful in this regard, so,… gravity. Google also says chickens drink about a pint or more per day. That means my 45 chickens are going through 5.6 gallons / day. Which seems about right. And with them staying inside more with the snow and cold, it’s a good thing we have a heated bucket. And I’ll need to collect eggs more often before they freeze. 

I’ve ordered seed, fertilizer, and chemicals for spring, so that’s encouraging and exciting and a sign this snow and cold will end. Prices, jeepers. Corn seed is about $300 / bag and plants about 2.5 acres. Soybeans are $60 / bag and does about 1 acre. Oats is $13/ bag and does less than an acre. I don’t even want to tell you how much the fertilizer and spraying totals. It’s over $26,000.  Sigh. And I’m a small farmer! It’s crazy. 

Last week talking about clocks and I should have included this one. I inherited this clock at the college. It was in a cabinet, so it came with the place. 

Peter Max design. Ebay shows them at $600. That’s the thing about Ebay; just because they list that amount doesn’t mean anyone has PAID that amount. 

This cleaver (knife) has been hanging in the machine shed for years.  

I recently found it hanging on a nail in a back corner. And considering it’s been there a long time, it’s in really good shape. What’s the best way to ‘preserve’ it or save it? Oil the wooden handle? Remove the rust on the blade? I don’t know what I would ever do with it besides hang it on a wall, and I’m not up on my antiques. The only printing on it says “Genuine Warranty” and below that a numeral 8. Eight inch blade. I suggested to my family that it’s the actual knife dad dropped on his head when he was 4 years old that he said his mother poured Absorbine Jr. on his head and wrapped it with brown paper, see the scar?? My siblings were dubious and pointed out it was a hatchet, not a knife that he says he split his head with. Spoil sports. 

Tell a story about being groovy. Or a knife story. 

Family, Food, holidays, home, Nature

Maple Syrup

32 Comments

The son of my BFF is what we used to call “a gentleman farmer”.  He and his family live in the big farmhouse and they have goats and chickens, a massive garden and maple trees.  Every fall he taps the trees and boils down the sap to make syrup.  He also has black walnut trees which are harvested.  I don’t understand the science behind any of it but the output of the maples and the black walnuts varies greatly from year to year.  I try never to get my expectations up about whether I will see the syrup and about whether any of the syrup will be “maple black walnut”.

This year the maples did fine but not the black walnuts our holiday gift was maple alone.  This is not a problem for me and I was looking forward to a couple of months of fresh from the farm syrup.  (This is particularly good when paired with Ben’s fresh from the farm eggs!)  YA tends to shy away from foods that are “different”; this means that farm eggs and fresh maple syrup are usually left completely to me.  Last years black walnut syrup was all mine.  Delicious.

For some reason YA decided to taste this year’s syrup.  Then she decided to make pancakes that night.  She’s now made pancakes four more times since Christmas – she even went out and purchased a new box of Bisquick after she used up the box in the cabinet.  I’m thinking I’d better make some pancakes of my own pretty darn quickly or I won’t even get to TASTE this year’s syrup!

How do you like your pancakes?  Is there a place that makes particularly good pancakes?

2024, Family, home, Seasons

Welcome 2024

30 Comments

We’re putting away all the holiday decorations today.  Normally we do everything today but YA has been chomping at the bit so started cleaning up “around the edges” the last couple of days.  She doesn’t do more because, of course, she’ll leave most of it to me.  Not a problem… pretty much everything goes into the plastic bins that are currently sitting on the front porch.  Only takes about an hour or so. 

Except for the wreath.  I like to leave it up until after Chinese New Year.  Not entirely sure why – except that they are darn expensive and I like having it on the front door with our welcome sign.

Still “discussing” whether to put the tree out in the back.  YA wants to but I’m a little skeptical that it might lure little critters into a false sense of security when there is a killer beast let loose in the yard several times a day.  I’m campaigning for the front yard but YA thinks that will look messy from the street.  It’s pretty much the last thing that will be done today – plenty of time for more “discussion”.

Other than that, no particular acknowledgement of the beginning of the new year.  We used to write bad habits that we wanted to leave behind onto flash paper and burn them up but haven’t done that for years.  I’m not even sure the magic store, where you can find flash paper, is still in the Mall.  As I suspect is the case for most of us on the Trail, it’s an arbitrary day and if you’re not already in the mood to make changes to your life, circling this day on the calendar probably won’t do it.  Don’t tell the weight loss companies who are right now flooding the market with ads that I said so. 

Will put up all the 2024 calendars today as well!

Do you still write checks – how long does it normally take you to write the correct year in the date?

2023, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Caramel Rolls

39 Comments

Our daughter had an inexplicable yearning for a caramel roll the other day and went out to find one in Tacoma. No one she asked knew what she was talking about. Some people suggested sticky buns, but they didn’t look right to her. The ones she likes are available in every little café around here. The caramel is at the bottom of the pan, and the rolls are dumped upside down when they come out of the oven and the caramel drips down over the hot rolls.

She did some research and found that the caramel rolls that she was familiar with as well as the name caramel roll are peculiar to the Dakotas, Minnesota, and maybe parts of Wisconsin. She phoned some friends from California and they confirmed that they had never heard of caramel rolls. They had sticky buns. A Bismarck friend who lives in Virginia said no one there knew what caramel rolls were. Her best friend from childhood now lives in Reno, NV, and she said no one there spoke of caramel rolls, either. That led to her friend getting her aunt’s recipe for the caramel rolls that she bakes at her restaurant called The Cowboy Café in Medora, ND. Daughter sent me the recipe. It makes six pans of rolls, and the girls are hoping I can reduce the recipe to a single batch so they can make them. Her friend’s mother also sent them a caramel roll recipe from a cookbook published by a Lutheran church in Sharon, ND.

Husband found the cookbook from my Lutheran Church in Luverne. It had two caramel rolls recipes. He also found caramel roll recipes in the New Prague Hotel Cookbook and in The Norske Nook Cookbook from Osseo, WI. I sent the recipes to Daughter and her friend in Reno. They are thrilled. They both like to bake. Now they have multiple recipes to choose from when they are feeling homesick.

What do you miss most when you are away from home? Ever had genuine homesickness?

2023, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, home, Nature, Theatre, Uncategorized

Wrapping Up

76 Comments

Today’s Farming Update comes from Ben.

Sunday we saw ‘Aladdin’ at the Orpheum. It was big and fun. Everything you would expect of a Disney musical. Bright costumes, lots and lots of colorful lights, and a lot of magic. I still haven’t figured out how the carpet flew. It must have been magic.

I had feed delivered to the farm Monday. I had cracked corn put in the bulk bin by the barn and I feed it to the chickens. It wasn’t empty yet, but I didn’t want the truck coming down when the road gets icy or snow covered. I was planning ahead. The bin holds maybe 6000 lbs. I usually order 100 bushels (remember, 56 lbs / bushel, so 5600 lbs) about every 8 months. Because the bin wasn’t empty, I was gonna order 50 bushels. But the elevator / coop, wanted at least 4000 lbs to deliver. As long as the weather forecast was decent, we postponed for two weeks, and the corn fit with a little room to spare. The corn is from the ‘grain bank’; Corn I have the elevator store specifically for use as feed. (It’s not MY specific corn, it’s just an amount of bushels, so when I need corn, I don’t have to purchase that. I pay for the hauling and the cracking. $30 to crack it, $100 to deliver it.

I wish I had taken a picture of the truck unloading. Nothing has gotten smaller in the last 30 years…The driver said they have 5 bin trucks, and 7 bin trucks. This was a 7.  

The chickens are doing well. So well they’re doubling up on box space.

Maybe this is where the double yolkers come from!

One of our summer chickens turned into a rooster. So far, he hangs out with the hens and keeps to himself and hasn’t caused any trouble.

I’m not sure the other roosters even pay him any attention yet. Funny to think ‘They don’t know he’s around’, but maybe.

I stepped out one morning and everyone came to see what I had for them. The usual table scraps.

Crop insurance payment came in. It was enough I bought myself a new ladder. And I went for the heavy-duty fiberglass. I often see aluminum extension ladders on auctions, but not fiberglass.

I got a call from Samantha, my agronomist talking about 2024 crops. Input costs are down a bit from 2023, thank goodness. I expect Nate, my seed dealer to call soon. Early orders get discounts. Can I please just not have debt for a few weeks before taking out next year’s loan?

College semester is over. I finished the class with 94%. Whew. Creative Writing begins January 8th, and that will be an in-person class with a teacher I know well. Need about 22 credits yet and I’ll have a degree!

I baked the first batch of Amish Friendship Bread on Wednesday night. I had a bottle of Grape pop, I had my headphones on and I was listening to the first album of Chicago, when they were “Chicago Transit Authority”. It turned out OK.

WHAT WAS YOUR MUSIC THIS WEEK?

2023, Family, home, The Future, Uncategorized, work

Getting Old

58 Comments

In the last week I have done something rather unheard of for me-I took two full days off of work because I was tired.

I am rarely sick. I normally have enough energy to get done all the things I want to accomplish in the evenings and on the weekends. I am not doing any more than I normally do. I am in good health. Work is no more stressful than it usually is. Why, then, am I in bed most nights by 8:30? Husband is having the same experience that I am and is tired all the time.

I realized to my great annoyance that we are tired because we are aging. I will only be 66 in February. That isn’t that old. Husband will be 70, so I can understand a little more why he is taking more naps. After all, he may be retired, but he is working 20 hours a week.

My two days off allowed me to get a lot of things done at home that I would never have accomplished after work. I have to accept that I need to take more time off. With only a year of full time work left before I retire, I doubt that the administration will be too upset about me taking the occasional day off. They are hopeful I will work part-time after I formally retire, so they will be nice to me.

What about getting older has surprised and/ or annoyed you? If you are retired, is it what you hoped it would be?

2023, animals, Family, Farming Update, Health, home, pets, Uncategorized, work

Pause

33 Comments

Today’s Farm Update is from Ben.

Felt like a rather quiet week on the farm.

I did get snow fence installed, and driveway markers are in.

Hauled in the last of the scrap Iron I wanted to do for this year. I’ll be curious to see what my total was for scrap iron this year. Several thousand lbs. This last load was 3500 lbs and was an old disc, a bit of the old elevator frame, and some misc pieces. Price was still $100 / ton so it paid for the gas anyway.

I did an (almost) final cleaned up behind the shed one day just scraping all the brush into a pile; I wish I had done a before photo but there’s the after.

Just image it full of trees and junk and crap collected over 40 years. I’d love to put an overhang back here to shelter some machinery like the rear blade, the snow blower, the brush mower, etc. Got a pile of cement blocks to move yet.

Met our banker one day and made a plan. I’ve got most of the big bills paid. Signed the last of the papers for crop insurance, but don’t know what that’s going to pay yet.

Had two nights of Holiday Concerts at the college this past week. The choir sounds really very nice. The band is small but growing, and they’ll be really good in another year or two. The one photo is the designer, Paul, with Santa.

We’ve had a little issue with Luna and Bailey lately. They really got into a fight the day I was working on snow fence. Like a ‘to the death’ type fight. I had to separate them three times, finally putting Bailey in the gator.

We can tell Bailey seems jealous, yet she’s picking fights she doesn’t want to be in. They’re equal size and weight. It almost seems like Luna is trying to find her place in the order. Bailey is spayed, we don’t think Luna is yet. We’ve had Luna for 2 months now. She’s really settling in. Which might be what’s putting Bailey off. Any thoughts on 2 female dogs getting along would be appreciated.

Need to get the final paper submitted for class this coming week and the semester is over on the 15th.

The Rep Theater has the next phase of heating and AC going on so that will take some of my time. They have a lot of old photos out as part of the 40 year anniversary. This was me at about 20 years old at the Rep. PHOTO

I should get going on 2023 bookwork one of these days… I’ve been really lazy on that this year.

HAVE YOU GOT THINGS WRAPPED UP?

2023, Family, holidays, home, Uncategorized

Lit Up

52 Comments

When we first moved to our house in 1988, people referred to our street, in December, as Santa Claus Lane because about four houses at the end of the street had elaborate, wooden, hand made, moving Christmas decorations in the front yard. One, the home of a piano teacher, had the swaying figure of an organist that looked like the teacher herself seated at a pipe organ, with choir boys standing along side in a row. The boys looked like the teacher’s three sons.

As the owners of the elaborate decorations aged and/or died, the decorations have been given to other residents on the street, but the decorations have aged, too, and no longer move. Most other residents opt for strings of lights on the trees and houses. All we have are four, year round LED lanterns stuck in the ground lining the edge of the front peony bed.

Our front yard isn’t conducive to light displays because of the awkward placement of the only electrical outlet on the front of the house being between the double garage doors. We would have to drive over electrical cords. I am fine with no lights. Something in me rebels about the falderal, and really, all that just takes up space in the basement 11 months of the year. Husband is even more ascetic than I am, but confessed last weekend while we were running errands to strange urges to get lights and hang the all over the front of the house. I don’t know what got into him, but I got him home as soon as I could and poured a glass of German brandy for him. that is something we usually only have around this time of year, since I need it for Stollen.

How do you decorate the outside of your house for the holidays? What is your favorite holiday beverage?