Last Monday I announced to my coworkers on the Youth and Family Team that Husband and I had worked like navvies all weekend getting the garden planted. They had no idea what I meant.
We picked up some handy words and phrases when we lived in Canada that most people here find odd or quaint. Our whole family calls Mail Carriers “Posties”. We phone one another instead of call one another. The sofa is sometimes a chesterfield. People we are annoyed with are jam tarts. Those trying hard to get ahead are keeners.
Just in our family, Spaghetti with olive oil and garlic will forever be called Pasta with Invisible Sauce. A massage at bedtime was always called a backrub scratchrub by our children. A bedtime breakfast was a bowl of cereal before bed.
l grew up with some odd family words for things. My maternal grandmother said that a bottle of soda that had lost its fizz was ausgespielt (all talked out). My mother said that someone who had too much to drink was a little gemutlich. Farts were “little noises from behind”, according to my mother.
What phrases or word usages are specific to your family or place? What words or phrases would you like to introduce into everyday speech or see back into everyday speech?
We’ve had 5.5″ of rain since May 1. They’ve all been pretty decent, gentle rains I thought. And then I was out picking up some rocks and there are some wash-outs in the fields. It doesn’t take much slope, and especially right now with so much bare ground, a hard rain for few minutes will wash.
Farmers do so many things to try and prevent it. Obviously we don’t want to lose the top soil; it’s how we make our living too, and it really hurts my soul to see a field wash like this. Thanks goodness they’re not deep ruts. On the rolling hills like our farm, they’re hard to avoid.
I had picked up rocks before planting too, but there’s always more.
I finished at the college on Tuesday.
I finished lighting the play at the Rep on Tuesday, and Wednesday evening I cut some grass. Got rained on, which led to a beautiful double rainbow.
Still trying to catch up on mowing.
We let the little chicks out. They’re not so little anymore. Luna was very interested in them. She never bothered them, she just had to investigate really really closely.
Daughter had her 29th Birthday. Four girlfriends from PossAbilities took her out to eat. I sent them a note of appreciation; it seems like such a small thing, but for her, that’s a pretty big deal! She doesn’t have the opportunities for those little things, like lunch with girlfriends. These four are pretty cool and we’re all lucky for the people that come into our lives.
I put away the last of the 2023 receipts that were in a pile hiding in a desk drawer. Seriously, I’m going to get going on 2024 bookwork soon. SOON!
I really want to get going on the shed again. I also need to get the roadsides mowed in the forecasted week without rain, so that should be the priority. And there’s a fence along the road that I want to rebuild. It’s embarrassing to drive by and look at every day. It’s just wore out. Been there a lot of years. I’ve fixed it a lot, but it’s time to be rebuilt. Which means mowing the grass in there first. And since it’s 3′ tall, I need the brush mower. Which needs four bolts holding the gear box on replaced before I use it again. Need to cut / grind them off and replace. And I should do that soon, so they guys can get the cattle in that pasture.
I’m a little hesitant to build a fence again. I figure I need to dig holes for 11wood posts, plus put in 100 steel posts. That was hard work when I was younger. And I know this a rocky area (because it’s all rocky on our farm) Digging a hole is hard work involving a 6’ iron breaker bar, and the manual post hole digger. I don’t know anyone with a tractor mounted one. Kelly said I should I go rent one of those ‘Dingo’, motorized post hole diggers. “Do it for me so I don’t need to listen to you moan and complain.” A pretty compelling argument. I’m working on a summer helper again. I’m not sure they’d come back after a day of this.
I cut down some dead trees, and planted 6 oak seedlings. They were given to school kids for Arbor day. A friend is an elementary school teacher, and she got a bag of seedlings, but many kids are in apartments, so I got 6 of the left overs. I could cross those couple things off my to-do list.
Spent Wednesday riding in big trucks and directing the drivers applying dust control on the township gravel roads.
You know, this happens every summer: more on the list than I can get done. This is:
WHAT EVENT WOULD YOU DO AT A RODEO? OR HAVE YOU ALREADY?
I have no problem admitting that Husband, I, and the dog are spoiled when it comes to food. I started to subscribe to Goumet and Bon Appetit when I was in Middle School. That has certainly skewed my expectations for meals in my home ever since.
The dog is spoiled because he will only eat his kibble if we put a spoonful or so of homemade broth on it. This week it is goat broth. He is a happy boy.
Winnipeg is a foodies paradise, with every sort of ethnic restaurant and grocery store you can imagine. Six years there left me unprepared for spartan western North Dakota and only two chain grocery stores. Fargo, the nearest food mecca is 300 miles away.
We have taken to ordering on-line to obtain harder to find cooking ingredients. This Christmas, Husband found a source for all sorts of food from Spain, including wonderful serrano ham, Portuguese linguica, cheeses, chorizo, smoked beef, olives, and Galician sourdough bread partially baked in Galicia and frozen, shipped to the US, then shipped frozen to us. It is lovely bread that we tried, but failed, to reproduce at home. We also order 10 lb hunks of parmesan, olives, and pasta from an Italian importer (the parm lasts for a year and costs less than buying smaller packages in the grocery store) and beans from Rancho Gordo. I also order celeriac by the case from Oregon because we can’t grow it well here and I like to cook with it in soup stock. Daughter just visited the Rogue River Creamery in Southern Oregon and decided we needed 4 lbs of their award winning cheddar and blue cheeses. It will arrive on Wednesday. She and son have similar food attitudes as we have.
I justify all this by noting we don’t travel much, have little to no debt, rarely eat in restaurants, and don’t own a boat, camper, or a lake home. We shall see if living near to Sioux Falls after we retire allows more access to these foods, or if we will still order from afar.
If you lived in the middle of nowhere, and cost was not an issue, what would you order on-line to eat and cook with.Where do you like to find recipes?
For the past several weeks Husband and I didn’t go out of our front door. Some enterprising robins built a nest atop the light that illuminated the stoep, hatched four eggs, and were busily feeding their chicks. We didn’t want to disturb them by going in and out the front door. You can see the nest in the header photo.
We could see the chicks getting bigger, and by Saturday, the last of the chicks was perched on the bench below the nest.
I like the baby tufts on his head. He sat there for a day, then flew off. I hope he has a nice adulthood.
I was always pretty independent and left the nest pretty easily, although with lots of anxiety. So did Husband and our children. I have known a few families in town where the children never manage to leave. In Winnipeg, it was typical for young people to buy their first home on the same block as their parents. That would have been pretty weird, I think, but typical for Canadian society.
What kind of a fledgling were you?Got any good bird stories?
We feed the squirrels. We started out to feed just the birds; I’m not even remotely worried about squirrels not being able to fend for themselves. But as anyone who has tried to feed birds without feeding squirrels will tell you – get over yourself. We have one feeder that has things like corn and peanuts and suet. The other feeders offer teeny bits that appeal to birds and have itty bitty openings that the squirrels can’t get into. The last feeder holds a block of seed and meal worms but is laced with some kind of hot sauce. Apparently birds aren’t bothered by capsaicin while squirrels are repelled it. It seems to be doing the job as the squirrels ignore it completely and the birds seem to enjoy it.
Of course, having squirrels on the feeders and on the ground under the feeders makes Guinevere insane. When you open the back porch door she can get to the feeders in about a nanosecond. She has never gotten a squirrel although there is one who seems to go out of its way to mosey along to the tree with just a hairs breath from getting gnawed by the dog.
I have to admit that sometimes I egg Guinevere on. “Go get `em Tiger” is the most used phrase although sometimes I mix it up. I don’t actually want her to get a squirrel and I’m very sure that my giving her positive feedback isn’t increasing her speed but I do like to think I’m tricking her into getting a little more exercise.
I only think like this because I have to trick MYSELF into getting more exercise. I’m just not crazy about organized exercise, so I disguise it as something else. Yardwork is the biggie and walking the dog is good too – I don’t even think about these as exercise. I’ve taken over trash/recycling duty from YA the last year as this is something that needs doing and the long driveway on the hill is some good movement. I’ve even taken to bringing up the neighbors cans (they keep their cans next to their back door which is right off my driveway). Extra trips and it’s a neighborly thing to do. If science actually came up with a pill to replace exercise, the neighbors would probably be on their own every Thursday!
Until I figure out a way to make exercise my friend, I guess I’ll be tricking the dog into chasing after all the teenage mutant ninja squirrels in the back.
Are you and exercise friends? How do you manage it???
Husband was at the local college library the other day and saw a book that he thought I would like. He checked out Hausgeister! Household Spirits of German Folklore, and it has been quite a fun read. The book details the various spirits that inhabit German folklore, and outlines the origins and changes in attitudes regarding these characters over the years. Most Germans believed that their homes, particularly farm homes, were inhabited by these creatures, and that the world around them was as well. It was easy to believe in them in the times when houses were poorly lit and were heated with fireplaces. All you needed to be mindful of was making sure you fed them what they liked to eat.
Most of the myths were about kobolds, male household gnomes who helped out with the housework and farm chores. Wichtel were spirits who lived in communities below mountains. They were also helpful. Draks were small fire dragons that could be either good or evil. They entered the house through the chimney. Holzfraulein were female spirits of the forest. Geldmannlein brought people money and looked like weeds.
The Brothers Grimm wrote extensively about these creatures in addition to writing their fairy tales. Tomte and Nisse are their Scandinavian counter parts. I think there is a Finnish character called Sit Behind the Stove. I think we have a kobold in our dining room who rolls the dog’s balls out from underneath the buffet. Something manages to do it. The ball rolls under, and a few seconds later rolls back out. A kobold is more fun to imagine than uneven flooring.
What hausgeist would you want to have? Favorite fairy tales?
Last summer Husband bought four tarragon plants to put in the big front garden bed. We had never grown tarragon before, and I hadn’t cooked with it that much. We found it a delightful addition to the garden and to our cooking. I was sad to see Autumn come and the plants die in the first freezes. I also thought the same thing about the spinach, a late season Italian variety called Gigante d’inverno, that we plant once the peas are done in August. It is a dark green, highly savoyed spinach with large leaves. It is pretty fast growing and cold hardy. It doesn’t like heat, but likes it cool, even if it gets snowed on.
Much to our surprise, all four tarragon plants survived the winter and are growing nicely. The same is true for the few stray spinach plants we didn’t harvest last year. I never realized that a tender herb like tarragon was hardy to Zone 4, and that if well mulched, the spinach can winter over even in North Dakota. I find that amazing.
Husband plans to have lots of herbs in the garden this summer. It is also a basil summer, as we are getting low on pesto in the freezer. Can you tell I am excited about getting into the garden?
What herbs do you like to grow? What do you like to use tarragon for? How are your garden plans coming?
Year after year people I know have been dumping their land lines.
For awhile I kept ours because I hate putting all my eggs in one basket, even if it’s a mobile-phone-basket. Then right about the time I was ready to let go, my mom decided to drop hers. Why would this matter you ask? Well, my land line was saved in HER cell phone contacts and no matter how many times I said “you know, you should probably just call my cell….”, every 3rd or 4th call went to the land line. Along with a voicemail saying “Oh, I guess I’ll try your cell”. Except for picking up calls from Nonny, I’m not sure eitherYA or I have touched the handset in over a year. Sigh.
Finally I took things into my own hands in January when I was visiting. I deleted my land line from her contacts and changed “She” to “She-Cell Phone”. One and done. If she has even noticed that I don’t have two numbers any longer, she hasn’t said anything.
That was the easy part. Now I have to figure out all the various reward programs that still have my old phone number attached to them. Every time I think I have them all, I stumble across another. The Container Store just two weeks ago still had the land line!
We’ve had some nice rainfall, and I’ve got the show open, and I’m trying to stay home and get ready to farm. Yet, every day seems to be interrupted by minutiae and farming has not become the priority it should be. Yet.
My brain cleared enough I found the three things I couldn’t find last week. Kelly pointed out to me the extra chicken waterers behind the house. Yep, that’s exactly where I put them last fall when that chicken hatched those eggs under the deck. And I found the rain gauge in the garage right where I thought it should have been last week. And it turns out the dog’s tick medication is good for 12 weeks, not four, so I had only bought one dose. And that’s why I couldn’t find more. There’s usually a rational explanation, isn’t there.
Over the weekend Kelly and I got 2/3 of the seed wagon cleaned off. (The “shed remodeling tool storage wagon”) so at least I have room for oats and corn seed and the oats will be gone before I pick up the soybean seed and then that can go on there. Daughter and all three dogs and I picked up oat seed on Monday. I also picked up another ton of the layer ration for the chickens. One ton, in 50 pound bags, equals 40 bags, so they are good for about eight months.
On Friday I got the tractor hooked to the soil finisher. If you park something in a field over winter, you need to put a board under the jackstand, otherwise it will sink into the dirt and the hitch of the implement will not line up with the tractor drawbar. I had a board under the jackstand when I unhooked it back in October, but the implement shifted and the jackstand slipped off the board. And then Friday it was 8” down in the dirt. I took a regular jack out to lift up the tongue to get it hooked to the tractor and that jack pushed down into the dirt as well. I had a board to put under the jack, but it was stuck under the hitch at first. Eventually I got that out and under the jack, and was able to raise it up, get the hydraulic lines hooked to the tractor, and attach the tractor and implement. See? I’m making progress!
I moved the chicks out of their first, smaller tank, and into the larger pen. They are about robin sized now.
The spring play at the college will close this Saturday afternoon and next week is a band and choir concert. We need to be out of the theater by about 5:30PM on Saturday, so we don’t have much time to dismantle the set. I hope to get things off the bookshelves on the set, and the small grand piano (it’s an electronic keyboard) off the stage. I’m hoping to get three or four strong young kids to carry it up the steps rather than tipping it on its side, taking off two legs, and trying to get it through a doorway sideways, like it came in. Goals.
I started delivering some straw this week.
Speaking of Straw, I was talking with a family friend about the hayrides that we used to do with 4-H or church groups. It used to be a very popular thing to take a tractor and wagon, make a pile of loose straw on the wagon, and then at night, in the dark, 15 or 20 kids would pile on the wagon and you’d go out in a field and drive around and push each other off, and by the time you got home again there was no straw left on the wagon. We don’t do that anymore. Can you imagine? What could go wrong?
I don’t know how come nobody got seriously hurt. My folks did it for the church youth groups for a lot of years. The only accident I remember is when one kid jumped off a wagon early and was going to cut across a corner of the driveway to catch a second wagon, and he ran into a barbwire fence. After that, the kids were told to stay on the wagon until they got to the field.
There is a story in my grandmother’s diaries of a 4-H hayride mid 1950’s, when the tractor slipped into a ditch. The wagon tipped over and several kids were hurt – none seriously by some miracle, but my uncle, who was driving the tractor, had several cracked ribs.
When our kids were young, the daycare would visit the farm and we used a hayrack with the tall sides, and they sat on bales, and we went in the daytime, and it was just a wagon ride. Not a hayride in my sense of the word.
I googled “hayride” to see if I could find examples of our type of hayride. Wikipedia says it’s a traditional activity consisting of a recreation ride which has been loaded with hay or straw for “comfortable seating”. They say it harkens back to farmhands or kids riding the load of hay back to the barn for unloading. And has since become a tourism gimmick to generate income for the farmer. I guess that’s one way to do it.
Husband and I have four rolling pins. Two are French-style ones I use for pie crusts, one is a knobby one for hardtack, and the biggest one with narrow grooves is for lefse. I use the French ones pretty regularly. The lefse rolling pin only comes out in November, that is, until now, thanks to my physical therapist.
My physical therapist really likes to attack knots in my sore muscles by vigorously rubbing them. This is not gentle massage. It hurts, but helps loosen the muscles. The other day at my PT appointment after the heating pad and dry needling there were very sore knots on the muscles on the outside of my right leg above my knee. My therapist got out a large and heavy styrofoam roller and rolled it up and down those muscle knots for about 10 minutes. After she was finished it felt wonderful. I told her I thought I could do the same thing at home with a rolling pin. She agreed, but cautioned that the narrower circumference of the rolling pin might hurt more than her roller did.
I spent a good amount of time Saturday doing my PT exercises and rolling the lefse rolling pin up and down the knots in my leg. I had the most pain-free day I have had in a couple of months.
What is your preferred rolling pin? What are some alternative uses you have found for objects? Any odd home remedies you have tried or heard of?
