Category Archives: home

2022, Gatherings, home, Stories, Uncategorized

Inspiration

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Sunday has never been a day of rest for us, Yesterday was particularly busy, and we ended up in very odd but very affirming encounters with other people.

We started out the morning at 7:30 with a run-through of our choir anthem “Hear me, Redeemer” which is written in a gospel style that has a soprano soloist belting out a solo/descant with the choir echoing her lyrics. The soloist was a terrific singer who is a member of the local LDS church but who sings with us on occasion. People in the congregation loved the song, and said it was “inspirational”, something we consider a real success given this is a pretty traditional Lutheran congregation. They even clapped.

We then spent a couple of hours doing a fall clean up the church garden with other congregation members, and it was during this that a woman drove up in a car with Florida plates, a missing driver side window, a grown daughter, and four chihuahuas. She asked Husband for help, as they were homeless. Husband found a hotel that would take dogs, gave her the number for the homeless coordinator at my agency, and our pastor found some funds for a night at the hotel and gave her a bag of leftover food from the church brunch we had earlier after our service.

We then went home and vacuumed and dusted the house, dropped some kohlrabi off at a friend’s house, and headed to the liquor store for a well deserved bottle of wine. It was there we encountered the clerk who had worked at the store several years ago, quit due to health problems, and started working again. She said she remembered us, and told us she had married, quit drinking, and was really happy in her sobriety. We congratulated her. I don’t know if working in a liquor store is the best work environment for her, but it was inspiring to hear her success. She teased us that if we stopped drinking, she would be our sponsor.

What or who inspires you? How do you spend your Sundays? What are your favorite choir songs?

2022, animals, Farming Update, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Better Bring A Jacket

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

Had a freeze here this past week.

It was 28° on Wednesday morning. We lost the other creamy colored duck. And the next morning a coyote was howling just 100 feet below the house. At first, the yipping noise they make sounds a little bit surreal and I ran outside to see what was going on. Even the dogs came running back to the house looking at me like “Did you hear that? What the heck is that??“ I yelled and the dogs remembered they’re supposed to deal with stuff like coyotes and they took off after it. Kelly was out the other door slapping her ‘bird away’ boards together. There’s too many leaves on the trees yet, and the corn and beans still out there and too much coverage for things to hide in and it’s tough to see much. And that’s why, a few days later, I was out in my pajamas hunting a coyote. 

I was standing at the kitchen window filling the tea pot and I saw something moving out in the pasture. It was too far away to tell clearly what it was, and by the time I got my crocs on, and found the shells for the rifle, (which were behind the toothpaste box), and got out there to a better vantage point, there wasn’t anything to see. But as long as I was out there already, I fed the chickens and let Rosencrantz and Guildenstern out of their pen. Rosie and and Guildy are doing good.

I realized all the chickens spend a lot of time hiding, so it’s not just them. (See the first paragraph.) Course hiding under a bush seems more helpful for attacks from above than from coyotes.

Bringing pears in the house was the solution to eating them. They soften up and taste really good.

I have seen a couple guys combining soybeans around here. The freeze kills the stem and they harvest better that way. A few more days now and everyone will be going full force.

I still get some dairy magazines in the mail and I spent a bit of time wondering what I would have changed if I still had cows. My whole calf raising situation would have been the first thing to improve. I’d have needed to get them out of the dairy barn pen and into individual stalls somewhere.

Adding more cows and getting out of the stanchion barn would be important, but where and how I’m still not sure. We’re on low ground and it’s wet and I don’t know where I could have built, or how, or if I even would have wanted too.

Kelly asks me sometimes if I ever wanted to be one of those big farmers with thousands of acres? Well, the machinery and toys are fun, but it also turns into more management and less actual work at some point. So I don’t know.

As I’ve always said, just add more zero’s to the bills and income.


Done anything stupid in your pajamas?

2022, Family, Food, home, Kids, Uncategorized

Hand Pies

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Despite already having way too many kitchen toys, last month I couldn’t resist a set of hand pie molds on sale in a catalog of cooking fripperies.  I had never heard the phrase “hand pies” until I moved to Minnesota and even then, I don’t hear it often. 

Now that YA and I are overloaded with apples from our trip to the orchard on Sunday, I decided to try out one of my new molds – the apple one.  I didn’t use any particular recipe, just some thinly chopped apples with sugar and a bit of cinnamon.  At the last minute I tossed in a half cup of raspberries from my canes.  I also used refrigerated pie dough (Trader Joe’s) since I wasn’t sure how it would all come together.  I hate wasting dough made from scratch!

They turned out pretty well considering that I was just winging it.  I figured out pretty quickly that flour was needed in the mold and that although I was using an egg wash on the outside, I should have used water as the binder between the two layers of pastry.  The last issue is one I’ve encountered before; when working with store-bought pie dough, you have to really work the edges together when you roll out the scrap pieces or they don’t hold.  I know this but didn’t follow through well because I was rushing a bit (I had already made an apple crisp at YA’s request).  They turned out OK but not as pretty as any of the online pictures.  That’s OK, I didn’t expect masterpieces the first time around.

The good news is that even though they weren’t picture-perfect, they taste great.  The addition of the raspberries gave them a bit of a twang and being able to pick up your pie and eat it without a fork or spoon is a lot of fun.  Maybe I’ll try blueberries next time around.

What kind of food have you discovered as an adult? 

2022, animals, Family, Farming Update, gardening, home, Mysteries, Nature, Stories, Weather

Falling Weather

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Rosie and Guildy are still good. They look like they’re finally growing. They’re still spending most of the day hiding under something, but they do come out and go in by themselves morning and night so that’s progress.

We lost one of the creamy colored adult ducks. Still the two black and white, one creamy, one poufy, and 6 mallards. And two guineas. And roughly 52 chickens. Daily egg count is somewhere between 7 and 12, down from summer peak. Newest hens haven’t started laying yet; late October they’ll be 6 months old and they start laying somewhere in there.

This is Rooster #3 — Kelly calls him ‘Top Gun’ because he thinks he’s hot stuff.

Some of the latest batch of chickens have more black around their eyes than other years. They are ‘Black Australorpe’ breed and they have good longevity, but they can be kind of ornery. I like them. Most chickens in a close up just look ornery.

I’ve been busy at the theaters this week. The HVAC being installed brought in a scissor lift and I use it when they’re not. Replaced a bunch of non-functioning fluorescent lights in the theater with LED retrofit kits. Pulled down all the cables for the stage lights so we could redo them. (It just turns into a rat’s nest after a while. Good to pull down and start fresh.)

Created some new doorways and redid other odds and ends over the summer break between shows. On Saturday all the platforms for the seating are going back in place so I must finish the bulk of the work that I want with the lift before that.

I’ve been saying there’s not much happening on the farm. That’s not true. I’M not doing much on the farm, but there’s a lot happening. The corn and beans are both maturing and drying out. Beans are losing their leaves and drying down, corn is turning brown, maturing, and drying out. Birds are migrating, bees are busy, deciduous trees are turning colors, the world rotates, planets are moving, the moon changes phases… there’s a lot happening. Just not by me.

I watch some youTube farming channels; they’re busy getting things ready for harvest. Soybeans could be going in our area in another week or two.

The pod right in the center of the photo has 4 beans in it. BONUS! Most only have 3. Four isn’t unusual, but it’s not the normal either. See the pods at the very top of the plant? Those are the ‘bonus’ pods. Not only because the deer didn’t eat the buds off the top, but the plant develops from the bottom up, so the better the conditions, the better resources the plant has, the more pods it can create. It’s looking like a pretty good year for my crops. Knock on Wood.

WHO HAVE YOU KNOWN, OR DO YOU KNOW, THAT LOOKS ORNERY BUT WASN’T OR ISN’T? 

OR ARE THEY?

DO YOU HAVE AN “RBF”?

2022, Art, Family, home, Mysteries

Can’t…. Stop….

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I decided to put the egg table up Sunday afternoon (since I had to skip Blevins due to continuing cough).  This just involves setting up the candle, cutting wax into teeny bits, lining up the kistkas that I’ll need for this year’s design and also making the dyes I’ll be using.   The actual set up takes less than an hour but there’s a 24-hour lag before I can start working on eggs.  The dyes need to be completely cooled and the eggs need to be room temperature.

Yesterday when I woke up at 5:30 (about the norm), it was all I could do to keep myself from going downstairs, firing up the kistkas and getting started.  I know myself well enough to know that the minute I start, I’ll be obsessed until I’m done.  Sitting in that chair for too many hours in a day just makes my back and shoulders hurt so starting at 6 a.m. is not a good idea. 

There are very few things that I get this obsessed about.  In card-making, I don’t have any problem putting things away at a good stopping point.  Jigsaw puzzles can keep me busy for quite some time but I do tend to run out of puzzle steam after 3-4 hours.  Reading is a passion, but except for the rare “I just have to finish this book right now” situation, I can stop when I need to.   (I do occasionally have to throw YA out of my room if I’m down to the last few chapters of something I’m really into and I was once late to work!)   But once I start the first egg, the decks need to be cleared because I want to keep going and going.  In prior years (before retirement) I used to take the egg week off from work because I’d end up sitting at the table until 2 and 3 in the morning.  Several years ago when I didn’t take the week off, I ended up pulling an all-nighter; that was ugly.

Waiting until 7:30 to go downstairs was a good idea.  I ate all my meals at the table today and except for an hour when there was a tradesman here measuring stuff, I worked straight through to 8:15 p.m.  Then I hobbled upstairs and headed straight to the ibuprofen bottle!  I figure, based on yesterday’s work, I’ll have four more days before I’m done. 

What do you obsess about?

2022, Food, Games, home, Mysteries, Technology

Dish Drainer Jenga

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I saw a funny picture on Facebook last week – dish jenga.  I laughed because it’s true – at least in my life.

Usually it doesn’t come to this but on Monday, it was the perfect dish drainer jenga storm.  YA took the last brownie to work – an empty Tupperware.  Cooked down the last of the raspberries into a sauce. Made a bundt cake – mixing bowl and then bundt pan.  Three jars of pesto – that was a biggie as it uses the salad spinner and most of the food processor and accessories.  Then add in the dishes from breakfast as well as all the measuring cups, spoons and spatulas for all the morning endeavors and I was well and truly jenga’d. 

If the dishwasher were working I suppose I could have filled it up instead and if I’d been willing to get out a dishtowel to dry, I could have put things away as I was working.  But for some reason, while I am willing to stop between steps of projects to wash things, washing AND drying doesn’t seem like a good use of time when I know dishes will dry on their own.  I’m guessing this is the kind of thought process that results in most folks who end up with dish jenga.

I’ve never liked the actual Jenga game very much.  The groups I’ve played in haven’t managed to keep the game going very long and it’s not that much fun when you are constantly having to pick up all the pieces.  And life-size Jenga is terrifying; I only played it once on the beach in St. Thomas and it gave me nightmares.

What are your favorite board games?

2022, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Midnight Flight

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One of my colleagues was excited last week for the arrival of her mother for a visit from Washington State. She was flying from Spokane to Bismarck via Minneapolis, arriving in Bismarck on the midnight Delta flight.

There are very few commercial airports in ND, and very few commercial carriers that come into the State. I knew exactly what the midnight flight into Bismarck is like. The airport terminal is almost dark, nothing is open, and all the airline counters are closed. There are a couple of lighted offices, and one or two rental car desks whose occupants look exhausted. The long term parking kiosk is closed, so you better have exact change for your parking bill, or else a debit/credit card.

It is sort of comforting, sort of odd to live in such a remote place and know the details of these things so well. I wonder what it will be like to move back to Luverne when I retire, and what new things I will learn, and what old things are still there.

What communities are you the most familiar with? How have they changed for better or worse over the years? What are some of the more interesting airports you have been in?

2022, animals, Family, Games, home, pets, Uncategorized

Learning How To Fetch

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Our puppy is a delightful little fellow who never misses an opportunity to teach us new things. These past couple of weeks he taught us to fetch. We didn’t even know it until recently.

Kyrill loves to play with balls. He rolls them around and chases them. They often roll under the sofa and love seat in the livingroom, and the space is too small for him to retrieve them, so he barks and we get them for him.

I became suspicious of the sheer volume. of balls that were going under the furniture. I draped blankets in front of the sofa and love seat to block balls from rolling under, and then I noticed him roll the balls under the unblocked ends of the furniture. He was doing this on purpose! This was a Terrier game!

The Cesky Facebook group told me this is typical of the breed, and they all have yardsticks close at hand to retrieve all the toys their dogs like to shove under the furniture. Who would have guessed?

What are you favorite and least favorite games to play. What have animals taught you? Who has been the most successful getting you to do what you don’t want to do?

2022, animals, Food, Health, home, pets, Uncategorized

Not For Human Consumption

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Our puppy is an avid chewer, and we get him faux rawhide treats to satisfy his cravings. Rawhide is hard to digest, and the fake stuff is described in one site as made from “Human grade food ingredients that are nutritious, highly digestible and completely healthy for your dog”.

As I perused a new bag of chews, I noticed in rather large letters these words: Not for human consumption. These were flat and thin chews about 4 X 6 inches in size. There is certainly nothing about them that made me want to start chewing on them. Are there people who would actually think it was ok to chew on these things? Are people that ignorant? Have parents given them to their teething infants? What would make a company put something like that on their products? I just don’t know what to think!

What are some perplexing and unnecessary warnings you have seen on products? What foods do you think are not for human consumption?

2022, gardening, home, Uncategorized

Pushing Yourself

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This gardening season has lacked much of a strategy except the constant drive to weed and water.

We typically are more planful in terms of weed mitigation in the spring, laying down wet newspapers in the rows and covering it with topsoil, making sure all the soaker hoses are laid down, etc. I suppose having the new puppy slowed us down somewhat, but for whatever reason, it wasn’t until last weekend that Husband decided enough was enough and he bought 30 bags of black cypress mulch to spread in the flower beds.

It was really hot on Sunday but he insisted he was going to get it all spread out, and so he did, all 56 cubic feet of it. He told me he pushed himself as hard as he could, more out of a sense of pride than anything else. He is not happy with the changes that age is exerting on his body, and wants to be able to work like he did when he was younger. He needed a nap on Sunday after all that. He was so tired he forgot to take his wallet out of his jeans pockets, and it got laundered. I should also add that over the weekend we vacuumed and dusted and made two kinds of corn chowder, potato salad, cherry strudel, and chicken enchiladas. Don’t ask me why. It just seemed like a good thing to do.

I tell myself that once we are both fully retired we will have the time to garden and cook at a more sedate pace and we won’t be so worn out all the time. This habit of pushing ourselves is getting tiresome.

How do you push yourself or pace yourself? When are you likely to overdo it?