The photos above were taken from YA’s hotel room in Banff.
It’s still a little bizarre that YA now works in the same travel division as I did for 33 years, albeit in a different department. She designs website and mobile apps for group travel; when a client purchases a mobile app, she accompanies the group to provide onsite support for the app. She seems to enjoy it.
I know people who have retired from the industry and many of them have really missed the travel. I would even call it grieving in a couple of cases. I wondered if I would feel the same, but I have not. I’ve always felt extraordinarily lucky to have had my job and visited so many fabulous places; I even fantasized about making a life in many of those places. My favorite destination was almost always the last place I’d visited.
Banff is a gorgeous place and I’ve been there twice, both at this time of year, when there is snow and the air is clear and brisk. Seeing YA’s photos did give me a momentary pang but it was replaced with a great feeling of gratitude that she is getting to have some of these experiences – experiences that certainly enriched my life.
Any place you think would be nice to visit in January?
Not much happening on the farm this week, it’s been pretty cold.
The chickens are appreciating the fact there is / was no snow- or very little snow, so they’re still able to go out and move around. They get up against the south side of a building and stay in the sunshine and I try to spread their corn out in those areas. I did get nine eggs the other day, so production is slowly coming up.
Luna is still trying to find another rooster to play with her, but they are not interested in this activity.
Our bathroom and laundry room remodeling is progressing. Rough in plumbing has been completed, the fans, ductwork, and dryer vent have been installed. A little more demolition happened with the downstairs bathroom ceiling and the closet of an adjoining room being removed to allow access for pipes, which of course means the bathroom downstairs is gonna end up with a fresh paint job as well. “It all started with a new bathroom fan.” And that’s probably OK since it hasn’t been touched since the house was built in 1968.
At least the sink and toilet are not pink.
Striped wallpaper on the hot pink walls. Pretty much it’s just been me and daughter using that bathroom and I always kinda liked it. We’ve always joked about my mom painting it that way and she says it wasn’t her idea. I would expect she got a couple gallons of pink paint from somebody. We laugh that upstairs it’s 2020 but when you open the basement door it’s 1968 again. Our little time portal. That bathroom even has a wooden toilet paper roller! Speaking of which, we’ve started using bamboo TP. It’s OK!
It’s also unfortunate the cold weather coincided with tearing out the ceiling sheet rock and removing all the insulation in this area. They have plastic up on the ceiling, and zipper plastic walls, so it’s only cold in this area.
It also strikes me as a bit of a paradox that when it’s the coldest is when the electric company turns off the heat. Part of the dual fuel program, and I know it’s for the greater good, I know it’s all part of conserving energy and keeping the rates low, but that’s a big picture thing and it’s hard to keep in mind. For a lot of people.
Luna is getting frustrated because it’s been too cold for her to stay out and get the exercise that she would like. Daughter has decided it’s too cold for her long walks, too. I do play fetch with Luna and whatever stick I find while doing chores, and Luna loves running with that, but then she gets distracted by something else and leaves it lay somewhere until we find it again the next day. Course there’s always another stick in our yard.
I have been talking the dogs for walks. Through the woods or down the creek or across the pastures.
And that’s been nice. It reminds me of how often I had to walk out and get the cows for milking and I wonder if that chore made me so grumpy about walking? As a kid, it was one of my chores to go get the cows. As I got older, it was just part of the job. Often, they’d come home by themselves, they knew it was milking time. Cows love routine. We share that.
DID YOU SQUEEZE THE CHARMIN? GOT ANY GROCERY STORE MIS-ADVENTURES?
Although I grew up in Missouri, I spent many summer and winter vacations in northern Wisconsin, either at the family homestead or at relative’s cabins on the Eau Claire lakes. When it was time to pick a college, I announced to my parents that I would only apply to schools in Wisconsin or Minnesota. When I had been in Northfield for two months, I took my first trip to the Twin Cities. All it took was that weekend – I knew this was where I wanted to be. After wasband finished graduate school in Milwaukee, we hightailed it here. After 40+ years, I’d like to consider myself a Minnesotan rather than a Missourian.
It is partly the weather that drew me here so I’ve been surprised by what seems to be a trend the last several years of many Minnesotans over-reacting to the weather before the weather even gets here. So many times there is an alarming forecast and people almost burrow in, stocking up and preparing not to leave their homes. Then, of course, 8 out of 10 times, the dreaded weather never arrives.
This has happened to me once already, when snow was forecast for the week before Christmas. On that Tuesday, my book club baled on our rare in person meeting which was scheduled for Thursday. There was snow on Thursday but not nearly what was threatened. Main road and highways were fine.
Now I’ve gotten an email from a friend with whom I have concert plans in March, asking if I’d rather get online viewing tickets instead of driving downtown to see the show in person. Because it’s March, when we often have snowstorms.
This is a trend that mystifies me. Does this make me a tough Minnesotan?
When I was growing up, we were not a poinsettia household. I think a lot of it stems from money; my dad didn’t really come into his own, career-wise until I was almost out of elementary school. There are plenty of memories of my mom saying “don’t ask for that in front of your father” kinds of things. We weren’t destitute by any means, but there wasn’t a lot of disposable income for seasonal house decorations. We always had a tree and a wreath on the door, but no little villages, no strings of lights on trees in the yard, no dishes of holiday candy and no poinsettias.
I’ll admit I’ve gone a little overboard in the other direction, but I never thought much about poinsettias until I was working in the bookstore and came across The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola. This book became the first in my collection of children’s holiday books.
When YA was little, I would bring them all down and we read at least one a night during December. And it was then that I first added poinsettias to my holiday décor.
But red is really the only color for poinsettias in my book. I have a close friend who adores all things pink and she would always have a pink poinsettia on her desk during the holidays. Bleech. I do own a silk white poinsettia; I probably got it back when I had quite a few silk plants – a very silly phase I admit. I still put it out although YA doesn’t like it and it’s not my favorite either.
We usually get two big poinsettias for the mantel. Some years, if the spirit moves us, we get another one for in the dining room. AND for many years we got a teeny one for Nimue. She would happily munch her little one and leave the big ones alone. Not sure why. (I DID THE RESEARCH… a cat would have to eat hundreds of poinsettias to be affected by the toxin. We’d ALL have to eat hundreds.) This year, since Nimue has slowed down a bit as she ages, she no longer jumps up on the mantel. Since the big plants are safe, we skipped the kitty-poinsettia. She gets enough treats.
Poinsettia shopping happened at Gertens this year; YA has decided she really likes Gertens. As we were walking through the greenhouse, we came upon some truly hideous specimens. Purples, pinks, turquoise, blue. And glitter. Ick. YA knows I don’t like these so she has to tease me. This year she suggested we get one of each color to “celebrate the rainbow”. I’d have to be sedated every time I came into the room!
Poinsettias? Yes or no? Red? White? Pink? Colors of the rainbow? Glitter (I promise I won’t judge)?
Only getting about three to five eggs a day lately. Not sure what’s up with that. Might be because I ordered roosters this spring, I’m not sure. I’ve got the chickens heated water bucket going, I’ve got the tank heater going down by the barn, and I’ve got the heat running in the shop, the wellhouse heater is on for the really cold nights, plus a heat lamp over a water bucket for Bailey. And I plugged a tractor in. This time of the year I go out and do chicken chores before I go to work, rather than doing them in the afternoon when I come home. I give the chickens fresh water, (I don’t know how many chickens we have these days. Maybe 40 or 50 and they drink about two gallons a day). I throw out a bucket of corn in the morning. If I throw it out in the afternoon or evening, the deer eat it overnight before the chickens ever get to it. Coming down our driveway at dusk, there are deer all over! One night when it was fairly pleasant out, I bet I counted 35 deer in different spots- and that’s all in a mile just on our property! And most of those are does. Stupid deer.
A lot of years, the weekend after Thanksgiving, Kelly and I put up the snow fence. This year the weather wasn’t conducive to that so our plan is to do it this weekend as it’s supposed to be in the 40s. It will be complicated a little bit by the tall grass in there, because my cow people never ran their cattle in this pasture and I didn’t have the brush mower. I tried mowing it down with the lawnmower, but the grass was just too tall and thick. The brush mower has been repaired now and I’ll pick it up next week. They fixed a lot of extra cracks and honestly it should be better than new. It wasn’t cheap, but it cost less than a new mower.
I’ve started filling our birdfeeders again: an ear of corn, a suet block, a log with the holes drilled in it for the suet pegs, and then one feeder for sunflower seeds, and one feeder for a mix. In the fall after combining, and while I’m chisel plowing, I will pick up ears of corn that I see in the fields and bring them home and put in a bucket and that’s what I use for the birds. This fall as I was picking up corn I was thinking to myself that I thought there was a place on the tractor to I put these 20 or 30 ears so they weren’t rolling around in the cab with me. And then I remembered, under one of the steps there’s a little storage area and when I opened it up, it was full of cobs from last year. Mice had gotten into it and eaten all the kernels. I chuckled to myself as I sort of remember thinking last year to remember to go get that corn, which evidently I never did. This year they were probably in the tractor a week before I remembered to go get them, and was surprised to discover the mice had already found them and cleaned off a couple ears.
My summer Padawan came out the other night with a friend of his and they wanted to work on a car in the shop.
I told him they couldn’t get into the heated part yet, but they could use the other part of the shed. And it was gonna be cold in there. He was fine with that and said it wouldn’t be a problem. It was Wednesday night when it was 8° out and the wind blowing like crazy. The thermometer in the shed said 20 degrees and here he is in shorts, because that young man does not own a pair of pants. He picked up a different car recently and he’s fixing it up by adding things I don’t understand, but things to improve the performance: custom air filters, something called an air dump, performance spark plugs, and he’s got a chip coming for it to boost engine performance. It’s a pretty slick looking car in the first place (a Kia something) I have to admit, and he is learning a lot, and this is keeping him out of trouble. He certainly had more willpower and stamina than I did at 18, I don’t think I would’ve worked in a 20° shop in shorts. For three hours. I offered him sweatpants but he wouldn’t take them. He did ask for gloves once, but I didn’t have any that fit, and I gave him some of the nitril work gloves that I wear, and they keep your hands very warm, but the next time I went out he didn’t have those on either. He said they had gotten in the way. I offered help as needed, and I helped them find the right tools, and really, he was focused and determined. His buddy didn’t quite know what they would be doing that night. He thought they were just gonna hang out and at the last minute Padawan said ‘I know a guy with a shed, let’s go work on the car.’ They’d come into the shop area to warm up as needed, and by 10:15 PM they had the car running again and they headed for home. And again, more power to them I guess. The second kid was a very nice young man. He and his family had lived in the UAE for a couple years because his mom was working over there. He builds computers for people. It was fun talking to him. The next night, Padawan and my other summer helper came out. One still in shorts, and the other without a jacket. But he had just left it somewhere and gladly accepted my jacket. Padawan was back the third night IN SWEATPANTS!
I’m making progress on the shop. Just a couple pieces of steel yet in a corner of the inside, and all the steel on the outside wall. But that will go quick.
PHOTO
Just got AC installed, mostly to help with humidity in the summer. It’s not a ‘Man-cave’ I keep telling Kelly!
PHOTO
This was a used unit I brought home from one of the theaters and I didn’t want it sitting open all winter.
Kelly, daughter, and I saw ‘Les Mis’ at the Orpheum last week and that was as good as I remembered.
Next week is ‘Book of Mormon’, but we decided daughter didn’t need to see that one. Too many things I didn’t want to explain yet.
This blog was going to be all about the practice burn the fire department did at our old Haverhill Townhall. But then I looked at the weather forecast and my farming priorities changed. Talking snow in the 10 day and some cooler temps and I rearranged things. I’m still not sure if it’s snow to stay, but I decided I better get some outdoor things done and suddenly the blog turns into all this other stuff.
When I’m working in the machine shed, because we already have spotty cell phone service down in the valley, and then inside a metal building, I can’t get cell phone or Wi-Fi in there. 30 years ago it was a big deal when I ran a phone line out to the machine shed. I could call John Deere right from the shop while I was working on something and that was a big ass deal. It wasn’t long after we all had cell phones and the wall phone became irrelevant but still, I thought having a phone in the shop made me pretty hot stuff. It’s along those lines that I need to have, well I feel like I need to have, well I WANT internet out there. It’s not like I’m installing a TV and turning it into a man cave, but texting is a major line of communication for us and I’m always looking up something or other, so it’s a need more than a want. Therefore I am installing a Wi-Fi bridge to send the Internet from the house wirelessly over to the machine shed. A cable from our basement modem through the garage and to a device on the side of the garage, and another device at the peak of the machine shed and a cable that will plug into a router in there. It’s good that I have friends that know this stuff and could point me in the right direction, and it’s good to have YouTube to show you how to do it. The one on the garage is done and working and Wednesday morning I was mounting the one on the machine shed when I got a phone call that my second garage door would be installed the next day. Well crap, I thought that was coming next week and while I’m mostly ready for it, I wasn’t completely ready. So I spent two hours putting a couple supports in place and getting flashing installed where the tracks will be. I had to work an event Wednesday evening and then another hour Wednesday night to finish the door up before the gentlemen arrived Thursday morning and installed the door.
Kelly said it best: “It’s like ‘Let’s Make a Deal!’ Do I want Door #1 or Door #2??” This is called vertical lift garage door. It all came about because I bought a used garage door and opener at an auction for this location. My thought is this will be a good place to park the lawnmowers or the gator or the small tractors while leaving the big door and opening for the big tractor. But then the loft hasn’t materialized and regular garage door tracks would be in the way, which led me to a vertical door. Which also means of course, the door that I bought cheap at auction doesn’t work. Well heck, it’s only money.
I’m heading out to chisel some more, want to try and get that done before the temps get too cold and I should be able to finish that before the weekend.
I’ve also had a contractor out to look at moving some dirt and fixing a waterway. A spot that’s always wet in the spring and the last several years the water runs down the edge of the field rather than staying in this grassy area. That area has overgrown with Willow trees and Box Elder and really, to fix it right, we need to tear out about 200 yards of trees. The contractor is hoping to get too that early December.
I think I have this weekend open, so I shall work on picking up hoses and taking off the outdoor faucet, and until they predict a snowfall amount, I’m not gonna worry about picking up the buckets and such for the chickens yet. I suppose I might have to move a water bucket inside if the temps stay cool. I did put the back on the chicken coop this week.
I’ve seen the three ducks flying overhead. I’m not sure where they’re hanging out, but I’m glad they’re still around.
Next week I need to start lighting another show. And it’s a Christmas show of all things. Knowing my love of Christmas music should make me a joy to live with. And then the second week of December I will have holiday concerts at the college. I should start stocking up on alcohol now.
NEXT week I’ll get to the burning of the townhall.
My gardening juju goes away in September. Gardening in May and June really gets me going but by fall, I’m so done. I think it’s because the stuff that needs doing in the fall is just clean up – nothing is going to leaf out or flower or even green up due to my work and attention. And I detest the leaf situation the most.
My house and yard are in the middle of a weird neighborhood vortex; for some reason, even though most of the neighbors have the same number of trees as I do, way more leaves end up in my yard than the others. I’ve documented this over the years. So so many leaves. I’m not rabid about cleaning up leaves; I understand about leaving some leaves and plants for pollinators. However if I don’t clean up some of the leaves, then I end up with masses of wet and sometimes moldy mess in the spring.
But I hate raking and bagging leaves. I’ve always hated it. In high school, I was part of a church group that did chores for seniors and even then, I told everybody I would do any odd job but raking. Once YA was old enough I bought her a child-sized rake and I co-opted her into helping — some years I even paid her.
Now at the ripe old age of 29 she has decided that dealing with leaves is something important to her. She adores our electric lawn mower and she’s been out several times now, mowing, mulching and bagging. After a session over the weekend, she informed me that she will probably do at least one more pass in the backyard and once more out front. I haven’t asked her even once to do any of this and she hasn’t even hinted at any money crossing her palm. It’s just amazing.
And don’t worry, believe me when I say all this activity does not denude our yard of leaves. Plenty left for the pollinators!
Do you have anything you like to do in fall (or NOT like to do) to get ready for winter?
Got the corn out on Thursday and I got to ride around in the combine for an hour. It was fun and satisfying and a weight off my shoulders and a bright spot in the day.
The dogs and I observed them finishing a field, then they moved up along the road, and that’s when I got in. I watched them unloading on the go, and it was good to see there wasn’t many ears on the ground. A nice surprise for this year.
Their combine is only a few years old, so it has a lot of bells and whistles. Like a back up camera when he shifts to reverse, and a warning screen and tone when the grain tank is ¾ full, and another when it’s ‘full’, but they can still go for a while after that. The grain tank is right behind the cab, (keeping it in the center of gravity) and there’s a window behind the operators head that is about the middle of the tank (and it’s always so dirty you can barely see through it) however there is so much corn that can be held above the window, and most guys have tank extensions, so you really can’t see how full it is until it runs over the front and hits the top of the cab, and then you get ‘Cab Corn’. That’s a thing the guys try to avoid. Evidently it’s a rather tongue-in-cheek sign of failure. “Ope! Bop got cab corn!” Hence, the sensors that tell you the tank is full. There’s also a ‘low fuel’ warning and it went off several times before they sent one guy back to get the fuel trailer. Here they are refilling with fuel and DEF. (Diesel Exhaut Fluid – an emissions product).
I’ve mentioned a few times before how much fuel these big machines hold. The combine might hold 300+ gallons. Same with the tractors. And that’s why they pull a fuel trailer to the field rather than running the machine back home or hauling in 5 gallons cans.
They corn yielded better than I predicted. Roughly 180 bushels / acre, which is REALLY impressive for our farm. Imagine what it would have done without all the deer and raccoons out there! I got a little over 7000 bushels. Test weight was good, and moisture was between 16 and 17%. It needs to be dried to 15% for storage, and that will cost a bit, but not as much as drying it from 22%, which has happen as well.
This photo from the coop website showing each load, total bushels, moisture, and testweight. From this total, I had a couple thousand bushels put into storage to sell in a few months. I’m being optimistic the price will come up. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But I can always use the money.
Many nights when daughter and dogs are walking, the dogs pick a fight with a raccoon out in the corn. I expected to find 20’ diameter circles of flat corn from their fights.
I hadn’t seen the ducks in a week and I was hoping maybe they had flown south, vs being eaten. I was very excited to see them out in the yard Thursday afternoon.
I was able to spend a few nights working on the shop.
Course Tuesday was elections so that was a full day.
And now I’m hoping to spend a couple days doing fall tillage and I’m excited about spending time in the tractor.
We had the last school show on Friday morning. After the show while the kids are waiting to get out, I have a moving light slowly sweeping around the stage and audience. I figured the kids would enjoy that. This audience loved it even more than I had hoped. Every time it hit them they cheered. I was standing by some kids who were getting restless so I was talking to them and telling them about that light. One asked if I could make it purple. I pulled out my phone and showed them how I could control it through my phone. Well. Game on. “Make it red!” “Make it yellow!” and I changed patterns and the kids shrieked with delight. It was a wonderful moment and it filled me with joy.
Our dog Bailey, she suckers Luna into something so often, I can’t believe Luna falls for it every time. Bailey will bark at nothing, but it gets Luna all excited. She’s pawing at the doors and climbing the walls to get out. It might be 3AM, but she’s ready to go. And she runs out barking, not even sure which direction she should be going. And Bailey comes to the door and gets petted and she’s happy. Eventually Luna will come back. Sometimes Bailey can get both Luna and Humphrey out, and they’re all barking different directions. Ya know, it would help if we all knew what we were barking about, don’t ya think? Life lesson there.
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE A WARNING LIGHT FOR? BE WHIMSICAL!
(I Need a warning light telling me I’ve walked away from my water bottle again. )
Monday afternoon I saw our neighbor across the street mowing his perfectly manicured lawn and removing every single leaf that had landed on the grass. When he was finished, there wasn’t a single leaf on the lawn. He loaded the leaves into the back of his pickup and hauled them to the city bins. He can’t tolerate anything that takes away from the green.
Most of our front yard is a vegetable garden, so we don’t rake there or in the back yard. I swept the leaves that landed on the front stoep and sidewalk into the garden so we could go out in our socks and not get them full of dried leaves. During the night we had a very strong wind, and in the morning there were as many if not more leaves on the stoep and sidewalk. Neighbor’s lawn looked like it did on Monday afternoon before he had mowed. It was covered with leaves! He was out there again on Tuesday repeating what he did on Monday. There are still lots of leaves on the trees around his property and the neighborhood. He’s going to have a busy time until the leaves are all fallen.
I suppose our neighbor thinks our yard is a mess because we leave the leaves in the flower beds and garden, we leave the perennials uncut to promote pollinator hatching, and only cut back the peonies, daylilies, and irises. Sometimes our next door neighbor comes over and rakes in the flower beds on the north side of our property because she feels guilty that our flower beds are full of the leaves from her ash trees. We tell her that the leaves will decompose and insulate the garden, but she can’t let leaves lie, either.
Rakers in your neighborhood? Did you jump in leaf piles as a kid? How do you prepare your lawn or garden for winter?
I got a lot of work done on my shop wall. It’s basically all framed up. I need a few more boards and a lot of finishing bits, but it’s getting there. I’ve purchased insulation to install myself, the LP tank has been installed, waiting on the heater and the big garage door to be installed, and the steel siding has been ordered. Going for gray on this wall. Might make it before winter yet.
I sure do appreciate my friend at Red’s Electric letting me use his lift. This would have all been much MUCH harder without.
I sure have been dropping things and knocking things over with working on this. Good thing I’m working alone; I wouldn’t want to be around me the way it’s been going. And there’s barely room for me in the lift. Cause you know, I need all the tools.
Saturday will be adoption day for Luna. And back in 2007, it was about the same time of year we acquired Allie.
Last weekend I burned a brush pile. I need to dig the metal out of it and then I’ll have the ash pile buried after that.
It was time for a new ‘everyday-in-town’ hat. Not so dirty to be a farm hat, and cleaner than the farming hat, but dirtier than my ‘going-to-church’ hat. This is a hat I got for free at the theater conference USITT. It’s a seating company that I won’t be able to afford anyway.
I lost half the ducks last week. Friday afternoon I counted 22 ducks. Saturday morning I saw something white laying down by the barn. It was a dead duck. And there was another. And another. I picked up 6 carcasses. Four outside and two in their pen. And we have 11 ducks remaining. We’re pretty sure it was a weasel as there was a bite mark on the back of their heads. I have found some piles of feathers out in the fields. The dogs never reacted, and I never heard a fuss, so I’m not sure what happen. But it’s very discouraging.
The mallard ducks have discovered they can fly. And if you think about it, how would you know you COULD fly, if no one told you or showed you? You’d have to figure it out by accident. Maybe instinct, but again, no examples… so… what will they do?
I often listen to a 1940’s station and one of the things I enjoy are the songs you don’t hear anywhere else. I heard Hogie Carmichael singing ‘Huggin’ and Chalkin’. It’s considered a novelty song.
“I gotta gal who’s mighty sweet
With blue eyes and tiny feet
Her name is Rosabelle Magee
And she tips the scale at three o three
Oh gee, but ain’t it grand to have a girl so big and fat that when you go to hug her
You don’t know where you’re at
You have to take a piece of chalk in your hand
And hug a way and chalk a mark to see where you began”
….
….
One day I was a huggin’ and a chalkin’ and a beggin’ her to be my bride
When I met another fella with some chalk in his hand
Trail Baboon 