Category Archives: Science

2025, animals, Farming Update, Kids, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Seasons, Stories, Travel, Weather, work

THEN THIS HAPPENED

September 6, 2025 xdfben 56 Comments

This weeks Farming Update from Ben.

When I started the rough draft of this blog Thursday, I didn’t have much farm stuff to talk about. Now Friday afternoon and I’ve got a few farm related things.

I needed some straw bales for Friday. First of the 2025 crop to be used and climbing up into the straw pile and trying to hit the truck bed was a challenge.

**Trying to aim under the rafter and get the bales in the truck bed.**

We hosted daughters group, PossAbilities, and gave them a wagon ride through the fields. Kinda cold and windy, but they had blankets, Kelly made hot chocolate for them when they returned, and they enjoyed it.

I hauled in the scrap iron on Thursday. The wagons I pulled out of the trees and scrapped last week.

The net weight of the scrap was 3200 lbs.

The cranes are always fun to watch. My goodness, the amount of scrap is overwhelming. Juxtaposed with such a pretty blue sky!

I took secondary roads there, and I took gravel back roads most of the way home. I saw two Bald Eagles eating something that left a pretty good sized red spot in the field. I saw more of those ‘Bigfoot’ silhouettes. A few farmers are starting to chop some corn, and lots of guys are doing 3^rd or 4^th crop hay.

A couple months ago when our fridge died, we purged a lot, and moved a lot to the basement chest freezer and spare fridge downstairs. I still haven’t figured out why the new freezer section upstairs is so empty. What happened to all that stuff?? I thought we needed it? Isn’t that a story for our times…”But, I need that!” No, evidently, no you don’t.

One of the things missing from the upstairs freezer was the last loaf of chocolate chip Amish friendship bread I had made back in March. Most of us freeze and savor those summer time flavors in January. Here in September I’m remembering last winter. I didn’t think I’d have thrown it out as I know the chocolate is bad for dogs. The chickens would have loved it, but I just didn’t remember doing that. Took a month, but I found it in a bag in the chest freezer and I’ve been enjoying it. It’s not as dried out as I thought it might be, and I look forward to baking more this winter.

When I was researching how to remove those old tires last week, I saw one video where the guy talked about using diamond tipped cutting blades. The cheap abrasive cut-off blades I can buy at big box stores wear away quick. They’re about $3 each, but as the name implies, ‘abrasive cut off’, meaning they wear out as fast as they’re cutting. Cutting off the 16 tires I used 4 small, 4” wheels, and one 7” wheel. So I went shopping online for diamond tipped wheels. An “Indestructible” wheel comes in a 5 pack. Well, Huh. You see where I’m going with this? If… then why…?

I ordered a 3 pack of diamond tipped cut off wheels. We’ll see what happens when I get to the next set of old tires.

(There might be a photo here if I remember to go out to the shed and take a photo)

I REMEMBERED!

**Abrasive disc on the top, diamond disc on the bottom**

Kelly and I have a joke that I can’t find anything if you’re going to put it under my nose. This morning it was my cell phone. It was 6” away from where I was looking. No wonder I couldn’t find it. I had to borrow daughters phone to call mine and track it down. I was the kid with my mittens attached to my sleeves…Why is that getting worse instead of better?

We’ve talked before about that magic ten minutes in the morning. Every. Morning. It was later than usual one morning. Daughter and I got in the car to leave and she says “I was pretty fast this morning, wasn’t I.” Uh. Not really. But I don’t know why. Maybe it was petting the dogs longer than we should have. Which seems like a pretty good excuse. One night she was mad at me for not letting her do something. She begged and pleaded and then stormed off yelling “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL DAD!” I replied, “Actually, biology has nothing to do with this.” and then I got the giggles. She didn’t think it was so funny but a few minutes later we talked it over. She gets over stuff quick. I like that.

Last weekend Kelly and I attended a wedding in St. Paul. It was at a relatively new wedding venue called Le VENERÉ. A pretty nice place. Newly remodeled. The Groom told me when they toured it in February it was full of scaffolding. It is an old building with a really cool stone foundation. They had a 1920’s ‘Speakeasy’ theme and encouraged people to dress the part. I wore sleeves. And after looking up 1920’s styles, just decided to order a cheap 1970’s style ruffled shirt like I had in high school. It came with a bow tie that wouldn’t fit around my fat neck, so I just wore it on my sleeve. Kelly and I drove up Friday and had a weekend vacation. We had a great time at the wedding with friends.

**The groom and I. He is a former college student.**

OXYMORONS?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Music, Nature, pets, Science, Songs, Technology, Uncategorized, Weather

What Mystery is this?

August 16, 2025 xdfben 47 Comments

The weekend farm report from Ben

Welcome to the sick house. We all have colds. You should buy stock in tissues. My head is all fogged up so who knows what may come out in this…course that hasn’t stopped me running heavy machinery.

After last week and breaking things, I made some progress on repairing things this week. And I don’t think I’ve broken any more. Yet. (Never say never). I replaced the lift cable on the bale elevator and got that repaired. On the hay wagon I got the remaining pieces of the wheel bearings out of the hub, meaning I got both the inner and outer bearing race removed, which, thankfully, had identification numbers on them, and a local place could use that to find the correct bearings. We double checked dimensions and I got four bearings; a set for both back wheels and the plan is to have one of my padawans help me install on Saturday. It will be a good experience for him to ‘pack’ grease into a bearing. It’s not hard, but there is a process, and it is messy.
It’s supposed to be hot on Saturday, so I’m planning a shop day. We’ll put the old John Deere 2 cylinder tractor, the 630, in the shop, drain the coolant and replace a radiator hose, take off the carburetor (for one of my friends to deep clean) and we’ll see what else we can get into. I’d like to replace the exhaust manifold, and those bolts will be difficult to remove as I’m not sure they’ve been out in 50 or 60 years, and through innumerable heating and cooling cycles. I’m told to heat the area red hot, let it cool for a few hours, then smack it with a hammer. That may work on some of the bolts, but on two of them, the heads are broken off, meaning the usual method is to weld a nut to the broken off bit. I’ve never tried that. I’ve seen it done successfully, just never tried it. We shall see.

Looks like we’ve lost 1 baby guinea. Still got 11.

Some of the baby guineas. They’re pigeon sized.

And they sure get around. Often when I leave in the morning, the three mom’s and them are half a mile up the road, hanging out on the edge of a corn field. By evening they’re all back home. Weird. And there’s been one pheasant hanging out around the barn.
Now that the oats is out and straw baled, I’ve been mowing the edges of those fields. Cutting down weeds I couldn’t get to while the crop was growing. And I mowed the new waterway. The barn swallows sure loved me doing that. It was fun watching a couple dozen of them flirting around.

You can kinda see the barn swallows fliting around.

On Wednesday this week I drove to the twin cities to pick up some lighting stuff for the college. I have mentioned before that my favorite Bob Dylan song is ‘Tangled up in Blue’. I don’t often listen to song words or meanings, but that one appeals to me. I love a good story, and one of love lost tugs at my heartstrings. I was aware of two versions of the song, Dylan’s and Joan Osborn’s. Then I heard of this guitar player who was recently in the cities by the name of Billy Strings, and he does a cover. So I started looking for his version. It’s on YouTube, but not Apple music yet. However I found several other versions.

I spent half the trip up, and the entire trip back listening to these different versions of the same song. The differences were really interesting to me. I really like the rhythm of the song, the tempo, the structure, and, depending on the version, the instrumentation or harmonies. A group called Grain Thief has a bluegrass version. The Indigo Girls have a section that drops into a solid blues verse. KT Tunstall’s gritty, throaty voice gives it a different vibe. Then there’s Mary Lee’s Corvette, who I hadn’t heard of before this, and she’s got a good rocking version. Jerry Garcia’s Band has a version complete with guitar jam. Bob Malone does a ROCKING bluesy version that I really liked (And a solo piano version available on YouTube). Robyn Hitchcock is just guitar and piano with a very folk / blues sound. A few are simply guitar, one starts as piano before adding the full band (and I really like a song that grows like that.) There was one version that seemed to be punk rock or something. I only got 20 seconds into it before deleting. Overall, the different guitar sounds, the slightly changed lyrics, the interpretation of each artist was fascinating to me and I still am not tired of this song after listening to it 58 times.

We have these fuel barrels for the farm: a 300 gallon barrel of gasoline that’s up on a stand so it’s gravity fed. And a 500 gallon for diesel fuel that’s electric and has a pump. The automatic nozzles like you use at the gas station don’t work on gravity feed, the only work with a pump, so it was a big deal when, however many years ago I got a used barrel from a neighbor and went from gravity to a pump on the diesel barrel. I rented a trencher and ran an electric line across the driveway from the shop to the barrel and then could buy one of those automatic shut off nozzles. When I needed to refill the tractor the other day, I started the fuel flowing, went to the house to grab a snack, and got back to the tractor two seconds before the fuel stopped. I remember a few times with the gravity system and we used a big square nut to hold the lever up and then I would go to the shop and get distracted and I spilled a few gallons… I appreciate not having to worry about that anymore.

The header photo and that hole in the ground? I dug up the cover of the septic tank. Bailey helped.

We got the tank pumped out. It’s been on my ‘to-do’ list for a couple years. Also got a riser installed so the cover isn’t 2 feet underground anymore. Digging it up on Thursday I was thinking that is going to be a really good thing.

SIMPLE CONVIENCES YOU APPRECIATE?

AND MUSIC-

FAVORITE COVER SONG?

2025, animals, Business, Family, Farming Update, gardening, Health, Kids, Nature, pets, Science, Seasons, Stories, Technology, Weather

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER

August 9, 2025 xdfben 21 Comments

The weekend farm report from XDFBen

ONE OF THESE IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER

Wow, Man, what a week again. Thursday night I hit a gumption trap so hard, I had a rootbeer float and popcorn for supper…

We have baby guineas! I had seen one sitting on a nest behind the machine shed a few weeks ago, and we talked about getting the eggs into an incubator but never got too it. Next time I looked the nest was empty and there were broken eggs. Momma was nowhere to be found, and we feared the worst. A week later I saw her and a bunch of chicks heading into a corn field. Typically, guineas are not the best moms. But this group seems to ‘community parent’ and they’re doing surprisingly well.

As you can image, the real world is a tough place for a little chick. They could fall into a hole, they could get eaten or lost. It’s a tough place. But yeah, they’re doing well and getting big enough they might just make it. They’re not quite pigeon sized, and they hop and flutter and there’s always that one that’s six feet away and running to catch up.

I cut down a bunch of box elder tree’s growing over a fence down around the barn yard. Treated all the stumps. Then tore out the old feed bunk augers and cement bunks. Don’t need them anymore and it will help open up the yard.

Dad built the first silo in 1968 and installed these augers. When the second silo was built in 1976, the whole feed bunk was turned 90 degrees and the cement bunks installed. Then it was 1978 when I stuck my leg into this.

The augers I stuck my leg in. Hard to visualize from this picture how it was set up when working. I’m just really lucky.

As I tore it out, I thought about that. I don’t harbor any resentment. These bunks fed a LOT of cattle over the years and provided for two families. They served their purpose well.

I put the forklift extensions on and used the loader forks to lift the old bunks out. I expected animals to be living under them, but nope, nothing. I’ve been asked why I’m doing this, and to what end? Just to clean up. There is no end goal. It would never be used again, why save it?

The oats got harvested Friday and Saturday. Yield wasn’t very good, the oats didn’t even fill a semi. Ended up at 735 bushels, meaning about 31 bu / acre. According to the oat people on FB, oats has been all over the place this year. At least the test weight was 34.6 meaning the elevator would take it. Wasn’t heavy enough to be food grade, nor was it enough bushels to mess around with.

Lots of straw! I ended up with 900 small square bales. Put 700 in the barn.

The hole in the middle is where the elevator was.

I had the three teenage boys helping and I couldn’t have done it without them. They were great. The one doing the most work, number 3, (and treated as the odd wheel out by the first two for some reason), had a broken toe (dropped a barbell weight on his foot). Ah, the teenage mentality.

I baled 3 loads of straw on Monday, the boys came out Tuesday and we unloaded the first two, just throwing them into the empty barn. Then we put the elevator up and unloaded the third. I baled three more loads Tuesday afternoon.

Wednesday, I started back at the college. You know what that means. Sleeves.

The boys came out at 5PM and we unloaded those three loads. 700 in the barn. Full enough. Haven’t had it this full in a few years. The boys rode in the wagon and we went to the field to bale up another load. And to stack this one as it will sit for a few months until the neighborhood berry farm is ready for it. I’d put one kid in the tractor with me, and the other two stacked on the wagon. I only hit one kid with a bale. He moved! I was aiming to the side and as the bale kicked, he stepped to that side. Oops. He was OK. Straw is light.

I’d have them rotate positions so they all got to ride in the tractor (and the AC) and they all thought it was pretty neat in there too.

Number 2 and 3 Padawan’s stacking in wagon. Number 1 is in the tractor with me.

Pretty proud of themselves. I couldn’t have done it without them.

I noticed on Friday, one of the rear wheel bearings on a wagon is gone. So that wagon is out of service until I can get new bearings. Hopefully it hasn’t damaged the wheel hub or axle.

And then Wednesday night, backing the stacked wagon into the shed, and the front wheels are not aligned. What the heck?? Tie rods are bend. Jeepers. Not sure when or how that happened. And I moved it a bit more to back it in and one wheel goes completely sideways. Well heck.

So, I pulled that wagon in backward to at least get it under cover and out of the way. More repairs. Add it to the list.

AND THEN- Thursday evening and I’m taking down the bale elevator and the lift cable snapped and it all fell to the ground. Words were said. It didn’t break anything. It was about 8’ up and I was lowing it to transport height of about 6’ when it dropped. I dragged it to the shop and Kelly and I worked on it for an hour. Gumption traps were hit several times until I blocked it up with an old pallet and we called it a night. So that’s three things. I should be done now for a while. Right?

Corn and soybeans look great! We have reached the point we cannot make any more management decisions to help the crop. The last thing done was aerial application of fungicide. Now the crop just has to finish out the season. One neighbor called me upset about aerial application too close to his house. I understand that and will take steps in the future to create a buffer zone. However, by the time it gets from me to the agronomist to the company to the pilot, I’m not sure what will actually happen. Not an excuse, just warning him a lot is out of my control.

DID SOMEONE HAVE THEIR EYE ON YOU AS A CHILD?

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL YOUR TEENAGE SELF?

2025, Business, Health, Science, Technology, Uncategorized

Lifetime Guarantee

Image August 5, 2025 Chris Norbury 36 Comments

I’ve been thinking about this term for a long time. What exactly is a lifetime? How good is any guarantee? And do I own any thing (product, device, appliance, clothing, etc.) that has been sold to me that came with a lifetime guarantee?

After all, a lifetime for a human can be less than a day to more than 120 years. Mosquitoes and many insects have lifetimes measured in days. Tortoises can outlive humans by a factor of 2, if the experts are to be believed. And Redwood and Sequoia trees live for four centuries or longer.

But let’s focus on human lifetime. Mine in particular. We bought the bathroom scale shown in the title photo from Brookstone at Southdale most likely, wayyyy back in the 1980s. It is battery operated, and I use it nearly every day to weigh myself. I’m weird that way. I think monitoring my weight daily helps me cut back on calories or exercise more to keep my weight roughly the same over the years. Not for everyone, but it works for me.

Lately, after easily 40 years of usage, the battery is showing signs of dying. I’m not positive, but I see larger than normal daily fluctuations in my weight. Normal is 1-2 pounds. Lately, I’ve seen several 3-5 lb. jumps or drops. I eat and exercise about the same amount every day other than an occasional restaurant or dessert pigout. So maybe the battery is at the end of its useful life.

I don’t even think Brookstone is around anymore, but if they were, and the battery died, would they honor their lifetime guarantee on this scale? Or did I miss the fine print in the sales literature saying something like “Lifetime guarantee or 40 years max, whichever comes first”?

No matter, the scale has been reliable and troublefree for decades, so if it dies, I’ll get a new scale that might be relatively cheaper because I won’t have to worry about getting a “long-term” lifetime guarantee. 20-30 years is about the best I can hope for.

MY QUESTION:
Tell us about any products you’ve bought that came with a lifetime guarantee and have actually lasted far longer than you ever would have expected.

2025, Business, Family, Farming Update, Food, gardening, Nature, Science, Technology, Travel, Uncategorized, Weather

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS FARMER BEN?

August 2, 2025 xdfben 23 Comments

This weeks farm report from Ben.

I finished lighting the show in Chatfield last week, in time to fly out on Saturday with Kelly and our daughter. Kelly had a work conference and we got to travel along and amuse ourselves for a few days.
I was under the impression that taxi drivers were always better than Uber / Lyft because they are more professional and know the roads better. But that plan falls apart if they’re all independent taxi’s and they all seem to need to enter the address in their phones anyway. And they tell me they’ve lived here multiple years, so it makes me wonder why they don’t know their way around yet? But whatever. Our first driver was crazy; drove like a maniac and told me he liked American women and big boobs! Second taxi was a nicer driver, but his car broke down and when daughter and I came out of the Butterfly Pavilion he was sitting right where he had left us. He called a friend of his to take us back to town. And the taxi back to the airport was a nice guy with sheet metal screws holding his car door together. Resourcefulness!

Daughter and I had a good time walking around downtown and there was lots to see. I took lots of photos of old buildings. The day we saw the butterflies, that only took an hour. We never got going too early in the day, because we were on vacation after all. I was surprised that I could out-walk daughter. It was as hot there as it was back in MN, but less humidity, so that was nice. I didn’t expect it to be that hot. I found it interesting so many restaurants and bars had wide open windows or garage doors and yet there was very few bugs. One bartender told us they really spray the place down at night, but she said there was less flies this year than usual.

On Wednesday Kelly gave a presentation on Laughter Yoga. I snuck in the back and watched. It was well received, the group liked it, and she had several good loud laughers, so that got the rest of the group going.

She picked up some swag for me with the catch phrase: “Wicked Smaht Pathologists” and a link to their group. It makes me laugh. If you need a pathologist, you’re gonna want one that’s Wicked Smaht.

We had a young lady staying at the house to deal with dogs overnight while we were gone, and some other friends that would take care of chickens and eggs and amuse the dogs during the day. They said, “Bailey and Humphrey make us want dogs. Luna reminds why we don’t have a dog.”

And on the way home, in the MSP airport, the gate agent was a girl I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in 40 years. We had a little reunion right there at the gate for 15 seconds. It was nice to see her again.

Last week as I was headed to Chatfield one night, I saw, walking on the side of the road, three nuns in full black habits with the veil and headpiece. I had to double take, and double take again. This was out in the country. A few days later, Facebook, of course, provided the answer. There is an old order Catholic Church in the area and they have been seen coming from there. Well that explains it. Sure did make me wonder though. And then, ten days later, I saw two more nuns in full habits. But that was outside a Catholic Church, and they were selling baked goods at a street fair. Although when I saw them, they were packing up. I saw them pulling the totes with the collapsible tents up the street. I hadn’t seen a nun in full habit for years and now here was twice!

You all had that big storm come through on Monday night with high winds… the oats got beat up. Yep, sure did. Maybe 50% of it down. We didn’t get any hail so nothing threshed out on the ground, it’s just broken off and lying down and it makes it more difficult to pick up for harvest.

The plan is to start harvesting Friday. Going to try taking it straight- meaning I don’t swath it and lay it in windrows first. A lot of guys do take it straight. When we have tried it in the past it didn’t work so well… we shall see. I have the swather ready just in case.

The soybeans are waist tall and looking good. At least some of them. They don’t all look this good, but some of them.

There’s a guy on YouTube goes by ‘Bushel Billy’, from the Ohio area and he was talking about a corn issue with a certain variety, in extreme weather conditions, having “tassel wrap” meaning the last leaf doesn’t unwrap from the tassel. So of course if the tassel can’t open up to shed pollen, it’s going to be tough to get all the kernels (silks) pollinated. It takes 90,000 kernels to make a bushel. Hence 90K pollen grains to 90K silks are needed. He pointed out how after pollination the silks turn brown and detach from the kernel after pollination. I didn’t know that and I had to check it out myself.

Notice how many silks are loose. Just a few on the tip still stuck.

HUH!
Sweet corn would be so much easier if the silks would detach.

CORN SWEAT SEASON AGAIN

July 26, 2025 xdfben 37 Comments

This weeks farming update.

Sure, blame the corn for the humidity.

According to the weather channel email I received on Thursday, an acre of corn releases 3000 gallons of water into the air every day. It’s “evapotranspiration”. A quick google search shows multiple newspaper articles blaming corn for the humid weather. I am tempted to call it misleading. I mean I don’t like the humidity either, but is it really all the corn’s fault? Data from the Ohio State University Extension office in 2024 says corn sweat is not contributing MEANINGFUL levels of humidity. More humidity is brought in by weather systems with southerly winds and bringing humidity from the Gulf of Mexico. The greatest amount of water usage by a corn plant is during tasseling and flowering, which is where we are at in SE MN. My corn just started tasseling this week. (And again, I am so amazed at how it all works! The silks emerge at the same time!) After tasseling, water usage in the corn decreases. All plants have some form of transpiration and evaporation. Don’t blame it all on the farmer and my corn.

The header photo by Kelly is soybean flowers. Soybeans are looking good and coming along.

This week I have been either finishing the projects at the Rep, or down in Chatfield lighting ‘Shrek’, the musical for Wits End Theater. Lots of road time. And with the main route to Chatfield, Highway 52 South closed at I90, I’ve been taking other routes. Sometimes Highway 7 through Eyota to 52, sometimes Highway 10 through Dover to the East side of Chatfield. Usually County Rd 19 through Marion to 52, or my favorite, County Road 1 through Simpson, past the Root River County Park, down in the valley over the North branch of the Root River and Fugles Mill, through Pleasant Grove, and into the west side of Chatfield. I try not to take the same road home as there.

I still haven’t gotten the oats harvested. It got mostly ripe but still had some green in it and that’s where it’s been sitting for 2 weeks. Rain and thunderstorms the last few days have caused more of it to go down. A lot of oats has been taken out. The Oat Mafia FB page says a lot of guys are finding it wetter than preferred. And there are some photos that show a stark reminder of the benefits of applying the fungicides. Fields without are broken and flat, while the fields with it are standing well.

img_4137-1 — **No fungicide on left, fungicIde on right.** PHOTO COUTESY OF THE OAT MAFIA FB PAGE

Oh, then our refrigerator died on Wednesday. I had noticed the freezer temp was 33 degree’s in the morning, and I thought maybe it was just defrosting. That afternoon it was at 39. We took everything to the basement chest freezer and I put a thermometer in the fridge. I laid on the floor and vacuumed off the coils and used the long narrow cleaning brush to dig out as much dust and gunk as I could. A repair guy was consulted and it was not given much hope. By that night, Kelly emptied the fridge, taking it to the downstairs smaller fridge. That little basement fridge was originally purchased as the “egg fridge”, but it has since become the pop fridge. Thanks goodness we have it. It’s a little no-name fridge that just keeps chugging along. Daughter is very put out that we don’t have the regular fridge upstairs. She insists it is still working and I’ve had to rescue her food and take it to the basement fridge a couple times. Thursday morning I went fridge scouting. The salesguy, Randy, his first question was counter depth or regular? “Uh….” Then he asked me what color? “Uh….” Did we want ice and water in the door? “Uh….” I didn’t have any of that information. My only question to him was ‘”Which ones have the better interior lighting like our old one?” That local store is where we’ve purchased appliances since we got married. They had a delivery slot open for Friday afternoon. I’ll take that one! And I sent Kelly some photos. We met there in the afternoon and agreed on a fridge for Friday.

Priorities, you know? When I checked with Kelly, her only priority was double doors. Yep, that was all I looked at. And freezer at the bottom. And good lighting. Beyond that, I didn’t know.

I hate having too many choices, so thankfully that only left us three choices, and if you remove the $12,000 model, well, I sent Kelly photos of those two.

By Friday evening daughter should be back in her happy place and we’ll have a new fridge with nice interior lighting.

IS YOUR REFRIGERATOR RUNNING?

WHAT ARE YOUR APPLIANCE PRIORITIES?

2025, Farming Update, gardening, Medicine, Nature, Science, Theatre, Weather

NAILING THE WEEDS

July 19, 2025 xdfben 51 Comments

Nailing the Weeds

The weekend Farm report from Ben

I finished mowing weeds this week. Last year the mower was being repaired so I wasn’t able to mow much at all. $2600 later it’s back and better than ever. I mow the edges of the road next to the fields to keep the weeds down, (and the crops always look better when the weeds are cut). Lots of wild parsnip, and thistles. Sometimes when it’s just grass I’ll leave it standing and I think to myself ‘What is the point of mowing all this?’ What is the point of mowing if it’s not noxious weeds? The waterways that go through the oat fields, I mow them off because it’s easier to harvest the oats and bale the straw without the weeds and grass in there. But it really does look nice when it is mowed down. I don’t worry too much about cover for wildlife, there’s plenty of cover yet.

I practice my side hill acrobatics too. It helps to remind myself how low the actual center of balance is on the tractor.

All the weight is under my feet. There is a bit of a ‘pucker factor’ but I’ve done this before so I know it’s OK. I worried more about these hillsides when I was a kid. Dad always told me it was OK. And I only ever tipped over one wagon and that was due to a badger hole.

Down in the pasture there is a lot of parsnip. Back when we had cattle, they kept the weeds and buckthorn down. Or maybe buckthorn hadn’t taken over 30 years ago.

While down in the pasture I found some wild flowers growing. At risk of stirring up the flower debate again, I present them here. I used the ‘Plant Net’ app to identify them. Wild bergamot, Giant St. John’s wort, American blue vervain (which we had bought some seedlings from a friend selling native plants, and I didn’t realize we have this), mullein, and lots of Goldenrod coming. I try to save most of that. Again, majority rules, so I’ll mow some off to get the parsnip.

And Kelly took this picture of milkweed in the yard.

We learned about ‘Beggars Lice’ too. For years, the dogs would get these little stickers in their fur and I didn’t know what they were or where they came from. Ah. It’s this plant.

Work at the theater went well. I won the ‘Power Actuated Nail Gun’ on the auction, and made good use of that. It was fun to use. I nailed 2×4’s and foam to the north wall for some insulation. We are attaching plywood to the 2×4’s. Nailing 2×4’s to concrete with a .22 blank! Awesome!

Crops are still looking good. Corn has nearly doubled in height since July 4^th.

Beans are filling in and getting blossoms on them. The oats should be ready for harvest in another week or so.

I put a new fanbelt on the 630 tractor and I replaced the throttle plate so the throttle lever will hold its position. One of the padawans and I changed the oil in Kelly’s C tractor.

A little bit of everything this past week.

Next week I’m working on ‘Shrek’, the musical, down in Chatfield.

FAVORITE SOUR FOOD THAT MAKES YOU PUCKER?

OR QUESTIONS OF YOUR CHOICE BECAUSE I GOT NOTHING!

2024, books, Fantasy, Movies, Mysteries, Science, space, Uncategorized

Visitors

November 19, 2024 verily sherrilee 26 Comments

I had lunch yesterday with a few girlfriends. Our conversations always range all over the place so one of my friends mentioning she had seen an article about aliens wasn’t too weird. She couldn’t find the article online (on her phone) but that didn’t stop the rest of us from glomming on. Another friend said she’d seen a theory that aliens are already here.

I suggested that if there were actually aliens here we would never know it. Considering how far we have yet to go to even get ourselves to Mars, any aliens who have the considerable enough technology to get here would certainly have enough technology to go undetected by us.

After a bit more silly discussion I asked WHY these aliens would be here among us. Maybe we’re just an amusement part for these aliens. Another friend said the article claimed that the aliens were here to save us. Another big WHY from me at that point. Maybe we’re some alien high-school kids science project – kind of like an ant farm.

None of my friends actually believe in aliens, at least not little green men in mental saucers. I fall into Carl Sagan’s camp when he says in his book Contact “The universe is a pretty big place. It’s bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it’s just us… seems like an awful waste of space.” Although if there were a way to bet that we would be done as a species before we made any contact from elsewhere in the universe, I’d take that bet.

Do you have a favorite alien book or movie?

2024, Health, Mysteries, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Gabbing From Ear to Ear

May 30, 2024 verily sherrilee 40 Comments

Today’s post comes to from Bill.

An article in National Geographic caught my attention recently. The headline read, “Do You Have an Inner Monologue?” It caught my attention because my response was, “Of course I have an inner monologue. Doesn’t everybody?” Turns out not everybody does.

I’m not on any of the social media platforms but I gather that the presence or lack of an inner monologue has been a topic of discussion there. Inner monologue has also been a recent focus of scientific study, one product of which is a name for the lack of one: anauralia. Those studies contend that fewer than half of all individuals—by some estimates only about 30%—possess an inner monologue.

If that is true, I am gobsmacked. My inner monologue never shuts up. It is so integral to who I am that I can’t imagine its absence. Persons who lack that relentless flow of words say they imagine having them would be overwhelming.

The National Geographic article portrayed the inner monologue as self-critical and self-evaluating, a voice that regulates and replays social interactions and situations. As such, the article suggests, it can be inhibiting and destructive to one’s confidence, a source of negative thoughts. That’s not my experience. My inner monologue is not, for the most part, focused on how I appear in social contexts. Rather it’s a source of enrichment and entertainment, whether it’s replaying a conversation I had with someone years ago (those just pop up unbidden), preliminarily composing a commentary like this one, working through matters of personal philosophy, or pondering questions that just pop up out of nowhere, like, “what is the commonality between taxicabs and taxidermy?” (It all goes back to the Greek “taxis”, which means “an arrangement” or “to put things in a certain order”) or “if you describe something as the color of mercurochrome, does it mean anything to anyone under about 40?” All of this mental conversation happens while I’m busy doing other unrelated things.

Another article addressing the inner monologue: https://metro.co.uk/2024/05/16/like-live-no-internal-monologue-20853880/

It provides a simpler and easier to parse way to test for an inner monologue. It asks, “When you read, do you hear the words read, (presumably in your own voice)?” Apparently, those with anauralia do not. That for me is incomprehensible.

Do you have an inner monologue? What does it tell you?

2024, Family, Kids, Nature, Science, Uncategorized

Cool Rocks

May 24, 2024 reneeinnd 27 Comments

Our grandson is now 6 and has developed an interest in rocks. I remember my mom getting me a cardboard box that displayed all different kinds of rocks when I was the same age, some polished and all quite colorful and interesting. I had them until our children were in elementary school and they somehow disappeared after that.

Grandson wants to identify and collect every interesting rock he sees. Our son got him some geodes in a rock shop that they had fun opening with a hammer to see the crystals within. Earlier this week I sent Grandson a set of very heavy and colorful polished quartz bookends we had in the basement. It is a win-win for all of us since they are just what Grandson is collecting these days and now we don’t have to find somewhere for them when we move. They also serve a double purpose as bookends.

What did you collect when you were a child?

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