Category Archives: Seasons

2022, animals, Family, Farming Update, Health, holidays, home, Movies, Seasons, Uncategorized

Revolutions

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Today’s post comes from Ben.

The end of another year, pretty fitting that it happens on the last day of the week. It just fits the calendar so nicely and it feels so right that the last day of the year, the last day of the month, also ends on the last day of the week. And then we begin another month, another week, another year on the first day of the week. No open squares, it just all seems better that way.

The end of the year, all the old hackneyed, banal phrases of closing out another chapter, turning the page, another chance to try it again. But they still apply.

On the farm I will collect mileage from all the vehicles and the hours on the tractors and the lawnmower, the four-wheeler, the gator, and even the total gallons on the diesel barrel pump. I put all the data in my spreadsheet to compare with the other years. (At one point I believe we had to report the mileage to our accountant and there must’ve been a deduction for farm mileage or something. Now it’s just all under the standard deduction but I have always enjoyed keeping track of things like that). I also have our farm balance sheet that I will spend the next month working on.  It’s fun for me; I like compiling the data and seeing the changes, adding pretty colors, and formatting it. 

During 2022, I kept track of how many dozens of eggs I moved out of the house. It was easier keeping track of the dozens going out then it was the eggs coming in. The last few weeks I haven’t actually moved very many, so counting the eight dozen I have on the counter now, I moved 320 dozen eggs. That’s kind of impressive. That’s 3480 eggs. Which averages 10 eggs per day for an entire year. Back in October I only moved about 10 dozen, while between March and August it was upwards of 30 per month. If you count all the chickens around here, which is somewhere between 40 and 50, 10 eggs per day doesn’t seem like enough. I never said I was looking for efficiency, I’ve always said it was a chicken retirement farm.

I’ve also been getting crop inputs finalized for next year. Prepaid some fertilizer, locked in prices on some other products, and finalizing my seed orders. It’s discouraging that fertilizer and chemicals are as expensive this year as last. Hope for another good year of crop production and prices. I expect prices will have to crash and we’ll all take a loss one year before things will come down again.

A lot of the stuff we do before the end of the calendar year so that I can take the financial expense this year. There’s also typically a discount on pricing when you order sooner. My seed company discount goes until mid-January, and I expect to be driving again by then so I will get that done at that point. We paid off all of this year‘s crop loans, paid off another small loan on my truck, and paid a good chunk of an operating loan. Also, at the end of the year the equity checks come in from the various co-ops that we belong to. March 2023 will be 19 years since I sold the milk cows. The dairy co-op that we sold to, AMPI,  has a 20 year payback on their equity and so for the last 18 years I’ve been getting a check for a few hundred dollars from the dairy co-op even though there has not been a milk cow on the farm. The check this year was for $200. There’s $2.48 remaining in my equity.  Seems to me it would’ve made more sense to just add it on too this year‘s check. But whatever, one more check from the milk cows. 

We are all glad the weather has finally warmed up. The ducks finally got out of the pond and actually came back up in the yard. Chickens, squirrels, pheasants, and lots of birds are out and about and enjoying it. The show has melted off the deck so I can go out there and walk around a bit.

I am getting along very well on my knew knee. (Gnu G-knee!) And the 37 staples were removed from the incision on Thursday. The doctor gave me a good report. A few days prior to that Kelly took me out for a ride in the gator, it was just nice to get out of the house. She even took me over to the shop and I got up in the tractors. Just to say I could. Again, after all the trouble I had the spring and summer, I didn’t really think this would stop me, but it still felt good to get in there. I sort of expect to be driving again this weekend and I may have to take over snow clearing duties soon.

Prior to the surgery I had to remove the two earrings that I wear. I asked daughter to put them in. She doesn’t have pierced ears, and she’s never done earrings before and I thought this would be good practice for her. As a guy, I can’t get them in myself, I generally ask Kelly. Daughter got one in and Kelly got the second one.

Years ago when I was giving a farm tour to some elementary school kids, a little girl asked me about the ear tags that I put in the calves ears. I was kneeling down and face-to-face with her and I told her it was like getting your ears pierced. I have a very vivid memory of her looking to my ears at the same moment I Iooked to hers. I had earrings, she didn’t and I thought to myself, this is a fascinating little discussion and I wondered if she’s going to go home and ask to get her ears pierced.

One of the movies I watched this week was ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’.  One of those movies I’ve heard about and seen bits of, but never seen the whole thing. I enjoyed it. I also watched ‘All That Jazz’ for the 349th time. I was home alone so I had it loud to make it the best it could be. And I picked some new bits out of it. I never get tired of that movie. 

MAKE A NEW YEAR RESOLUTION FOR SOMEBODY ELSE.

TALK ABOUT GETTING YOUR EARS (OR BODY) PIERCED.

2022, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Emergency Snow Routes

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We are currently experiencing our third snow storm in four weeks. Our city has major thoroughfares designated as Emergency Snow Routes where one is not allowed to park during storms so that the plows can clear them. Vehicles parked on those streets that aren’t moved are to be towed. Well, the Snow Emergency designated street I drive to work on has at least a dozen vehicles covered in snow that haven’t been moved since Halloween. They haven’t been towed. This seems unfair to me.

Our city has the oddest street clearing habits. We once had a major storm in late April that left huge amounts of snow and ice on the streets, and the city commissioners, to save money, chose to leave the streets uncleared because “Well, it is all going to melt in a week or two, anyway.” We drove in the worst bumpy conditions for more than a month!

I was concerned with Margaret’s dilemma yesterday of needing a vehicle towed. If she lived in my town, it seems that she could leave her car on the street with impunity.

What are your experiences with tow trucks? What municipal policies do you think are unfair?

2022, books, Fantasy, holidays, home, Movies, Seasons

Bah Humbug Day!

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“He lived in chambers that had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.”

One of my favorite metaphors from one of my favorite books – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Most years I try to re-read this little classic some time in December.  It’s a quick, satisfying read – a great story of redemption if ever there was one!

Yesterday was the anniversary of the publication (1843).  For the first time in my memory, I had an absolute day of leisure.  Past years I either had to work or I was deep into party prep; with the party behind me (it was wonderful!) and new to my retirement, this year is different.  I decided to celebrate by watching every movie of A Christmas Carol that I like (there are more than you can imagine and I don’t like them all).

I didn’t plan my viewing schedule ahead of time… just went with the mood of the moment whenever one ended and it was time to select the next.  Started with the Reginal Owen/Gene Lockhart version then headed into the Alistair Sim version.  Needed a little lighter fare after that so did Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.  George C Scott was next followed by Mickey’s Christmas Carol.  Patrick Stewart was next, then Scrooged with Albert Finney, rounded off by The Muppet’s Christmas Carol. 

Thought about American Christmas Carol with Henry Winkler but just wasn’t up for it after 10 hours of Charles Dickens.  I don’t know if I’ll celebrate this way next year but it was a relaxing and enjoyable day for me.

If you had a free day to celebrate/commemorate something, what would it be?  And how would you like to celebrate?

2022, animals, Farming Update, home, Seasons, Theatre, Uncategorized, work

Snowed

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Today’s Farm Update comes from Ben.

Snowed overnight. About 5” wet, sticky snow. Gave daughter a snow day. I started waking her up, kept looking out the window at the snow falling, talked with Kelly, and we decided, life is too short. Covered daughter back up and turned off her light. She wasn’t awake anyway. Can you say ‘teenager’??

I made a quick path up the driveway and back. Will do more around the yard later with Kelly so she can refresh how to drive the tractor and work the blade. Header photo is halfway down our driveway.

I finished meteorology class. Got 57/60 on the final (which the teacher opened early for me), and I submitted the final lab assignment (on water usage in our homes) and got 10 points of extra credit for doing another test. Don’t know my final grade yet as the teacher hasn’t graded three assignments, but I’m expecting an A. Three credits closer to getting a degree someday.

I won some items in an online auction this week. This auction is open for about 8 days. And if someone bids on an item in the last 5 minutes, the timer resets for another 5 minutes. I was bidding on some heavy-duty pallet shelving. Did some research on new stuff, and it’s about $600 for one end and 2 bars. Typically, you figure half the price for used. So, these three auction lots were three uprights, six bars, and a bunch of cross pieces. There was three lots and I bid on two. Got one lot for $725. Couldn’t afford the second, but still a bargain.

Also got a set of 6’ fork extensions to put on the pallet forks I use on the loader. I remember first using forklift extensions as a stagehand and sometimes there was larger, awkward cases that needed a longer reach than normal forklift forks.

These will be good for picking up branches, or scrap iron. I thought about taking my trailer to pick up this stuff. But my trailer has sides on it, about 1′ tall. It’s great for hauling straw. It’s not so great when trying to load something from the sides, like pallet shelving, because a forklift can’t set it down with those sides in the way. I may have to buy a flat trailer too, because… you know. Toys.

I hauled in the scrap iron I dumped on the trailer a few weeks ago, plus a couple other things I had tossed on there. It weighed 1000 lbs and scrap was a low price of $50/ton. I never check the price; I just haul it in. Sometimes scrap is $400 / ton. Obviously, more people are hauling their scrap in when the price is high. I learned from the salvage yard guy that when they scrap cars, they drain the fuel out of them, and they save the good fuel and use it in their own cars. He did admit it’s a little like Russian roulette. But the machine they use to drain and filter the fuel has a site gauge and you can see bad fuel and divert it. It also costs them $4/gallon to get rid of old fuel.

This week at the college I’ve been working on lighting our holiday concert. My friend Paul creates the decor. I light it up. One night only, so I can tolerate that. We have ice mountains and a giant Nutcracker.

And this is my view from the booth.

After Paul finishes building the set, he leaves some bit of decor in the office. This year it was Version 1 of the Nutcracker’s mustache.

I was outside the other day and suddenly the chickens all made a racket and they headed for shelter and the dogs started barking and ran around trying to figure out what was happening. And there was a red-tailed hawk right next to the house trying to get a chicken. It flew away. No blood, some feathers. It might have been after one of the roosters; Number 3 was missing some neck feathers. Seems pretty ambitious for a hawk. Or desperation.

And some of the ducks are bathing in the water tank down by the barn. Nothing wrong with that except they spill a lot of water and it’s making an icy spot. Won’t be my problem in a few days.

Here’s some chicken and duck photos. The last one is Rosie and Guildy.

Hasn’t been any particular music this week. Just trying to keep the Holiday earworms away.

Next week is knee surgery. Yippee!

WHICH AMBITIOUS GOAL DID YOU WORK ON THIS YEAR?

2022, Food, Gatherings, holidays, home, Seasons

Cookie Storm

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I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that I’ve overdone.  Again.

I have rules about things around the holidays.   All self-imposed, so my own fault.

  1. No holiday music or movies until after dinner on Thanksgiving (YA always turns on the holiday station right as we leave from our Thanksgiving feast.)
  2. No holiday baking until the Friday after Thanksgiving.
  3. Tree purchased on Black Friday and put up some time that day.
  4. My best friend and her husband (and sometimes their kids & spouses) come to help decorate the tree, almost always the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
  5. Cookies and hot chocolate are served at Tree Trimming. Normally I make 5-6 kinds of cookies over the weekend for this gathering and then do the rest of the holiday cookies in the following few days.

These rules formed a perfect storm this year as my friend from Nashville arrived last night as well to babysit the house and the dog while YA and I take a trip.  I decided that I needed to get all the cookies baked before Tree Trimming.  I also had to get the house cleaned up.  AND, the front porch was coming down the final stretch.

3 days, 15 kinds of cookies, tree, lights, tree trimming, house clean enough for company AND the front porch is done.  I feel like I’ve been through the proverbial wringer and every muscle in my body has hired a hit man.  There is even a blister where the dough scoop hits my middle finger and I woke up during the night with pain in my hand and had to take an ibuprofen!  So I’m thinking that I have overdone it.  Just a bit.

(Anna’s M & M, White Chocolate Madadamia, Lemon Snowflakes, Peanut Blossoms, Frosted Sugar, Malted Milk, Cream Cheese Spritz, Peanut Butter Bon Bons, Vanilla Crescents, Pecan Meltaways, Speculaas, Soft Ginger, 2 kinds of fudge).  Yes I know this is only 14 – the 15th debuted it’s way right into the trash.

When was the last time you over-did?

2022, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, Nature, pets, Seasons, Weather

That’s a Wrap!

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Wrapped up another growing season on the farm.

Got my corn harvested last weekend. Best yields I’ve ever had plus a decent price so that’s all nice. Inputs costs were exceptionally high, which cuts into the profits, but all in all, it ended up being a good year. Was it the weather? (It was a later spring than we like) Was it the lime applied last fall? Was it the co-op applying custom rates of fertilizer? Was it the fungicide applied to the soybeans? Was it some of everything??

They finished the corn harvest on Saturday, I finished chisel plowing on Sunday, and Tuesday, the co-op spread lime on the fields we didn’t do last year.  I plow at about 6.5 MPH. I was doing about an acre every 15 minutes. Something I think about while I’m out there, it works up pretty rough. And that’s intentional because we want it to hold snow and prevent wind erosion. So driving across the field is really rough in the tractors. 50 years ago, when doing traditional plowing, it turned over all the residue, and if the conditions were good, left the field fairly smooth. And with the smaller tractors and smaller tires, that wasn’t a problem. It was probably in the mid 1980’s that we started doing conservation tillage, meaning we quit using the old traditional ‘moldboard’ plow and started using a chisel plow. One of the rules of the chisel plow is that you need to keep your speed up when plowing because the shovel is only 3” wide, and you want it to physically throw the dirt as it moves through the soil. The shovel is twisted to one side or the other, so my machine has 11 shovels; 5 throw dirt left, and 6 throw the dirt right. The whole thing is about 15 feet wide. Not burying all the residue also meant the machine has to be built to allow more trash to pass through it without plugging up in the shanks of the shovels.

The first chisel plow we got only had 7 shovels. And the tractor was not front wheel assist, meaning it had small tires on the front, and boy, it was really rough going across the worked ground. My tractor now, with MFWD (Mechanical Front Wheel Drive) and the larger front tires, makes it slightly less rough.

Course I had my tractor buddy Bailey with me the whole time.

If it got too bumpy she’d sit up and lean against my leg and I’d rub her head, then she’d lay back down again. It was tough going with some frost in the ground. Some places were frozen more than others; maybe different soil types caused that? There was a few minutes I was working in a snow squall. Weird.

My brother made the comment, “Thank goodness for heated cabs.” I agreed, and said I had thought about that too. I have spent time planting or doing fieldwork wearing a coat and gloves on open tractors. I also said I would have had to quit sooner because the lights weren’t so good back then.

With my bad foot, I generally get a new pair of shoes every fall because I’ve worn one of them sideways. After getting the soybean check is generally when I go shoe shopping. I only want steel or composite toe shoes. I move a lot of heavy stuff and I got enough problems without smashing a toe as well. And safety toe shoes are expensive to begin with.  With the brace I wear on my right foot, I take out the insert and need a size 11 for that foot. I have a custom insert for the left foot, which is 9.5, but since I have size 11, I add my custom one on top of the original and I get along OK. Yet It seems silly to pay so much money for shoes and then I’m taking out some of the main thing. And they have to be built right to fit the brace in the first place. This year I’m trying a pair of Keen boots. $170 at Fleet Farm. Gosh. I’ve been wearing a pair of Sketchers that have been good. These are the shoes I wear every day. I’ve also got a pair of Red Wing work boots I wear when farming. I think I can get another year out of them.

There are a few places that deal in mismatched shoe sizes for amputee’s or other issues with the feet. One place says, “Find your ‘sole mate’.” I’ve never tried them, but I think it’s a wonderful idea.

ANYTHING MISMATCHED ABOUT YOU?

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT THAT YOU COULD EXCHANGE WITH SOMEONE?  

2022, Family, Food, Gatherings, holidays, Seasons, Uncategorized

Well, I’ll Be Stuffed!

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It’s time for the annual CarbFest.  We always spend Thanksgiving with close friends and I am always asked to bring the vegetarian stuffing and a dessert.   A friend asked me to send her my recipe for the stuffing and as I typed it out I realized that I have probably never followed the recipe to the letter even once.

In fact, this year, I’m thinking of adding some cornbread  to the sourdough as the base of the stuffing.  And I have to go get craisins today because I always used them instead of the dark raisins.  I’ve also never used fresh parsley – not once in 20+ years.

I’m thinking I should probably have told this to my friend.  What if she makes the recipe as written and doesn’t like it and then wonders about my sanity??

Do you have a recipe that you always alter?

2022, animals, Automotive, Farming Update, Games, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Could Be Worse

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

At least it’s not ‘Lake Effect’ snow.

I’m kinda grumpy about this weather. It feels like January and it’s only November.

I was feeding the ducks the other morning and while I was in the feed room getting another bucket of corn, I noticed a couple of them fly up to where I had spread the corn. Of our 10 ducks, only a couple are actual mallards that can fly, the black and white ones, (The Swedish breed) and the poufy one can’t fly. And then I saw Rosie, the new black duck fly in! I didn’t notice if Guildy can fly too, but Rosie sure did. And they do have a sleeker look than the other non-flying ducks. What interesting cross breeding is what I thought. And good for them! Can’t you just imagine their delight and surprise when they figured out they could fly too?? How cool.

Driving around town the other day I saw a car with a headlight out. And I thought to myself ‘PI-DIDLE!’ only I was alone and didn’t have anyone to kiss, so it had to wait until I got home. Are you familiar with the term ‘Pi-didle’? Meaning a car with one headlight? And then you kiss your date. Or that’s how I heard it. When I googled the term, I got a few other definitions, including some not suitable for this website. Most include touching the ceiling of your car and / or punching someone.

I thought that was only when you saw a ‘slug-bug’.

This (clean) site has some official rules for the pi-didle game:

https://www.angelfire.com/pa4/mjr300psu/pididle.html

Got any other local colloquialisms about cars?

They are just starting to harvest my corn as I write this on Friday. The corn would have been out earlier this week if the weather wasn’t so crappy. (Sweeping generalization on the weather) Because mine goes to the elevator and theirs they take home, they plan to do mine during the day when the elevator is open, then work on theirs in the evening. Couple days they’ll be done. When he and I spoke earlier this week I was optimistic I might yet be able to get some fieldwork done. With the temps the last few days, I’ve kinda given up on that. Although I just put a couple driveway markers in around the yard and the ground wasn’t frozen here. So…. Maybe?? I’ll give it a try tomorrow.

The corn kernels themselves are not sensitive to picking up moisture like soybeans or other crops are. But the snow on the leaves gets inside the combine harvester and makes everything wet and then things plug up and it just makes a mess. So we either need warmer weather to melt the snow off, or colder weather to reduce the moisture in the snow. I guess we opted for colder.

Normally I’d wait for the corn to be out, then mow the roadsides down so they’re clean and won’t catch snow, then we get the driveway markers installed. Always a fun day when daughter and I ride in the gator or 4-wheeler and she pounds the fiberglass markers in. Every time, as she readies the hammer, she quotes Homer Simpson, “Steady…. Steady…” You’ll have to google that if you’re not familiar with it. Anyway, all that is more fun when it’s 40°F than it is when it’s 20°F. I may be doing it myself at 20°.

There’s a local guy named ‘Machinery Pete’.  He’s been reporting on farm auctions since 1989 and he’s very well respected for that. His name is Greg Petersen and evidently he’s a pretty good golfer too.

https://www.machinerypete.com

On his facebook page, it seems this year every post starts with “New record high price” for that particular piece of machinery. Should we blame Covid for that too? Well, sort of. The usual material sourcing issues led to shortages on new equipment, which led to demand for good quality used equipment, which lead to higher prices. Plus crop prices are high, land values are high, so…everything is high. But I have to laugh that there’s always a new high price. “Fourth record high price on 1992 tractor!” Is fourth record high a thing?

I haven’t filled my diesel barrel yet. I order 500 gallons which will last a year for me. I read of a large dairy farm out in New York, he said they got 7000 gallons delivered on Sunday and that would last them 25 days. Yikes!

Today, I took the day off ‘work’ work to get a few things done here at home. I’m gonna go mow the roadsides. Maybe that will blow the snow off the road too. Or I’ll hook the blade up and scrape off this couple inches on the road. Time to get it in the shed I guess.

I stopped at one of the local theaters today to check on some things. Someone used an orange extension cord to plug in an artificial tree onstage. It’s an unwritten rule that you only use black or dark green cords onstage. Orange cords on the stage drive me bonkers. Why doesn’t everyone know this!!?? How many times do I have to tell you this??

I know what I’ll be doing Saturday. Fieldwork.

WHAT WILL YOU DO THIS WEEKEND?

2022, Art, Automotive, Fantasy, Food, Mysteries, Seasons, Travel

All Aboard

56 Comments

Yesterday Bill mentioned the disappointment that Botticelli’s Venus isn’t shown to it’s best advantage in its home in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  I know someone who was disappointed at seeing the David by Michelangelo in that same city; she thought that many fewer people should be allowed into the gallery at any given time so that it is quiet while you are observing the statue.  I also know several folks who were underwhelmed by Stonehenge; they feel it is too close to the highway (technically the highway is too close to Stonehenge) and there is a chain link fence along the road that runs up to it.  And of course I did have a client once who just didn’t love Paris the way he thought he should. He couldn’t explain it at all and felt a little sheepish about it.

One of the days I was visiting Pat in Nashville, we drove down to Chattanooga for a day.  After we’d gone all through the huge aquarium there, I told Pat I wanted to see the Chattanooga Choo Choo.  After all – why not.  I’m guessing if it took me 66 years to get to Chattanooga the first time, I probably won’t get another chance!

We turned on the GPS… we were only about 3 miles away but it was downtown traffic so we wanted to be sure.  A left turn took us to the back of a hotel where there were some older trains but there wasn’t an entrance so we turned back.  A right turn after the hotel was the same… train cars but no entrance.  The front of the hotel has mostly pay parking and there was no signage whatsoever for the CCC.  We finally parked in a questionable spot and I called the hotel itself.  The gal who answered the phone said you had to go through the hotel lobby to get there.  Hmmmm.  We left the car in our questionable space and traipsed into the hotel.  It became clear immediately that this hotel had been the train station at one point but these days it is in sad shape and most of the retail spots in the big open atrium are dark.

If you walk all the way through, you do indeed come out to the train yard and the CCC is right there but that’s about all there is to say.  Not clean, not spiffed up, no signage, no speakers playing the famous song.  No little café serving coffee with cute names and no gift shop with magnet and postcards.  All the other train cars in the yard are in very sad shape; a few look like there might be some refurbishing going on, but I wouldn’t bet any money on when it will actually be finished.  As long as we were there, Pat snapped a photo of me in front of the engine, proof that we had actually found it!  Truly, the model of the CCC in the hotel lobby was more impressive than the actual train itself.

Luckily since we hadn’t thought about looking for the CCC until that morning, neither of us had any great expectations so it wasn’t nearly as disappointing as it could have been.  I think it’s the big build up in our expectations that causes most of our disappointments – at least it is for me.

What would you call a coffee drink at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Coffee Shop?

2022, animals, Farming Update, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized

In The Mood

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The weekend Farm Report comes to us from Ben.

Well, guess its winter; my 1940’s music station has been replaced by Christmas music. Bah. I changed that one to the Sinatra station. I like 90% of the 40’s music. I only like 53% of Sinatra’s music.

Orion is back in the night sky. I sure enjoy seeing him. I talk with him a lot.

Some of us have snow, many of us have cold, almost seasonal, temps. Some of you may have had a hurricane or two. It is November after all. I’m still fairly optimistic we’ll warm up again here in Minnesota. After all, I haven’t got the snow fence up, the corn out, or any fall tillage done. It *has* to warm up! Well, it would sure be *nice* if it would warm up. Yes, I’m pushing my luck on that one.

Corn crop is still out there. Feeding and hiding all the deer from the hunters.  I did hear the neighbors were hoping to get over here this week for their corn. And we didn’t have any severe weather as predicted the other day. Whew. Got a little rain, but really not enough to hurt anything.

Last year the corn was taken out on November 9th. Most years it’s mid-November. So, we’re still on target. Many years it’s the weekend of Thanksgiving that Kelly and I are putting the snow fence up. Usually we can find a nice weekend with calm winds and temps in the 40’s to do it. Only once have I actually had to kneel in the snow to do it. A few times I’ve been colder than others. I remain optimistic.

I put diesel fuel conditioner in the truck and the one tractor. This is the stuff to prevent diesel fuel gelling in cold temperatures. I added ‘Stabil’ to the lawn mower and put that away last week. Took off the outdoor faucet and picked up all the hoses. Closed the door to Rosie and Guildy’s pen; not sure if they’ve still been going in there at night, but they’ll have to find a new place in the evening. And I cleaned the chickens heated water bucket and moved that inside and filled with fresh water. (I haven’t plugged it in yet, but it’s there and ready, and will need to be plugged in soon). It probably holds about 6 gallons and as I carried it the 100 yards from where I scrubbed it to where the pen is, I thought to myself how far I’ve come since the shoulder surgery 10 months ago and I wasn’t carrying anything. And I thought to myself, in a few months I’ll get to celebrate doing this again, but for different reasons. (The knee replacement). I got the garage cleaned out so Kelly can park her car inside. I got the hay rake put away that I haven’t used since July. I’m not really sure why I let that sit outside all summer… wait, yes I do. Both small tractors that I would normally use to move that have been having issues all summer and I can’t get either started at the moment.

I took a wagon load of straw over to Firefly Berries so they could cover the strawberries. He said they lost a field of berries to grubs this year. Strawberries this year were probably the worst he’d seen. But the grapes were one of the best. So it goes.

I did get part of one of my summer ‘to-do’ jobs done this week. There’s an old shed where I park my car and the truck. It has old wood sliding doors but the tracks and wheels for the doors are shot and the wood sill plate is rotted out and it has all been falling off for a few years. But one corner of the doors sat in the dirt so it wasn’t really “going” anywhere. I finally got them off this week. Took all of about 5 minutes.

While I was out with the tractor and loader, I moved this piece of metal I dropped in the yard a few years ago. It was an old metal forage box, and when I pulled the front off, the roof and sides just collapsed onto themselves and I’ve been working around it. I hate it when I do that to myself. Put something down and then work around it. This is why I need to just put things away in the first place. It might be a thingy that goes to the basement, but I set it on the bench in the entry way and that’s where it sits for weeks. It might be the broken gear box from the old mower that I replaced and pushed it out of the way at the time. Yet it’s not in the scrap iron barrel, a year later and it’s still laying over there! I used a rubber mallet this summer as I fixed a window screen. Then it laid by the back door for two months. Then I moved it to the mudroom counter, and it laid there for a couple weeks. I finally remembered to take it to the shed this morning. Golly gee whiz I hate it when I do that.

So I picked up this mass of sheet metal and thought about where to move it, and caught myself, and said, ‘JUST PUT IT ON THE TRAILER! DON’T YOU DARE DUMP IT SOMEWHERE ELSE AGAIN!’. And I did! And added a few more things to the trailer. The plan was to get that hauled in this week. Or, Well, maybe next week. I have a large pile of things to haul in… scrap metal prices are pretty good. I need someone else to work my day job so I can stay home and do this job. I haven’t done any accounting in a few months either. Oh well.

Rosie and Guildy went in the pond this week! I happen to see them over there near it and the other ducks. And as I watched, they jumped into the water. Yay R&G!

Thanks to all the veterans for your service.

DO YOU PUT THINGS AWAY? WHY DON’T WE?